Corporations being tone deaf is a regular thing, but the evoking of "Every Voice Matters" so often after shutting down, and punishing, champions of their tournaments (it has happened twice! remember) for supporting a good cause is of historic levels.
Many people seem to think you can't be professional and allow things like this, but you absolutely can. You can let someone who wins a tournament have a few seconds to say something personal, we see this all the time in sports. Lance Armstrong was allowed to lie while disparaging all of the people who were correctly accusing him, Peter Sagan was allowed to make a wonderful political message.
When sports bodies crack down on this in the name of 'professionalism', history does not judge them kindly:
It's the difference between a Walmart, which everyone expects to be pretty low ethically, and Blizzard, which has been using things like LGBT in their marketing (showing their lead Overwatch character as gay [outside of China at least]).
You can't have it both ways. You're either progressive in marketing and action, or you're a hypocrite and deserve the market's backlash when you show your greed over ethics. It's why Lebron got pummeled so hard for his HK remarks.
Do people really expect blizzard to be ethically positive? At least among my friends (which admitted skews toward hacker types) Blizzard is notorious for being for the game industry what the RIAA or MPAA is for the music industry. The company has sued 3rd party implementations of games network protocols and engines, even when no assets were distributed. They even tried to sue Valve over DOTA 2. And to top it off now they've pivoted to a loot boxes monetization model.
Thats where we need people to have a conduit of accountability for the double standard. My ethnicity and sexual orientation is not their marketing soundbyte.
If a streamer had said something, for example, anti-LGBT, Blizzard would have shut them down the same way and everyone would be applauding.
Depending on your personal politics, any given corporate action is either 'brave, standing up for principles' or 'obviously a sellout to the corrupt bad guys'.
>It's the difference between a Walmart, which everyone expects to be pretty low ethically, and Blizzard,
The only ethics corporations have are making sure their share holders maximize profit as much as possible, any other ethics they pretend to have exists because they think it will lead to that or they're forced to. Corporations are mandated to do this. If it's a choice between ethics and shareholder profits for a corporation, the latter will always come first because that's why corporations exist. Corporations never have and never will have ethics as long as they exist in their current form where their entire purpose is maximizing profits. I have no idea why people seem to forget this these days.
Blizzard has done a crazy amount of virtue signaling over the past few years. It should have been obvious to most that this was just marketing to get people to buy their stuff, but it seems to work on a ton of people. You may or may not be surprised to know that they backtrack on a lot of their progressiveness in the Chinese market such as various characters being of certain sexualities.
The sooner that people learn that almost every company ever is only out to make money and is not your friend the better. This has been a more difficult realization for some due to it being a video game company.
I don't think awareness that corporations are out for profit and not your friend is incompatible with pushing back on corporations who are curating an image of support for certain causes and are then acting in ways at odds with that image. In fact, I think it is necessary in order to understand how to push back. They are not your friend so they don't care about your disappointment, but they are out for profit so they do care about the things you can do to affect that: personally boycotting, organizing boycotts, spreading bad word of mouth, etc.
Maybe your perspective is that corporations shouldn't do this image curation thing, and yeah maybe so, but in a world where they do, it absolutely makes sense for individuals to push back on them when they are then hypocritical. Otherwise they get the benefits of standing for causes without taking on the risks inherent in doing so.
> punishing, champions of their tournaments [...] for supporting a good cause
Which makes this headline framing by the LA Times even more upsetting. I mean, yes, it's a PR disaster, but even in context that's not the important fact to convey here. They're dealing with outrage because of an expressly political act they took, not merely a mistake in the management of "Public Relations".
As a marketer here's the deal. A brand can be "woke" and be socially conscious. When they do that though, and this is where people get tripped up, they're opening themselves up to an incredible amount of scrutiny that most legacy brands frankly aren't prepared to deal with. So as a marketing strategy it works, but it doesn't work as ONLY a marketing strategy. The entire organization has to be aligned on that messaging otherwise someone can and will figure out where you falter and attack you relentlessly for it. It's why it works for someone like allbirds, but blows up in Blizzards face when they grand stand on something like gay rights but then kowtow to Chinese party lines. Another good example is Nike and Kapernick campaign while also using sweatshops in SE Asia. Nothing enrages anyone quite as much as hypocrisy, especially the kind of person that would choose to support a brand based on their social stances.
tl;dr when you posture as a pillar of morality people will call you out if you aren't consistent.
