Activision Blizzard Q3 2021 Investor Call, Jen Oneal Leaving Blizzard

[Niwes]

oh god, i cant stand reading that blah blah any longer.

i worked in such companies. and they just do it for PR reasons and because its part of their exit deal. even in 2021 that ppl still believe, all that 16-20 year old kids out there eat that stupid lawyer PR shit, packed in nice wording, typed by marketing team. i literally hate all this shinyshine frontside shit, no sane person believes anyway. and thats the reason why i no longer work in such environments.

frontside:
„yeeeah, we are such a happy great family at blizz. and even when one of us fades away, he/she/it will always be in our hearts.“

backside:
„help, my family touched my boobs in cosby room.“

Afrasiabi didnt wrote the happy family letter. hmmm, but why… omg.

its disgusting.

[mbit]

It isn't biased to count a user as active for individual products and then combining it into one company wide statistic. That is reporting active users for all products lol.

God youre too stupid to read, reread "count people muliple times loggin in from different devices" aka if you login to HS from pc and mobile you count 2 times.

[rhorle]

God youre too stupid to read, reread "count people muliple times loggin in from different devices" aka if you login to HS from pc and mobile you count 2 times.

Well yes you would be an active user on a different platform if you log in on that platform. Why do you want them to under count active users?

[CaptainV]

Its not fraud, its how maus are counted and its a decently common metric. People should know that MAUs aren't a hard line measure of success, but considering net bookings are still doing well Blizz isn't going to care.
MAU is ultimately how many potential customers there are, more is better but if they can meet expectations with less they don't matter as much. Thats the trick Blizz has been pulling for years.

My point is that white lie fraud is still fraud, its a different kind of fraud, they conflate the idea of numbers to make you think people actually play the game when in reality, they dont.

This is that classic tactic a marketer would use to get a product to sell by saying 100 people bought the product, while neglecting to mention that they bought a completley different product because they're not obliged to tell you that.

This is exactly why its fake as shite and why im tired of the white knights defending blizzards shite, because calling a spade a spade is important, calling them out for disingenous bullshit is important, because if we let them lie, we keep feeding the lie.

But im tired of the lie ive been tired of it for 10 years.

I idolised this company back when I was in my 20's, I find everything about it now, a painful joke.

They dont give 2 shits about the player, they only care about the shareholder and the saddest part is that not only was it obvious back in Cata, its been gradually way more obvious since then.

The passion and love this company once had died with its unification with activision and soon after that its not just gone downhill, its just stopped caring if the players hate it and thinks out of its own self-narcistic ego people will come back.

I havent touched a blizzard product in 2 years.

They might wanna rethink their unshakeable faith.

[StillMcfuu]

No. I am just not choosing to add a bias to the statements made. You keep claiming they lied and that WoW is actually under performing. Why not inform the SEC that the investor communications contains an error?

Also why is it wrong to count every person that logs into a game? Not to mention you don't need to log in to uninstall any of their products. You and others like to spin MAU as being bad for counting every MAU for a product. Logging into a game for even 1 second makes you an active user for that month. Why wouldn't it? Why are you advocating that they actually lie by not counting every user for that period?

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It isn't biased to count a user as active for individual products and then combining it into one company wide statistic. That is reporting active users for all products lol. And yes you claimed MAU is a lie because they would already have been fined for reporting them if they can get in trouble for lying to investors.

Jesus... they added the spin. Its a quarterly report and they aren't saying anything about how wow did this quarter. Go on, show me where they reported WoWs health this quarter.

And I was making an example of how a negative can he shown as a positive and not be a lie or fraud. I'm not at all arguing that blizz is committing fraud, they aren't.

[Lolites]

I havent touched a blizzard product in 2 years.

im sure theyll go "well, we still have milions of players acros our games, we have great revenue that actualy INCREASED from last Q, but CaptainV doesnt play our games, so we should totaly chenge everything to his liking"

[rhorle]

Jesus... they added the spin. Its a quarterly report and they aren't saying anything about how wow did this quarter. Go on, show me where they reported WoWs health this quarter.

