Activision Blizzard Q3 2021 Investor Call, Jen Oneal Leaving Blizzard

[tylenol]

Citations and sources for all these claims please

Citation for his first line: just google the WoW sub graph, they had 10.x million subs at the start of WoD and by the 2nd earnings call they were down to like 5 million and they stopped reporting because jesus christ what a dramatic drop.

There was a guy who used AI to estimate WoW's current subscriber count based on Google data, he did this going all the way back to vanilla and his estimates were very close to Blizzards actual earning call subscriber numbers before they stopped reporting them, found the image, I mean you know the game is either in free fall or holding steady at a number that would probably shock most people.

[exochaft]

Companies getting busted for lying or using deceitful practices isn't really anything new though. Lots of the biggest companies in the world have been fined or faced litigation for it. Most of the biggest banks, oil companies, tobacco, the biggest pharma companies and others. Just in the last 5-10 years banks got busted for libor/interest rate fixing, commodity price fixing and many other things. Act-Bliz lying about stuff wouldn't be shocking at all.

Furthermore, it's less about legality and more about political will. Another way of saying it is "rules for me, but not for thee": the rules only matter if someone will hold you accountable for it. Because when you get right down to it, with the size, scope, and complexity of all the laws and regulations that ActiBlizz has to follow, I can guarantee you something could be found to which ActiBlizz would be in violation. But is there a will to do anything about it? Absolutely not, unless someone has an axe to grind or charges get so severe/abundant that you need to make an example out of ActiBlizz. Otherwise, people will turn a blind eye to everything until they have some benefit to gain, or the juice is worth the squeeze. Not saying this is morally a good thing, it's just the reality of things.

Do I think ActiBlizz has done anything illegal in this quarterly call? Nope. Do I think they played word games and twisted the narrative to try to give an impression that things are better than they are? Absolutely. Doesn't take an experienced investor to read between the lines on this one, maybe just a little life experience.

[Adamas102]

Citations and sources for all these claims please

There's obviously no source for the first claim, but there's really no mystery to it. They obviously CAN still track sub numbers, but it's not as meaningful a metric when a lot of the cash flow comes from micro-transactions. They were very happy to report those sub numbers until the optics of their decline made them not worth reporting.

I believe the second claim is incorrect, I'm pretty sure it doesn't differentiate based on whether you log in from mobile or PC. However, the rest is fairly accurate given ATVI's definition of an MAU.

Out of Blizzard's 26 million Q3 MAUs I counted as 3.3 just on my own. Each month I logged in weekly to HotS to clear out my 3 dailies on occasion (about an hour) and D3 to do the challenge rift (about 5min). I also logged into WoW to see what the token price was from the character screen (didn't have an active sub throughout Q3, but still logged in at least once a month for a few seconds). I also did one mission in WC3R back in Sept. So that's 10 MAUs divided by 3 for the number of months in the quarter.

When Blizzard has cross game promotions, they're looking to boost their MAU's. Sure, they'd love for you to stick around and spend more time (and money) on more of their games, but spending 15min for just the promotion and then going back to your usual game still adds the same number of MAUs as if you spent 3 hours every day playing the game that month.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

I believe the second claim is incorrect, I'm pretty sure it doesn't differentiate based on whether you log in from mobile or PC. However, the rest is fairly accurate given

This was pointed out to me and I will edit it, it was old information.

[MoanaLisa]

Do I think ActiBlizz has done anything illegal in this quarterly call? Nope. Do I think they played word games and twisted the narrative to try to give an impression that things are better than they are? Absolutely. Doesn't take an experienced investor to read between the lines on this one, maybe just a little life experience.

This is every investor call ever for anyone that must make them: Maximize the good news, minimize the bad. There is nothing unusual about any of that. Even with that though it was clear that 2022 looks grim for growth and the market reacted appropriately.

[Cosmic Janitor]

I had thought that Ybarra was to keep the game and product side going and O’Neal was to oversee the corporate culture stuff. Just a personal observation. The structure for that, relations between managers and supervisors with employees may now be in place or expected to be in place by the end of the year. If that is the case, and I’ll warrant that’s speculation on my part, she may feel that she has done what she was charged to do and be ready to move on. I never thought that co-leadership was going to stick in any case.

