Activision Blizzard Lawsuit Update - Contract Workers and HR Interference Added

[exsanguinate]

The part that i hate the most of this situation is that the players keep supporting Blizzard with their credit cards....Even after Shadowlands is a big piece of shit.

Why the players are not able to play something else? There are tons of MMO's out there, why keep supporting Blizzard?

Time to move on people....

true. you add nothing to the table if you spit poison on this game and keep paying them. I also canceled my sub and it took a long time for me to understand and overcome, but now I made the right choice.

[Velerios]

exactly. EA over the years has acquired companies and later dissolved them into their own company later; like westwood. The Blizzard name is tarnished and sooner or later the investors are going to get mad if this keeps burning to the ground. The only redemption they will have is to dissolve it and rename the studio something else.

That might actually be true. I doubted it at first, but now that i saw that they even removed the Activision-Logo for the next CoD Trailer, i think that we might actually see a removal of both Blizzard AND Activision.

Both of them are quite Tarnished, and we might get to see a reboot.

Maybe under a complete new name a "Restart" of both entities (doubt that King will play a role in it) or something they already have like "battle.net".

Still: i doubt we see anything outside of some heads rolling and ATVI having a deal and paying a big fine. The State rather have this than a long court case, since this can go often wrong.

[Martymark]

"We didn't shred anything! We don't even own a shredder!"

No, but you deleted a whole lot...

[RoKPaNda]

Co-development means Blizzard did nothing but give Vicarious Visions permission to do something with their property. Also at the beginning of development Vicarious Visions wasnt part of Blizzard and now they are. I can understand that such things are confusing

And what I expect from Blizzard is that they make new good games instead of remastering old ones. Diablo 2 is such a bad game in 2021. Its clunky and outdated.
Remember what this discussion was about? It was about Blizzard not making good games for a while now. They havent and they probably never will again. Diablo 4 already has some kind of microtransactions confirmed so it will be a typical Blizzard cashgrab like eveything nowadays. Even the Diablo 2 remaster, which looks alright, but its still 45 bucks for a 20 year old game.

Well that was pretty condescending. Remastered games are the industry trend. Sorry you don't like it but that's where the money is. Whether they make good games or not is subjective. You don't like their games, but at least 2 people in this thread have listed all the Blizzard games from the past several years that they've liked so...

They might not go bankrupt or shut down, but have fun fixing reputation. No way they recover.

Much like the COD and League fandoms the Blizzard fandom loves to hate everything that Blizzard does anyway. You can go back as far as WarCraft 2 and the Blizzard forums were filled with threads about how shit Blizzard is as a company.

Imagine thinking that twitch viewers directly correlates to active players. FFXIV is a very boring game to watch unless the streamer has the skills to make it a fun experience. The leveling takes hundreds of hours and most of it is story, story that the viewers most likely have already experienced.

I would suggest that you compare in game instead. Go to one of the big cities in both games and compare how alive the server seems. Numbers will never tell you this because all numbers are educated guesses at best.

I'm actually a little blown away that you think that viewership isn't a good metric for determining the popularity of a game. I mean with WoW you can actually see how many people are doing various end game activities. I'm not saying that FFXIV isn't a very lively game, in fact that post that you replied to stated that WoW and FFXIV are the titans of the genre. But the idea that FFXIV is somehow dominating the market is kind of amusing when something like 90% of it's viewership is concentrated in two streamers. Other former WoW streamers get lower amounts of views when playing FFXIV. Look at Towelliee for a good example of that, his viewership when he's just farming mounts in WoW or doing old raids is higher than his viewership when he's playing FFXIV or New World. Not only that but his social media interaction has suffered immensely since he stopped streaming WoW.

I'm not sure what you want me to see looking at cities in FFXIV? Yes there are people, I never said the game wasn't alive and doing well. I just said it wasn't dominating the genre like someone else said that it was. Like I said, on my retail WoW server it's packed with people even in off peak hours. Same with my classic server. Last night when I went to Karazhan there wasn't an inch of screen that wasn't covered by people outside by the summoning stone and Org was completely packed as well. Two MMOs can do well at the same time, especially two MMOs like FFXIV and WoW which don't have nearly as much overlap as you think they do. As for which of the two I feel is more alive based on your test of looking at the players in cities? WoW, hands down, without question.