World of Warcraft is on track to deliver its strongest engagement and net bookings outside of a Modern expansion year in a decade.

So that statement has nothing to do with the health of WoW? Lol. Misrepresenting facts to investors is fraud, a lie in the context of this discussion, and something that will get them in a lot of trouble with investors and the SEC. If WoW is really not on track to perform better then "non-expansion" years that would be a lie and not just "A spin on negative news".

[mbit]

Well yes you would be an active user on a different platform if you log in on that platform. Why do you want them to under count active users?

You're still one person playing same game same account. There is literally no benefit if you play same account on 2 devices for the corp. Now come up how inflating numbers isnt biased data. Gonna need a whole truck of copium.

[rhorle]

You're still one person playing same game same account. There is literally no benefit if you play same account on 2 devices for the corp. Now come up how inflating numbers isnt biased data. Gonna need a whole truck of copium.

And? Did you not read the definition of MAU? They count active users per game and per device type. There is nothing wrong with using a term how you define it to report information that is useful for investors to know.

[mbit]

And? Did you not read the definition of MAU? They count active users per game and per device type. There is nothing wrong with using a term how you define it to report information that is useful for investors to know.

So the copium is simply ignoring that its biased data. Just concede your initial statement was pure bullshit and the sec doesn't fine you for bias in data.

[rhorle]

So the copium is simply ignoring that its biased data. Just concede your initial statement was pure bullshit and the sec doesn't fine you for bias in data.

It isn't biased data though. They report combined MAU's that include per device and per game counts. It isn't biased to include all sources of your MAUs. The SEC fines you if they report biased information and Activision Blizzard specifically has definitions for MAU in order to avoid fraudulent reporting using the term.

[StillMcfuu]

World of Warcraft is on track to deliver its strongest engagement and net bookings outside of a Modern expansion year in a decade.

So that statement has nothing to do with the health of WoW? Lol. Misrepresenting facts to investors is fraud, a lie in the context of this discussion, and something that will get them in a lot of trouble with investors and the SEC. If WoW is really not on track to perform better then "non-expansion" years that would be a lie and not just "A spin on negative news".

No, thats stating for the year, if they make more money in qtr 1 and qtr 2 (released tbc with mtx) and they lose money this quarter but are still ahead of other non expansion years, that statement is 100% accurate.

Thats a yearly metric, not a quarterly progress report.

[mbit]

It isn't biased data though. They report combined MAU's that include per device and per game counts. It isn't biased to include all sources of your MAUs. The SEC fines you if they report biased information and Activision Blizzard specifically has definitions for MAU in order to avoid fraudulent reporting using the term.

Suggesting you have more active people than you do with a small fine print "actually we count some double" is the definition of bias.
Where the hell did you ever get the idea its not a scam if you explain it in the fine print? Fine print scams are the prime example of legal fuckery.

[rhorle]

Thats a yearly metric, not a quarterly progress report.

The quarter is part of the year. If it wasn't healthy then it wouldn't be on track. Just because it doesn't report the health in the way you want doesn't mean it is not a comment on the health of WoW in Q3.

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Suggesting you have more active people than you do

But it isn't more active users then you actually do have. It is counting all of the active users you do have. It is amazing how angry you are about bias while you want them to count people only once and bias the data.

[mbit]

No, thats stating for the year, if they make more money in qtr 1 and qtr 2 (released tbc with mtx) and they lose money this quarter but are still ahead of other non expansion years, that statement is 100% accurate.

Thats a yearly metric, not a quarterly progress report.

The bigger issue is engagement = playtime/player. It says nothing about players in total. If you only have 30 players playing weekly 60h you have higher engagement than if you have 3000 people play each only 1h.

[StillMcfuu]

The quarter is part of the year. If it wasn't healthy then it wouldn't be on track. Just because it doesn't report the health in the way you want doesn't mean it is not a comment on the health of WoW in Q3.

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But it isn't more active users then you actually do have. It is counting all of the active users you do have. It is amazing how angry you are about bias while you want them to count people only once and bias the data.

Now you are spinning it big time. It means nothing for the qtr. You don't know if they made money, lost money. Lost users, gained users, you have no idea.
Like I said earlier, overall warcraft health will be fine, but all points they gave us for this qtr indicates underperformance.