Just to point out: this is true for individuals as well. Standing for any cause or principle has inherent risks. Some people will disagree with your cause or principle and people who agree with it will expect you to be consistent.
I think society has shown that it only works sometimes.
The biggest example in recent history was the kneeling movement in the NFL and the NFL's stance of blacklisting and penalizing prominent players won.
Similarly with the NBA, player agents have indicated an overwhelming support by players to NOT speak out for fear of losing their endorsements from Nike, Adidas, Anta, and other firms deeply embedded in the Chinese industrial complex. Even with the Commissioner coming out in favor of voicing the issues, its the big stars the fans care about and without them there will be a significantly fewer repercussions.
Not sure I'd say the NFL won. If anything their reaction prolonged something that probably would have passed quickly on its own if they had let it play out. In the end they came out of it looking really bad.
The players didn't "win" necessarily, but I'm not sure if there was ever a criteria by which they could have won. The goals of the protest were too diffuse. I guess the main goal was awareness of police violence, but the people that needed to hear it the most immediately pretended it was about something else (the troops, patriotism, etc.).
I think with what's happening in the NBA, the truth is a lot of these "woke" individuals are only woke as long as it doesn't affect their business interests. It is what it is. This isn't a new thing.
>and the NFL's stance of blacklisting and penalizing prominent players won.
We don't know what would have been the result if the NFL had simply ignored the whole thing and let the players peacefully protest. A lot of effort was put forth by the NFL and the president to get people angry about that before they shut it down. Maybe don't do that.
> The biggest example in recent history was the kneeling movement in the NFL and the NFL's stance of blacklisting and penalizing prominent players won.
Did it? I'm genuinely asking and seeing contradicting results trying to search. At least super bowl stats look like they've lost quite a bit. [anecdata] I know myself I quit watching football as a result of that and the injuries.
When I worked at Blizzard at the beginning of the decade, it was the first "corporation" I'd worked at where I sincerely felt and believed that the espoused values were authentically reflected in decisions and actions. The edges were starting to fray a little bit around 2012-13, as veterans of the original Blizzard slowly began moving on to other things (or retiring altogether).
There followed a steady trickle of Activision staff into the holes left by the departed, which IMHO was also reflected in gradual shifts in recruiting practices. Morhaime's departure was the final farewell. I can't say what Blizzard's culture is today, but I'm confident that Every Voice Matters isn't what it used to be.
I worked there from about 2008 to 2014, and definitely noticed the same thing. Once the core guys started to leave, and teams started to ballon in size, you could tell that the magic was gone. For me, Diablo 3 was really the turning point. Despite clear polish and triple A quality, it lacked the same soul that the predecessors had.
A couple months ago, a recruiter working for Activision-Blizzard contacted me about a potential job. I responded that when I was working for my CS degree, I had dreams of working for Blizzard. But then earlier this year they announced laying off 800 people immediately after also announcing record profits, and said that doesn't sit well with me and I have no interest working for them.
The recruiter responded with something about being able to understand that perspective. I probably burned a bridge, but I don't really care.
The old "Blizzard" has been gone for years, another company ruined by greed.
Yeah, as an ex-gamedev as well there's a large divide between the values a devshop tends to hold and the publisher that finances your project. I've yet to see a studio acqui-hire that doesn't eventually head south as the publishing culture seeps into the previously independent company.
You say that as if that is always a top down transformation, and not the result of entrepreneurial founders losing motivation or leaving after a lockup period. Regardless of cultural differences or how the transition is handled, the fact that a studio is no longer an independent entity affects how you view your work and how much value you can extract from a commercial success.
There are some high profile examples of studio acquisitions I’ve had insight into where the publisher has been blamed for perceived changes in a studio’s output post-acquisition. The reality on the ground was almost the inverse: the publisher gave the acquired studio a great amount of autonomy and runway, even more than than internal studios, and the acquired studio struggled in an environment where they had relatively more freedom than they did pre-acquisition. It let bad habits fester and poor managers calcify in roles they never could have survived in during scrappier times.
They should be dreading it. For an American company, or really any non-Chinese company to bow down to China's censorship regime is unacceptable. I hope Congress doesn't let the issue die. It's an increasing trend that will be harder to curtail the longer it persists.