[ElDoorO]

The part that i hate the most of this situation is that the players keep supporting Blizzard with their credit cards....Even after Shadowlands is a big piece of shit.

Why the players are not able to play something else? There are tons of MMO's out there, why keep supporting Blizzard?

Time to move on people....

Because other games also have issues as well. Additionally, once you have a set of friends in a game, any game, it's more difficult to leave it without good reason.

And, to be honest, most people won't care what happens behind the scenes. After all, do you even know where your components are sourced from on the electronic device you're using to write that text with? Because I can tell you, it's probably not pretty. And yet there you are... using it.

[ellieg]

The part that i hate the most of this situation is that the players keep supporting Blizzard with their credit cards....Even after Shadowlands is a big piece of shit.

Why the players are not able to play something else? There are tons of MMO's out there, why keep supporting Blizzard?

Time to move on people....

Most ppl don't care about this lawsuit. Vast majority of people still playing shadowlands get enjoyment out of it one way or the other. They have no reason to invest time in a dif game

[Mikah]

The part that i hate the most of this situation is that the players keep supporting Blizzard with their credit cards....Even after Shadowlands is a big piece of shit.

Why the players are not able to play something else? There are tons of MMO's out there, why keep supporting Blizzard?

Time to move on people....

Tip of the iceberg. It is very likely that every video game producers are in the same boat. The whole industry is built on the same frame.

Just look at Ubisoft last year with cases of harassment and the culture of abuse. It is almost a copy-paste of what Activision is going through, and they are still going strong. I bet most of the player base are not reading much into gaming forums and are not even aware of this.

As usual, they'll get a slap on the wrist, fire a few people, hire a bunch of advocates to look good and keep rolling on.

[deenman]

And those #s are...?

have you not kept up with the reports?they always post em on mmo,until the lawsuit they had only increased

[Veya30]

Most ppl don't care about this lawsuit because they are addicted to this game, that is the main reason. The vast majority of the people still play Shadowlands, because they are unable to play something else. They deny even an attempt to try other games, because they are so hooked in WoW that they only play that all the time. And i think that is sick.

Now if the player base suffer from WoW addiction, that is up to them. I already moved to other games, even after spending a long time playing WoW. For real, after reading all the lawsuit....fuck Blizzard. And fuck them for good.

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All the companies have problems like that, but not so grave as Activision/Blizzard. But that is no excuse, for its player base, to keep supporting them, even in the clear sight of a awful lawsuit that demonstrate the quality of life inside those offices HQ. If you are paying money to them, you support this shit and probably, you deserve that shit (Like Shadowland awful content).

I don't care about Ubisoft, i don't play their shitty games. I care about Activision/Blizzard, because i used to put my money on that. But not anymore. A female worker commit suicide because a guy was passing her photos to other guys and making fun of her....Fuck those assholes.

I’m not sure if they can recover from this lawsuit. A great majority of players think like you and are quitting Blizzard games in droves. I’m still thinking we see all in progress games cancelled and current games being shutdown as a result.

[Laqweeta]

have you not kept up with the reports?they always post em on mmo,until the lawsuit they had only increased

This is because of Classic/TBC but k lolol

[Veya30]

Yea, this is actually something really bad. Activision/Blizzard always branded they company as a "Dream Job". That if you ever had the chance to work for them, it would be the best experience ever. Now we see the true....

After this lawsuit, many more will come. Just imagine all the people there in California, that used to work for them and left the company over the pass of the years, because of those behaviors. Or what about the ladies that were abused by many of the "tops" guys in that company?. This is a real shitstorm for them, and i think that is good, they had it coming. And deserve it.

Now, the main point here, is that if you support this "behavior", put your money on it, even if the cute face of Tyrande or Jaina is in the box, the men behind the company are still the same. That include that asshole, that took Millions of USD in the wake of COVID, while at the same time fired tons of people during the pandemic, all because his "bonus" was more important than the people working for them. Do you actually believe that guy didnt know about what was going on those offices?. Do you think he never spoke with Alex Afrasiabi?. They were all friends there and they knew what kind of environment they were creating with the passing of the years.

