Activision Blizzard Lawsuit Update - Contract Workers and HR Interference Added

[RoKPaNda]

I have. Its literally Diablo 2 with better graphics. Thats called a remaster. Also it wasnt made by Blizzard, they just bought the studio last minute.

I guess you know more than anyone else on the planet. Is it being psychic or do you have insider knowledge that nobody else does? Because as far as everyone else knows it was co-developed by Blizzard Entertainment and Vicarious Visions and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Which is a far cry from being made by someone else and then Blizzard bought them last minute. I'm also not sure what you're expecting from it? It's D2 with modern graphics that's all it's supposed to be? That's still a massive amount of work.

That’s what I was afraid; WoW and several other IP’s will either go into maintenance mode or be shutdown.

The lawsuit is already effecting WoW and FF14 seems to have taken over the market.

FFXIV hasn't taken over the market. Two very successful streamers make up the vast majority of FFXIV's viewing audience. If they're not streaming the viewer numbers for FFXIV are lower than WoW's by several thousand. Right at this moment of the 62k people in total watching FFXIV, 52k of them are watching Asmongold. If he wasn't streaming it would be far below WoW in terms of viewers. In terms of players, who knows? But if viewership is lower player base probably isn't doing much better. When that New World game actually gets released that will have massive viewership numbers for about a week or so and then drop off into obscurity as well. FFXIV and WoW are the kings of the genre, but don't confuse streamer hype with FFXIV taking over the market. There aren't really any indicators that it's the case or that it has anything to do with the lawsuit.

I can login to WoW Classic right now in an off peak hour for my region and both Shattrath and Orgrimmar are packed with people. I can login to retail to my high pop server and Org and Oribos are filled with people from my server. WoW is doing fine, FFXIV is doing fine.

[MoanaLisa]

Jeez. World of Warcraft is not going to be shut down or anything like it. Very little is going to change from the customer point of view. One can hope that quite a lot changes from the employee/contractor point of view as well it should. But this "Blizzard will go out of business and World of Warcraft will be no more" is just dumb.

Jen Oneal has quite the job ahead of her.

I'm not going to get into game vs. game territory here but I will say there are a number of worth MMO's to check out now and many of them can be checked out extensively for free. It's just fucking stupid that these intramural fights go on on forums about stuff like this. Each of my favorite other five (5) MMO's bring some different flavor to their respective IP's and are worthy games in themselves. Don't restrict yourself to just one game. There's a ton of good stuff out there with a lot of content that can be accessed for the cost of some space on your drives.

[Paperfox]

FF14 is just a flavor of the month thats getting alot of attention from all the popular streamers. Majority will try and conclude its not for them or wow is a much superior product even at its most mediocre.

I would say they're different. The Crafting and Gathering professions / jobs that I've tried in FF14 are far better, and a common thing I've heard is that combat is slow early on and it gets really good at a higher levels. My Black mage is now lvl 30 and pally job is lvl 14 so I need to get at least one higher before I can decide. Otherwise it would be like someone trying WoW and quitting at lvl 8 because they only get a few attacks/spells.

The other thing I'm surprised people aren't talking about is the content drought. SL has already had one, when will 9.2 hit? Some are saying February. How accurate is that? How about 9.3? If they announce 10.0 this fall (Nov 2021) then could that be launched July 2022, or Nov 2022? Who can predict the future? I don't see this as being anything but some major downtime for WoW.

Maybe they'll surprise us. Maybe the final boss of SL will turn out to be a catgirl.

[Exkrementor]

I guess you know more than anyone else on the planet. Is it being psychic or do you have insider knowledge that nobody else does? Because as far as everyone else knows it was co-developed by Blizzard Entertainment and Vicarious Visions and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Which is a far cry from being made by someone else and then Blizzard bought them last minute. I'm also not sure what you're expecting from it? It's D2 with modern graphics that's all it's supposed to be? That's still a massive amount of work.

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.

[exsanguinate]

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

[Erous]

The sad part is, they always advertised their pride in supporting equity, diversity and inclusion...for YEARS. NOW they're complying with requests to support this? What a load.

[FelPlague]

Really?
The Starcraft remake is literally just a higher resolution.
Diablo 1 remake wasnt done by Blizzard and neither was the Diablo 2 remake. Also all of these games are just remasters and not remakes. Dont forget the WC3 remaster, which was an absolute shitshow.
Hearthstone is a pay2win mobile game.
Heroes of the storm is dead.
Overwatch is midly entertaining for a few hours.
Legion was a mess at the start but it was pretty good at the end.
Starcraft 2 was alright. Probably personal taste but Wings of Liberty was the best out of the 3.

So the best Blizzard can do nowadays is mediocrity.

"just a higher resolution" my dude did you even play the game?
"Diablo 1 remake" what? there is no d1 remake... Also no, d2 was not, but nor was wc3 remaster, so if you are going to blame warcraft 3 on blizzard, you have to give them credit for d2 remake.

you cant blame blizz for wc3, but then not give them credit for d2.

pay to win? i mean yeah its a card game... who cares, its fun af
heroes of the sotmr is dead, buti ts fun
overwatch also fun
lolol legion a mess k
and it seems you hate X so X is bad, and no one likes x

[mbit]

you cant blame blizz for wc3, but then not give them credit for d2.