What's Congress going to do? The reason China has so much influence is because Chinese companies are willing to invest in (western) video game companies (or at least Tencent is). Most game developers aren't exactly swimming in money and if a Chinese company offers them more resources then many of them are going to take it even if it comes with strings attached.
Another reason is access to the Chinese market. Congress can't really do anything to stop companies from complying with the Chinese government so that they can publish their games in the Chinese market.
If China wants to enforce global censorship by using their market as a hammer, America should use their market to enforce global (or at least bilateral) freedom of speech.
It's an intl trade issue, it's impossible to expect every company to stand up to the CCP when they use access to one of the biggest markets in the world as a weapon
The latter is the reason why China has so much influence. Tencent only owns 5% of Blizzard. Heck, Blizzard only gets around 6-8% of their revenue from China. But they're looking at it as an avenue of future growth. Just like every other international corporation.
There are already regulations that dictate how companies must regard and comply with laws and regulations of other non-US jurisdictions. This could be a similar thing. Or maybe not, maybe there is a better way.
The point is, this is a long term issue of national security. US companies bolstering a foreign authoritarian regime by facilitating it's propaganda and censorship gives aid an comfort to a regime incompatible with our values.
The rank and file employees who by all accounts had nothing to do with this decision, and don't support it?
I generally agree with the position against censorship on behest of an authoritarian government, but I find the harassment of Blizzard employee's appalling.
The employees by and large who are attending BlizzCon want to do so to celebrate their hardwork and interact with their fanbase. I hardly think they deserve to feel dread.
> Who is the "they?" The rank and file employees who by all accounts had nothing to do with this decision, and don't support it?
If you're referring to GP's comment "They should be dreading it" then yes, obviously. They are and absolutely should be dreading this event. I would be. Wouldn't you?
> I generally agree with the position against censorship on behest of an authoritarian government, but I find the harassment of Blizzard employee's appalling.
No one has said anything about harassing Blizzard employees. What on Earth are you talking about?
> The employees by and large who are attending BlizzCon want to do so to celebrate their hardwork and interact with their fanbase. I hardly think they deserve to feel dread.
Too bad. They should be dreading this event. Blizzard have publicly fucked up in a very big way, and now the people that represent Blizzard are going to have to deal with that.
>Who is the "they?" The rank and file employees who had nothing to do with this decision?"
Yes, them. Exactly them. They're likely going to be faced with protestors and other types of pushback, and it seems rational to not look forward to that. They're at the event representing their company, and so they must face the conequences of those decisions.
They should not, themselves, be directly blamed, but it's their job to front for the company, and that won't be a comfortable thing to do right now. Now though, if they decide to keep working for the company, they are complicit In it's actions because now they know better. I wouldn't expect them all to quit at once, but if they don't start looking around for other opportunities then they share an increasing part of the blame.
We all face this in our work. Decisions we disagree with, we must decide if it's something we can live with it not. If we decide we can live it then some level of culpability accrues to us. Certainly this can be mitigated by working to change things from within, but it's still a factor.
Every employee tacitly uses their labor to support the actions their company performs. They obviously don't have 100% culpability for everything the corporation does, but it's definitely not 0% either.
I don't think this is something that needs regulation. The capitalist solutions of boycotts and protests seems to be sending a pretty strong signal to blizzard.
At the end of the day, while china is a huge market, it isn't the whole market.
That does mean, however, if you think that Blizzard's actions are immoral, then vote with your wallet. This doesn't work in every case (particularly where companies have practical monopolies on essential goods and services), but at the end of the day, Blizzard is a company that peddles luxury products.
Considering that Blizzard has not backed down from their stance that their actions were correct, I don't see how this is sending a strong signal. If they think current and potential revenue from China exceeds anything lost as a result of this issue, then they aren't likely to take any lasting message from boycotts and protests.
Wouldn't American boycotts only signal that domestic revenues are declining, making international growth seem even more appealing to maximize shareholder value?
Clearly that it's my opinion that such behavior is unacceptable. There is no legally unacceptable behavior here. But private or not, why couldn't a company's behavior be regarded as unacceptable? There's plenty of things that, while legal, are not things people would be comfortable with a company actually doing. Plenty of people find Facebook's actions unacceptable. Are those not legitimate opinions, backed by reasoned arguments? Absolutely they are, even if there are reasoned opinions on the other side as well. What you seem to be saying is simply that you don't find unacceptable.