Just imagine your daughter working on Blizzard. Do you like that?

Most of the bad people have been removed. I don’t want the good people to lose their jobs. Hoping for change and a better company in the end. ������

[deenman]

This is because of Classic/TBC but k lolol

and thats relevant how?also it launched mid 2019,why was it growing before?

also sales have set records every time,you dont need to buy expansions to play classic but k trololololol

[Daedius]

Shredding documents [evidence] should automatically apply a jail time and incredibly heavy fines of a % of their net worth...

[Osmeric]

Spoilation of evidence is a no-no in California. While suing for spoilation is not allowed, the rules of evidence can be very bad for a defendant who destroys evidence.

https://www.mondaq.com/unitedstates/...superior-court

(see the part starting at "Evidence Code §413" for a real case where spoilation occurred in a sexual harrassment case.)

[ElDoorO]

That's the way to do it. Good for you. Find somewhere else to have fun. Stop supporting a company that lies like this. I even wonder if Blizzard already sold our personal information to China or things like that. They are no getting anything else from me....

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There is no perfect game. All the them have flaws. And if the reason is that you have "friends" there, organize them to move to something else. I see no good future on WoW in the following years. Its time to look for another game.

The reason that you should care about what is going on "behind the scenes" is because this also affect the quality of the job being done by the developers, that content that you play, those raids that you do on weekends, those dungeons and even those world designs. If the core of Blizzard is rotten, their products are going to be rotten as well.

The only reason WoW is even alive right now is because of social peer pressure / obligation. It used to be a "home wrecker" for a reason.

It went from boasting, what, 13 million subscriptions? To... what was the number they released a few weeks ago?

In any case, WoW could better itself in many ways. A product, any product, should want to take the best of other ideas and products and pull it into their own while removing the bad stuff.

This is why most of the other MMO's have teleports instead of flight paths so slow you're /afk by the time you land all because "relax and enjoy the scenery" aka metrics.
WoW got deposit reagents from GW2, among a few other nice things.

I do agree they should be way more open. I wish, for example, they had a real bug tracker. For example, I don't know if the paladin mount glyph is still bugged in bg's where you lose the speed boost with the flag if you're glyphed. Is that fixed? I don't know. I have no way to know either without testing it and potentially pissing off a fair amount of people.

edit: I don't mean to sound like I'm jumping you. I just realized my wording is quite poor and pointed.

[callipygoustp]

I have no doubt Ion made women uncomfortable in the office, but I imagine it's less with advances and more with the fact he sometimes forgets to close both sets of eyelids blinking during conversation.

If we were on the official forums, I'd click on the little heart under your post.

[ElDoorO]

Is clear that Activision/Blizzard HR Department actually got the complains from the workers on paper, and instead of doing something, they ignored them + destroyed the evidence that the complain was done. What else could they have destroyed? Emails?....

I think, that if you are for example: A good developer with awesome skills and you read the newspaper and read all of this crap is going on, with the company, it would be a clear "red flag" for you, to understand that you have to move into another company to work, because things are about to get really bad. And what this company is facing, is really bad. I woudnt be so concern if a random citizen was sueing the company, but is actually the State of California the one that made the lawsuit.

But for us players, also means "Its time to find a new game to play, things are not going to improve any time soon...".

I moved to ElderScrolls Online and Final Fantasy 14. The last has been so awesome, that i havent played ESO in a while.

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Nah, don't worry. Just...move to play something else for now....shit is about to get bad for that company...

Also it will serve you as a way to discover new games, instead of being stuck in WoW all your life.

Oh, make no mistake, I play plenty of other games. It's why I'm so informed on other MMO's and other genre's.

I still have shit tons of games on Steam I still haven't played from those damn Summer and Winter sales.

I love FFXIV.. but their global cooldown I was never able to get through... I try and I try but I just can't.

GW2 I rather enjoy the WvWvW.

I still play Starcraft 2 Coop.

