Blizzard: No longer socially acceptable

[Velerios]

The scandal made a few headlines, damaged their image, and costed them whatever they paid in legal fees. At the end of the day, a good product (or well-marketed one) will sell.

Exactly. It doesn't matter, yes a few hardcore-gamers might be jumping ship to their audience at youtube/twitch (but only if they already want to change the game), but most gamers play a game, not look what company is behind it. And even if they do, many of them, and yes that includes me too; who cares? Woke media might completely lose their brain over it, but this is woke media: the people that reads it love or hate wokeness, it doesn't matter for them, as long as it bring them clicks, the same goes for youtuber. And yes, blizzard needs to pay a fine, some even might go to prison, and after this, who cares anymore.

[Mojo03]

Exactly. It doesn't matter, yes a few hardcore-gamers might be jumping ship to their audience at youtube/twitch (but only if they already want to change the game), but most gamers play a game, not look what company is behind it. And even if they do, many of them, and yes that includes me too; who cares? Woke media might completely lose their brain over it, but this is woke media: the people that reads it love or hate wokeness, it doesn't matter for them, as long as it bring them clicks, the same goes for youtuber. And yes, blizzard needs to pay a fine, some even might go to prison, and after this, who cares anymore.

Well, in this case it actually seems likely the main media outlets actively worked with California to smear Activision, which seems a more than a bit corrupt.

I say that because so much of what they said was wildly misleading and even blatantly lying if you compare official documents to what the media outlets were saying.

It actually scares the crap out of me how easily they did it and how effective it was. What else are they doing that on?

But ya, I agree, I don’t think it matters who makes the games to most people if they are great. Even if the company is clear as day terrible, people will find ways to justify playing their games, if they make great games.

[Akta]

spoiler: 90% of players don't even care about that

[MiiiMiii]

The company is not "done" because of the PR issues. The company is "done" because of the loss of good developers.

It seems to me that for instance the WoW team and somewhat Overwatch team is in shambles. Meanwhile the Diablo 4 and Hearthstone team seems to do a fantastic job (unless they lost a bunch of devs during this scandal).

I also don't think the new "leader" of Blizzard, Mike Ybarra, is gonna do a good job. Concidering he never communicate with anyone about anything, we barely know he exists and so do appearently the people working at Blizzard too, as he had some article where he still has not shown up to the office.

Bobby Kotick is, according to both "the public" and "insiders" a very problematic person and the biggest problem of the company. Like devolore (the guy that interviewed Ion on the youtube videos in Legion/BfA) constantly tweet about and some supposed ex devs claim.

[Cthulhu fhtagn]

I dont know, from personal experience the controversies have not affected the circles i've played in. Only the content drought has. People i play with play for the people that are in the game, it's been their way of socializing with those people for over a decade.

I don't quite get the logic that people should stop playing cause there's awful people at blizzard. Those awful people sexually harrassed people that were just trying to work at their dream job. I dont know how stopping playing (a thing i also enjoy doing for myself) helps those people at all. There's still a lot of good people working in team2 and until they personally ask that people stop playing i dont see it helping.

[exochaft]

spoiler: 90% of players don't even care about that

While I'd say even a higher amount of the player base doesn't even realize what's going on at Blizz, I don't think they would be the source of Blizz experiencing a downfall... it'd be Blizz itself.

What all their players will see is not the office politics and news stories about the company, but what's in (or not in) Blizz games. I think it's pretty obvious that Blizz has done a lot of damage control concerning their current situation, much of which has been bleeding over into their games. Remove some names there, sanitize something here, make something more PC over there, rewrite something "problematic" there, etc... that's stuff people actually see. If you start messing with the games to a level that people start to notice changes, that's when they start reacting.

Furthermore, when you have an office filled with people of this sort of mindset, it's not hard to realize that focusing on everything except making a game fun and entertaining is not conducive to making a great gaming experience. I mean, it's no secret that long before all this news about Blizz came out that many of the conversations tended to lack any mention of fun/entertainment, and it felt more like <insert corporate jargon> while following spreadsheets. Simply put, not much has changed at Blizz from the perspective that the decisions being made are still not coming from a good place.

The ultimate problem is that ActiBlizz is still making a ton of money, although the Blizz subsection is pretty weak in comparison it still generates revenue despite weakening activity. That just means they're milking players harder for money with less players to work with, and that's not surprising as that's been their business model for a while now. Such a model will insulate them from all the negative press to some degree, but you'll have to see a massive shift before you get sudden changes occurring. As it stands, I guarantee Blizz is just trying to hang on until OW2 and D4 releases... because let's be fair here: no matter how many people get abused or negative things occur at Blizz, OW2 and D4 are going to generate a tooooon of money for Blizz, and sadly that's all that really matters.

[kaminaris]

Nobody cares about that, their games simply went dogshit so people simply stopped playing them.

Their office drama could have been a reason why but who knows.

Anyways, as for D4, cool, its gonna make some money... in couple years then what? Are they suppose to live off just from that?
It's not going to cut it. Especially if they make it similar to D3 treatment (basically no content updates).