Also: This is a long term issue of national security, making the behavior of a company subject to a bit more scrutiny: US companies bolstering a foreign authoritarian regime by facilitating it's propaganda and censorship gives aid and comfort to a regime incompatible with our values.
Firstly, ATVI isn't a private company (not that it would necessarily make a difference here). But just a company can legally do something doesn't mean that they should.
Its a company, and should only do business. It should have no right to dictate other people's politics, platform, governance policy and speech. They have no right to stop what other persons speak because they are not the government.
Businesses should have no power except to sell their products and services (Not even indirect power that helps them sell their products and services better)
* Apple's decision hurts vast groups of people, not individuals. People have problems emphasizing with huge groups (e.g. Hong Kongers, Ulghurs, Muslims, Catholics) but are very good as emphasizing with individuals. This is why propaganda aimed at appealing to emotion always focus on individuals: especially children/women. Blizzard went after not just individuals, but tournament winners/players.
* Apple's product is less liquid than Blizzard's. I can stop playing instantly. I can unsubscribe from WoW instantly. Selling my phone and moving to another platform is much harder. The alternative offerings are also all extremely pro-Chinese Party, so even if I went off-Apple for HK reasons, I am just making the problem worst. With games, there is competition and there is no lack of good games in each category (save perhaps RTS, but SC2 is tiny for Blizzard).
Blizzard took away the winnings from one of their own loyal / hard working gamers, whom other gamers are sympathetic to as it could have been "them". This was a public forum with a specific person who seemingly did nothing wrong being punished unfairly, leading to the controversy were seeing.
Apple just removed some apps that people in the west weren't really using that much. More anonymous and somewhat blameless, a-lot of people aren't app developers and can't relate to that experience.
>Apple just removed some apps that people in the west weren't really using that much
HKers didn't really care either, those who had installed the app still have it on their phones and the rest have no trouble accessing the same information from tens of other sources.
Apple just removed an app. The equivalent would be if Apple removed the app, banned the developer, and sued to take back any revenue the app generated from the dev. That would've spun the story to be more individualized and there would've been a similar backlash.
On the flip side, if Blizzard just suppressed the stream but didn't "retaliate" with the bonus punishments, they would be in a lot less of a bog right now.
Apple just complied with a law enforcement request to take down an app (which didn't even prevent anyone from accessing the exact same information using safari)
Blizzard pre-emptively (and severely!) punished Blitzchung for daring to support the protests during stream.
We have a lot of choices in entertainment and can easily abandon bad actors. A smartphone/computer ecosystem that is deeply integrated with your life is harder to step away from. The only smartphone OS competitor doesn’t exactly have a better record of standing up to China.
I'd say it was because of the nature of two of the three punishments. Taking away money from someone who had won it in a tournament was too far and "firing" casters (banning casters for either 6 or 12 months is basically firing) who may not have been involved was too far. I think the PR would have succeeded if they had only banned him, even if it was for a whole year, and if they had fined him a fixed amount.
I think the biggest thing that sparked the situation was the casters. While some people feel that they were not neutral due to some comments made, Blizzard themselves in their response did not mention those comments. As such, it appears that Blizzard fired casters for merely allowing controversial topics spoken, which makes it very unclear how Blizzard wants casters to handle similar situations. In other words, Blizzard fired people who were neutral-ish and who were stuck between a rock and a hard place instead of clarifying the situation. TLDR: If a situation is complicated and unclear, clarify instead of firing.
IMO, it's mostly a popularity contest. Apple is well-loved and people want to make excuses for them whereas Blizzard has been getting a lot of negative PR for a couple years now and this new outrage is just a natural fit for Blizzard's already strained public image.
I think it's easy to argue that Blizzard's actions were more egregious, but at the same time Blizzard as a company is also much less important from a cultural perspective (i.e. Blizzard is a popular gaming company whereas Apple operates the most influential application platform on the planet)
Apple is a more important political party and holds both social and financial leverage. On the other hand, Blizzard is an easy target that media can shame as an example for what will happen if other corporations choose to side with China in the US vs China cold war.
This will blow over for blizzard as fast as it did for apple. After occupying essentially the top spot on many international new cycles for 20 weeks, people are getting tired and finding out abnormalities. Like how there are 0 verified direct deaths while other protest that are much more violent barely gets any coverage. Or that vandalism of subways and shops conducted by protesters never gets to news or are covered in a positive light.