[mbit]

But it isn't more active users then you actually do have. It is counting all of the active users you do have. It is amazing how angry you are about bias while you want them to count people only once and bias the data.

Its amazing how dishonest you are. You already admitted yourself 2 posts ago same person counts double if they play same account on mobile&pc. Maus as not users because they count same person double but now you talk about active users as they were. Seems you can't even avoid the bias yourself.

[rhorle]

Now you are spinning it big time. It means nothing for the qtr. You don't know if they made money, lost money. Lost users, gained users, you have no idea.
Like I said earlier, overall warcraft health will be fine, but all points they gave us for this qtr indicates underperformance.

Year-to-date, net bookings for Blizzard and for World of Warcraft, its largest franchise, were higher year-over-year.

Net bookings is an operating metric that is defined as the net amount of products and services sold digitally or sold-in
physically in the period, and includes license fees, merchandise, and publisher incentives, among others, and is equal
to net revenues excluding the impact from deferrals

Year to date has nothing to do with the quarter being reported? It isn't a spin to accurately talk about what was reported during the quarterly report. You never asked for a statement about profit or loss. You asked where they made a statement on the health of the game. Year to date is a statement on the health of the game for the quarter they are reporting on.

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Its amazing how dishonest you are. You already admitted yourself 2 posts ago same person counts double if they play same account on mobile&pc. Maus as not users because they count same person double but now you talk about active users as they were. Seems you can't even avoid the bias yourself.

It isn't dishonest to acknowledge how Blizzard defines and counts MAU. If they are collecting device metrics why wouldn't they count each time a person played on a specific device for the month? To not do so would be dishonest and putting a bias on that specific information.

The only foolish thing I've done was take your word on MAU. From the quarterly report:

For Blizzard, an individual who accesses the same game on two platforms or devices in the relevant period would generally be counted as a single user.

So most users are not counted twice.

[mbit]

Year-to-date, net bookings for Blizzard and for World of Warcraft, its largest franchise, were higher year-over-year.

Net bookings is an operating metric that is defined as the net amount of products and services sold digitally or sold-in
physically in the period, and includes license fees, merchandise, and publisher incentives, among others, and is equal
to net revenues excluding the impact from deferrals

Year to date has nothing to do with the quarter being reported? It isn't a spin to accurately talk about what was reported during the quarterly report. You never asked for a statement about profit or loss. You asked where they made a statement on the health of the game. Year to date is a statement on the health of the game for the quarter they are reporting on.

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It isn't dishonest to acknowledge how Blizzard defines and counts MAU. If they are collecting device metrics why wouldn't they count each time a person played on a specific device for the month? To not do so would be dishonest and putting a bias on that specific information.

1. net bookings are all sales. They artificially boosted it just now with mount sales. It says fuck all about the games health if they increased cashshop sales. They have been doing this throughout each addon to substitute sub losses.

2. "Not counting double would be dishonest" is not an argument. It's insanity. It makes the data incomparable to any honest dev counting each account once. You can't call it "user" with fine print *not real people, just logins on different devices* and claim to be honest. If you were honest you would call it either device logins or actually count users.

[Nize]

World of Warcraft is on track to deliver its strongest engagement and net bookings outside of a Modern expansion year in a decade.

So that statement has nothing to do with the health of WoW? Lol. Misrepresenting facts to investors is fraud, a lie in the context of this discussion, and something that will get them in a lot of trouble with investors and the SEC. If WoW is really not on track to perform better then "non-expansion" years that would be a lie and not just "A spin on negative news".

So it's not really a lie. I'm sure it IS on track of being the most profitable for a non-expansion year. But I think people forget both the inclusion of TBCC, as well as its only true competition in similar nature is WoD, which is the only expansion within those 10 years whose first quarter was Q4. Expansions make the most money off its first 2 quarters. Legion, MoP, and BfA's first 2 quarters were also within its expansion year.

So no, Blizzard isn't lying, they're just misleading with their information and hoping that the investors buy into it. Spoiler: According to this morning's stock value, they didn't