There is a huge difference between having stable 4 IPS/games that generate constant profit vs not having anything stable.

Are they going to die? If they keep this course, they will. Not in 5 years but maybe in 10.
The major problem is, they will have to cut the corners at some point.

[Raven]

40% again is actually not thar much. They can easily boost that just with the 9.2 patch release and they will.

And also its around 28-29% not 40% and in a pandemic when all stocks isnt the most stable.

[Boddhi]

Its no longer “ok” to be playing their games.

Generally i'd say it's OK to do (or not do) just what you feel like. Then you are yourself and that's always a good thing.

[sensei]

As been stated several times, most people don't care, or aren't aware. And even many of those that claim to care are doing it because of some personal agenda. Otherwise it's kinda hard to explain why Ubisoft and Riot Games get a pass on their messes. The fact of the matter is that any company that hires a lot of people is sadly going to have some rather iffy people working for them, and if you were to avoid any company that has some scumbag working for them, you are sadly going to spend most of your time playing tic-tac-toe by yourself.

Take this for example

https://www.cnet.com/tech/gaming/for...o-sting-video/

[cparle87]

Like it or not, the quickest way to end any sort of animosity against Blizzard is for them to make a great expansion for WoW or have OW2 come out and be a great game. 95 percent of their critics would disappear because at the end of the day, most people don't care if something doesn't impact them directly and the other 5 percent could effectively scream into the void but little would come of it.

Except "great" is subjective. And I'd wager there are enough people who are so angry and cynical that nothing would be good enough to make them happy. A blue made a post about this very subject back in vanilla or BC, it went like "if we could give every player a magical gaming hat that would give them their individually customized perfect gaming experience we'd still get complaints about the color of the hat."

[Trumpcat]

If only these pseudo activists also cared about the internal activities of other companies. But infantile social media outrage is very limited in comprehension.

Blizzard's "future" will be decided by the quality of their products. They may or may not rejuvenate their franchises with good releases.

[Ryzeth]

I'll play them until they're no longer fun for me. Simple as that.

Could not give a flying fuck what people think of me; the video game didn't harm anyone. The vast majority of the people working on the game didn't harm anyone.

Oh nooo. People who I didn't want to interact with anyway aren't going to "socially accept" me. What ever will I doooo...

[Romanthony]

Now that Blizzard has been forever tainted by the sex scandals, and Bobby Kotick has been unable to be removed by anyone (the one thing that could convince the public that anything will be different), is Blizzard effectively dead now? Its no longer “ok” to be playing their games.

Even if they release a very good expansion people will still take you over the coals for supporting them, so its not safe to do publicly.

Well I dont think its dead nor do I think "Its no longer “ok” to be playing their games."

As last person says "Ill keep playing them till there not fun anymore"

You still have to remember that there are still good people there, people who pour there heart and soul into there work, people who are decent. its those people who need our support as well, There the ones entering a burning building for us.

[crusadernero]

Now that Blizzard has been forever tainted by the sex scandals, and Bobby Kotick has been unable to be removed by anyone (the one thing that could convince the public that anything will be different), is Blizzard effectively dead now? Its no longer “ok” to be playing their games.

Even if they release a very good expansion people will still take you over the coals for supporting them, so its not safe to do publicly.

You severely overestimate how many people know, care or give a shit about the stuff going on at Blizzard. As others have said, look what happend with Riot. For some reason no one talks about it, even fewer cares. Why? LoL is still a cool game for many and they made that tv show that was a huge success.

No one on this site would care one bit about the insides of Blizzard if they delivered great games right now. To many on this site preach and act like they are some noble saints, but if wow were going great... they wouldnt give a damn.

[Corroc]

You guys remember back in 2004-2007 Wow players were socially bottom of the pit because we were basically interpret as unemployed people living in their parents basement? And now you say Wow is no longer socially acceptable?

[Ophenia]

Ah yes, social acceptance, totally what I'm looking for when playing a game.

[Mysterymask]

Typical conversation with most people when it comes to Blizzard games before the incident

Person: Hey whatcha playing on your phone
Me: Oh Hearthstone its a card game set in the world of warcraft universe by blizzard
Person: oh like that south park episode haha "That which has no life"

Now
Person: Hey whatcha playing on your phone
Me: Oh Hearthstone its a card game set in the world of warcraft universe by blizzard
Person: oh like that south park episode haha "That which has no life"

[cparle87]

People on MMO-C have this strange idea that they are the majority in thinking blizzard is dead when they are the 1% minority.

If you take the current number of accounts on mmo-champs right now, and divide it by the number of accounts made for WoW as of the beginning of MoP (~9 years ago) you would have approximately 0.00614%. Even if 99% of all players who have every played the game have quit it would still have well over a million players. That's how big WoW is.

[craigw]

if your shit is hot its hot, people will buy it. look at the music industry. chris brown done been cancelled like 9 times. yet chris brown still putting out music or collabing with other artists and has numerous top 5 hits since his first cancelling. people dont give a shit what you did when you pumping out shit people actually want.