World of Warcraft is growing stale and they seem to not have a replacement (as far as zero leaks).
Overwatch has been a big success and leaks suggest Overwatch 2 with more PVE.
That's fine and all but that's not going to be the cash-cow that WoW was for them. I was a dedicated player since launch but left after Legion and won't be returning.
I find it incredible that World of Starcraft is not a thing. (Starcraft Universe?) Blizzard is letting billions of dollars just sit on the table, refusing to even acknowledge the possibility of its existence.
My only theory is that they didn't want to cannibalize the WoW playerbase, but that's how you get stuck in a rut as a corporation.
World of Warcraft was a success because it came out at the right time, during an upward trajectory of MMO popularity, and it was polished and approachable compared to the first generation MMOs.
Since then, the MMO market, to my knowledge, has shrunk, as other genres have become popular. There's no indication that a World of Starcraft released today would be anywhere near successful.
Compared to many other moneymaking genres, MMOs are expensive to build and maintain and difficult to get right. The vast majority of them are massive, pricey failures including one of Blizzard's. I can't imagine any decision-makers at any major game studio thinking not-developing an MMO is leaving billions on the table and, to me at least, it seems they're likely right.
I'm not sure people want OW2, especially with a PvE focus.
Their last Blizzcon was pretty bad ("Diablo for mobile: Don't you all have phones!?") and they somehow managed to make things worse right before this Blizzcon.
Things are looking grim for a company that used to be an industry game changer.
I've played OW with people who are absolutely terrible at shooters but loved the characters and skins.
Eventually they rage quit because they never actually wanted to get better at the game.
This same thing happened with Dust 514, where there was nothing at all for the person who couldn't aim, (unlike EvE which has some barely passable PvE).
I'm guessing that Blizzard is looking at these stats, and noticing that people log back in for the limited pve content in OW.
They could have just made a Diablo or StarCraft universe MMO (or both) and people would lose their minds and sell their kidneys to pay for a monthly subscription...
Calling WoW stale is a reach. It consistently appears among the top 10 highest grossing games every month. Millions of people still play it and come back every expansion. They have no reason to make a "WoW 2" as long as their subscription base is strong and profitable.
Also, keep in mind that they don't even use subscriptions as a metric anymore, since now they have the in-game store with micro-transactions and the WoW Token which sells for more than the price of a subscription.
>Overwatch has been a big success and leaks suggest Overwatch 2 with more PVE.
I wonder about this though. While Overwatch as a game has been successful, I've heard some people say that they feel like Blizzard has lost their magic after Overwatch and Hearthstone. I used to always be interested in any new game Blizzard was working on, but those days are gone.
You are also older though. I don't know about you personally, but I was a fanboy all the same, but as I age the importance has decreased significantly, especially as I started to not enjoy the same types of games as I once did in my youth. My son however, he is just like me when I was 10, loves them. Likes waiting for them. Wants to be a part of the everything Blizzard.
> I wonder about this though. While Overwatch as a game has been successful, I've heard some people say that they feel like Blizzard has lost their magic after Overwatch and Hearthstone.
I don't think they lost their magic.
I was a WoW hardcore player for years. I won't play Overwatch due to it being a twitch shooter but I love the art direction.
Hearthstone is awesome. Can be played lightly, whenever, and is extremely well built for a "card game".
Hard to believe. That would be like one tenth of the world, excluding children and not internet connected. Even steam is a bit below that in active users and it has many more games and gamers.
I was definitely the target demographic for WOW classic: nostalgic as heck.
Instead with the Hong Kong dust-up, I faced the facts.
The blizzard I grew up with and loved is dead. Even with Wow Classic released, the world has moved on.
Instead I initiated a full Battle Net account delete, which nuked all my Wow characters, Hearthstone decks, etc.
Classic will never have the same revenue potential because players would revolt if they added in-game transactions.
Those transactions were a massive source of profit in later expansions and completely eclipsed subscription revenue. Even as the WoW playerbase dwindled, revenue grew thanks to things like game-time tokens, level boosts, mounts, cosmetic items, etc.
All of those things are 100% antithetical to the premise of Classic WoW.
Blizzard accidentally stumbled on the biggest business model of the 2020s-2050s: digital retirement homes combined with the GenX/Millennial equivalent of re-releases of Beatles albums.