I very much doubt that personally. If you need someone who can do the product and production side, then you have at least 3 layers of upper-middle management to do that for you below the president/ceo, a 4th layer at the company president/CEO level is kinda superfluous. At that level basic undertstanding of your product and being able to deal with the corporate/management side of the business is enough. If she was just there to set things up, then phrasing it a litte like the transition from Morhaime to JAB would have worked as well. Either way the representation angle hat clearly was originally part of promotion is out of the picture for now.

I mean we will see if they promote another person again and indicate Ybarra can't do it alone, but by her wording it seems like a single leadership position will be the norm again.

[FelPlague]

-They keep having these "log into Hearthstone for 15 minutes to get a mount!" deals to pad numbers, and nothing more, because it makes them look good.

"keep" you mean twice in 10 years is "keep doing" they have done it twice in 10 years my dude.

[munkeyinorbit]

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.

Check your math buddy

[Cosmic Janitor]

This is every investor call ever for anyone that must make them: Maximize the good news, minimize the bad. There is nothing unusual about any of that. Even with that though it was clear that 2022 looks grim for growth and the market reacted appropriately.

I don't think many people are suprised that Blizzard does it. The "surprising" (or shall we say discussion worthy) bit is how many people fail to realize what Blizzard actually said there, clearly showing that cheap diversion tactics work wonders.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

"keep" you mean twice in 10 years is "keep doing" they have done it twice in 10 years my dude.

That was one example, they constantly have cross game promotions like that. PREORDERING WC3 RM got you all kinds of stuff for the various Blizzard games, for instance.

I didn't care to look too hard, but here is a list from 2015:

https://www.gameskinny.com/bedaa/all...nvenient-place

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I don't think many people are suprised that Blizzard does it. The "surprising" (or shall we say discussion worthy) bit is how many people fail to realize what Blizzard actually said there, clearly showing that cheap diversion tactics work wonders.

"There is no war in Ba Sing Se"

-Some of the bootlickers around here, probably

[Gadzooks]

Companies getting busted for lying or using deceitful practices isn't really anything new though. Lots of the biggest companies in the world have been fined or faced litigation for it. Most of the biggest banks, oil companies, tobacco, the biggest pharma companies and others. Just in the last 5-10 years banks got busted for libor/interest rate fixing, commodity price fixing and many other things. Act-Bliz lying about stuff wouldn't be shocking at all.

Again, if you have proof Bobby is lying, report him. Anything else is just talk.

[Adamas102]

"keep" you mean twice in 10 years is "keep doing" they have done it twice in 10 years my dude.

It's not JUST the Hearthstone/WoW promotions. Every cross-game promotion is meant to AT LEAST boost MAUs for that quarter. Like I said above, I'm sure they'd be super happy for a few of those players to start playing additional Blizzard games frequently and spend more on micro-transactions, but even if that doesn't pan out they get to report those MAU's from your 15min log in as a "meaningful" metric. I think an MAU count would be a fine metric if it required at least a significant amount of time spent playing (say, 5 hours in a month). Not a whole lot of time, but enough to at least capture only people who actually engaged with the game.

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Check your math buddy

It's not meant to be a balanced equation. That being said, comparing 30 players to 3,000 is a bit extreme. Blizzard would probably still prefer the fewer players playing 60h per week since those are players that are more likely to spend more money on MTX compared to players who only log in for one hour per week. And of course they can keep reporting higher and higher player engagement since most of the players who leave each quarter are likely ones who were playing less and less leading up to quitting.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

It's not JUST the Hearthstone/WoW promotions. Every cross-game promotion is meant to AT LEAST boost MAUs for that quarter. Like I said above, I'm sure they'd be super happy for a few of those players to start playing additional Blizzard games frequently and spend more on micro-transactions, but even if that doesn't pan out they get to report those MAU's from your 15min log in as a "meaningful" metric. I think an MAU count would be a fine metric if it required at least a significant amount of time spent playing (say, 5 hours in a month). Not a whole lot of time, but enough to at least capture only people who actually engaged with the game.