You can, after all wc3 issue was not the outsourced look but administrative decisions like overwriting&deleting the original game that are clearly made by blizz hq and d2 is also outsourced and got praised for its look while suffering again from administrative decisions.

[Sensa1]

It's just fucking stupid that these intramural fights go on on forums about stuff like this. Each of my favorite other five (5) MMO's bring some different flavor to their respective IP's and are worthy games in themselves.

AMEN to that.

[Aloie]

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

Realistically, people will probably just forget about it in a few months. Remember when blizzard fired 600 employees to meet a quota on an earnings report and then still didn’t meet that quota? Because a lot of people seem to have forgotten that treachery.

[Soon-TM]

I'm really hoping that the state won't let them goldpave their way out of a courtroom, even if it looks like the likeliest outcome. If there was a trial, hearings would be most interesting.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Yikes. I guess the punishment for destroying evidence will be lower than whatever they would have gotten if they had that evidence used against them. And here I thought they had already reached maximum scumbag levels.. I guess we haven't heard about actual sex-parties, like they have in insurance companies, so still plenty of room for them to become even bigger pieces of shit.

Edit: Also lol at the guy that says they will be shut down. That isn't in the interest of the state in any way shape or form. They want them to redistribute their ill gotten gains to the state first and to the people second. That is the underlying purpose of the state, shutting them down just leaves them with a few unemployed workers and in the case of Blizzard, literally homeless people. If WoW shuts down it's because they crashed it so badly themselves that they don't want to run a skeleton crew for it that keeps the servers up.

- - - Updated - - -

Maybe the big evil of next expansion will be the HR department…

It's certainly pitiful that they have such stellar examples of villains at hand, yet they can't write one worth shit to save their lives.

[Exkrementor]

"Diablo 1 remake" what? there is no d1 remake

Yes, exactly as I said. There is only a Diablo 1 semi remaster on Gog and no remake. But you probably hadnt any time to read that because you were busy writing 24k posts on mmo-champion. I think lmao or lolol is what the kids say.

[Jastall]

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

They'll do the same thing they did after the Blitzchung incident, or the RealID fiasco, or WoD, or WC3:Reforged, or all these other times their reputation was supposedly in tatters; cry all the way to the bank because Internet drama rarely affects sales at all for the millions of people who don't know or give a shit about it.

Having said that, the current issue will likely affect them more than anything in the past, as it's a perfect storm of Blizzard lacking new IPs and products to draw it people, WoW fatigue, COVID disrupting their content schedule, and now a major internal crisis spilling over to the public with a lawsuit. But the company will be fine in the end, I just hope those who were abused see some measure of justice on the way and the changes aren't just surface level bullshit.

[Doombringer]

Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra should best put the word out... if you hamper or hampered the investigation, destroyed documents, or in any way were complicit in covering up employee mistreatment... you can leave immediately and willfully, quietly, or you will be found and you will be terminated with prejudice, and outed for what you did. Make your choice.

The only way to turn things around is to absolutely drop the bomb on the leaders, executives, and employee relations personnel.

[Whitedragon]

When ever I see the word diverse I wonder if it’s not meaning being racist toward white males in these woke years.

Growing female leadership positions… sounds very sexist toward males when a position now is being based on having a dick or not. What happens with the 90s idea of do your best and make sure your the best in the field and you will earn your position not matter what gender or race….. but it’s like the USA is more racist and sexist in 2021 then back in the 90s.

The talented people who are skipped over for diversity sake will go on to make their own teams/games and toughs will be the ones we are talking about in the future, meanwhile if someone is talentless and was purely a diversity hire, they will be stuck in a festering position and make no real impact on gaming.

Morel of the story is, it doesn't mater what you are in the grand scheme of things, it's what you have, anyone brought on without skill will be nothing more then a loadstone. Sadly in this day and age loadstones can make it a lot further then they have any right to....

[Gadzooks]

Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra should best put the word out... if you hamper or hampered the investigation, destroyed documents, or in any way were complicit in covering up employee mistreatment... you can leave immediately and willfully, quietly, or you will be found and you will be terminated with prejudice, and outed for what you did. Make your choice.

The only way to turn things around is to absolutely drop the bomb on the leaders, executives, and employee relations personnel.

That may have already happened. The head of global HR for Blizzard was let go - they may have been the one who destroyed the files, and got fired for it. There's no time frame in the state's accusation. If you read the amended complaint, the matter of denial of documents and not keeping them the legal amount of time is addressed at the end:

https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/24/2...panded-victims

It seems, from my reading this, that the issue has been ongoing since the state first filed a complaint in 2018. So it may not be a recent thing that documents weren't stored long enough, or destroyed.

And, an even slimier thing that ATVI is doing, is having employees talk to the lawyers, and then claiming confidentiality when the state has asked for documents. Bobby is playing dirty.

Note that is ATVI lawyers, not Blizzard. The c-suite at Blizzard may be trying to comply, but ATVi and their lawyers are the ones playing dirty.

[Sorrowseer]

Expended... you mean Extended?

[Neotart]

Hopefully none of the classic team is involved in this stuff.

literally anyone can replace the Classic team....its old content, the team is what? 3 people? digging up old files? lmao

[Echo of Soul]

FFXIV hasn't taken over the market. Two very successful streamers make up the vast majority of FFXIV's viewing audience. If they're not streaming the viewer numbers for FFXIV are lower than WoW's by several thousand.

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.