I occasionally fire up various games in Steam like Doom. I wish the original Command & Conquer were on Steam. Third Crisis was more fun than I expected. I've been working around with Warframe. I tried Path of Exile but some aspects I still don't get -- like identifying items. I have a ton of unidentified items but no way to identify them.

[ellieg]

Most ppl don't care about this lawsuit because they are addicted to this game, that is the main reason. The vast majority of the people still play Shadowlands, because they are unable to play something else. They deny even an attempt to try other games, because they are so hooked in WoW that they only play that all the time. And i think that is sick.

Now if the player base suffer from WoW addiction, that is up to them. I already moved to other games, even after spending a long time playing WoW. For real, after reading all the lawsuit....fuck Blizzard. And fuck them for good.

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All the companies have problems like that, but not so grave as Activision/Blizzard. But that is no excuse, for its player base, to keep supporting them, even in the clear sight of a awful lawsuit that demonstrate the quality of life inside those offices HQ. If you are paying money to them, you support this shit and probably, you deserve that shit (Like Shadowland awful content).

I don't care about Ubisoft, i don't play their shitty games. I care about Activision/Blizzard, because i used to put my money on that. But not anymore. A female worker commit suicide because a guy was passing her photos to other guys and making fun of her....Fuck those assholes.

Naw lol. I dont think most ppl playing are addicted. I think most ppl playing just enjoy the game. I and many others don't care abt the law suit. I still buy nike which uses child labor. I still buy plenty of products that have an abusive history and I can guarantee you do too lol. This is just the current popular thing to be outraged over. A bunch of noise from a minority on a website.

[ellieg]

For real, if you are telling me that people "enjoy" Shadowlands and its poorly written story, I'm actually disappointed of the player base of WoW. They are just playing a game just for the sake of playing it. Because I think i played the same game as all of you (Shadowlands) and it was BAD beyond words.

Now, saying that you buy NIKE even after knowing its a product with an abusing story, I means you don't give a single F. But that is up to you. I don't buy crap from abusers. And I think more than a reason sounds more like an excuse.

But for real, Shadowlands is just trash. Who ever is actually playing day and night that content, he/she has a really poor taste in games, And not moving into other games with far more interesting content.....is just addiction or being dependance to said game.

Just because you dislike a game, doesn't mean anyone still playing it is only doing so because they are addicted lol. What's more likely? Ppl playing a game because it gives them enjoyment, or ppl playing a game because they are addicted and afraid to leave? I don't think there's some evil conspiracy going on lol.

[Mikah]

I don't care about Ubisoft, i don't play their shitty games. I care about Activision/Blizzard, because i used to put my money on that. But not anymore. A female worker commit suicide because a guy was passing her photos to other guys and making fun of her....Fuck those assholes.

That's the not point whether you play (or like) their games or not. The reason I am bringing this up is because Ubisoft has been through this a year ago. You should really look it up before saying that Activision/Blizzard is in deeper trouble. They too were caught in not just some complaints, but in real criminal charges to both Ubisoft as a legal entity and to several current and to former employees including several people high up in the chain of command. This even included the CEO, who even though was not directly involved, allowed the harassment to flourish within the company. They went through a big purge and several changes were made, although many people who were problematic are still there. Only the really bad cases were terminated. The point I am making is that history is showing us that those things will blow over and will have been forgotten in a year from now. They'll get a slap on the wrist and move on. People will still buy their games. What makes this different?

So Activision/Blizzard is not finished because of this. This is becoming one of those thread of 'OMG WoW is dead' which we have seen periodically for the past 15+ years now.

The majority of people playing games are not active on forums and/or don't read news on the company making these games. They don't give a f*** about this issue. It may seems like a huge scandal here on MMo-Champ, but in reality, it will barely have an impact on the masses. The reason people are still playing WoW is not because they are addicted. It is because nothing good has ever come close to it. Some people will follow the streamers for a while and try other games, realize it's shit and eventually come back.

This is not specific to the gaming industry anyways. It is part of a much bigger issue of companies in any area dominated by guys/nerds, such as anything computer, engineering, etc...