Like another poster, I logged in to WoW to look at my characters and check token prices and because I had heard there were new customization options or something, but I am not subbed right now due to work/school. THAT counts as an MAU, a less than 5 minute login/quarter.

[Berndorf]

Again, if you have proof Bobby is lying, report him. Anything else is just talk.

I don't have proof and I don't even care whether he is or not. All I'm saying is it wouldn't really surprise me at all if he was at times. Even in a quarterly report.

[Caerrona]

67 quarters roughly since wow started...

Blizzard - 67
Doomers - 0

"wow will die in beta"
"wow will die on launch"
"wow will die next patch"
"wow will die next expac"
"wow will die next quarterly report"
"wow will die next season"

Hey one of these times someone is going to be right... eventually.

I hope it's sooner than later so these people can move on with their lives, see a therapist and become a functioning member of society again after 17 years of screaming at the monitor because "wow duh ded game".

[Adamas102]

Like another poster, I logged in to WoW to look at my characters and check token prices and because I had heard there were new customization options or something, but I am not subbed right now due to work/school. THAT counts as an MAU, a less than 5 minute login/quarter.

Ha, that was me...

I resubbed for Oct to transfer most of my gold to Bnet balance, but logged into WoW today to see if I still had enough gold to resub at a later date. Now I'll count as an additional 1/3rd of an MAU in the Q4 call just for those 20 seconds.

Obviously it's not something they'd ever officially report, but it would be interesting to try to come up with how many MAU's the average Blizzard gamer counts for. My guess is at least 2. Obviously a lot (if not most) play only a single game, but I bet there's a good amount who at least log into a few of the other games just for daily quests or seasonal things.

[rhorle]

I think an MAU count would be a fine metric if it required at least a significant amount of time spent playing (say, 5 hours in a month). Not a whole lot of time, but enough to at least capture only people who actually engaged with the game.

So it can only be meaningful by excluding people that are active user but just not active enough for an arbitrary threshold? I don't get why people are trying to hate so much on counting a user that logs in for that month as 1 user. Does it really matter if they played 5 mins or 30 hours? It is still a user logging into the product.

That is why engagement and other things are used as well. Because engagement it does exactly what you want MAU to do. Counts people based on how engaged they were. Both are valuable metrics for a company.

[MoanaLisa]

Like another poster, I logged in to WoW to look at my characters and check token prices and because I had heard there were new customization options or something, but I am not subbed right now due to work/school. THAT counts as an MAU, a less than 5 minute login/quarter.

One for the month. One-third of an MAU for the quarter.

[Self Inflicted Wounds]

One for the month. One-third of an MAU for the quarter.

For about 1 minute of time. I wasn't subbed. How is that an "active user."

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So it can only be meaningful by excluding people that are active user but just not active enough for an arbitrary threshold? I don't get why people are trying to hate so much on counting a user that logs in for that month as 1 user. Does it really matter if they played 5 mins or 30 hours? It is still a user logging into the product.

That is why engagement and other things are used as well. Because engagement it does exactly what you want MAU to do. Counts people based on how engaged they were. Both are valuable metrics for a company.

In reference to Blizzard, what is engagement?

Here is the google definition of MAU

Monthly active users (MAU) is a term that refers to the number of unique customers who interacted with a product or service of a company within a month. Essentially, MAU is a key performance indicator (KPI) They are also used to gauge the overall performance of a company that measures online user engagement.

How does a user logging in (who is unsubbed) for 60 seconds to check token prices accurately reflect the definition of MAU? How does getting a bunch of mount collectors to log into Hearthstone for 15 minutes to pad numbers accurately reflect that? These things aren't accurate representations of overall performance or health. Thats why people are calling it corporate speak bullshit, and thats why some of us are upset with Blizzard as a whole, we can see through it. I don't want Blizzard/WoW to fail, but they keep reporting that they are "on track!" and record this and that while making tons of bad decisions, content droughts, etc.

[mbit]

Check your math buddy

You are misunderstanding what engagement means. Common engagement metrics translate to how much does a player play? 10 guys noliving are worth more than 10.000 playing 1h / week for this because the latter LOWER the engagement metric.