I realized I was aging when I figured out that WoW Classic is Oldies Radio but for people in my age bracket.
Readit News
Many people seem to think you can't be professional and allow things like this, but you absolutely can. You can let someone who wins a tournament have a few seconds to say something personal, we see this all the time in sports. Lance Armstrong was allowed to lie while disparaging all of the people who were correctly accusing him, Peter Sagan was allowed to make a wonderful political message.
When sports bodies crack down on this in the name of 'professionalism', history does not judge them kindly:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Olympics_Black_Power_salu...
You can't have it both ways. You're either progressive in marketing and action, or you're a hypocrite and deserve the market's backlash when you show your greed over ethics. It's why Lebron got pummeled so hard for his HK remarks.
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Depending on your personal politics, any given corporate action is either 'brave, standing up for principles' or 'obviously a sellout to the corrupt bad guys'.
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The only ethics corporations have are making sure their share holders maximize profit as much as possible, any other ethics they pretend to have exists because they think it will lead to that or they're forced to. Corporations are mandated to do this. If it's a choice between ethics and shareholder profits for a corporation, the latter will always come first because that's why corporations exist. Corporations never have and never will have ethics as long as they exist in their current form where their entire purpose is maximizing profits. I have no idea why people seem to forget this these days.
The sooner that people learn that almost every company ever is only out to make money and is not your friend the better. This has been a more difficult realization for some due to it being a video game company.
Maybe your perspective is that corporations shouldn't do this image curation thing, and yeah maybe so, but in a world where they do, it absolutely makes sense for individuals to push back on them when they are then hypocritical. Otherwise they get the benefits of standing for causes without taking on the risks inherent in doing so.
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Which makes this headline framing by the LA Times even more upsetting. I mean, yes, it's a PR disaster, but even in context that's not the important fact to convey here. They're dealing with outrage because of an expressly political act they took, not merely a mistake in the management of "Public Relations".
tl;dr when you posture as a pillar of morality people will call you out if you aren't consistent.
The biggest example in recent history was the kneeling movement in the NFL and the NFL's stance of blacklisting and penalizing prominent players won.
Similarly with the NBA, player agents have indicated an overwhelming support by players to NOT speak out for fear of losing their endorsements from Nike, Adidas, Anta, and other firms deeply embedded in the Chinese industrial complex. Even with the Commissioner coming out in favor of voicing the issues, its the big stars the fans care about and without them there will be a significantly fewer repercussions.
The players didn't "win" necessarily, but I'm not sure if there was ever a criteria by which they could have won. The goals of the protest were too diffuse. I guess the main goal was awareness of police violence, but the people that needed to hear it the most immediately pretended it was about something else (the troops, patriotism, etc.).
I think with what's happening in the NBA, the truth is a lot of these "woke" individuals are only woke as long as it doesn't affect their business interests. It is what it is. This isn't a new thing.
We don't know what would have been the result if the NFL had simply ignored the whole thing and let the players peacefully protest. A lot of effort was put forth by the NFL and the president to get people angry about that before they shut it down. Maybe don't do that.
Did it? I'm genuinely asking and seeing contradicting results trying to search. At least super bowl stats look like they've lost quite a bit. [anecdata] I know myself I quit watching football as a result of that and the injuries.
Players want to be able to speak freely. Many of them have started their support for the Hong Kong protests.
There followed a steady trickle of Activision staff into the holes left by the departed, which IMHO was also reflected in gradual shifts in recruiting practices. Morhaime's departure was the final farewell. I can't say what Blizzard's culture is today, but I'm confident that Every Voice Matters isn't what it used to be.
The recruiter responded with something about being able to understand that perspective. I probably burned a bridge, but I don't really care.
The old "Blizzard" has been gone for years, another company ruined by greed.
There are some high profile examples of studio acquisitions I’ve had insight into where the publisher has been blamed for perceived changes in a studio’s output post-acquisition. The reality on the ground was almost the inverse: the publisher gave the acquired studio a great amount of autonomy and runway, even more than than internal studios, and the acquired studio struggled in an environment where they had relatively more freedom than they did pre-acquisition. It let bad habits fester and poor managers calcify in roles they never could have survived in during scrappier times.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/11/boeing...
Another reason is access to the Chinese market. Congress can't really do anything to stop companies from complying with the Chinese government so that they can publish their games in the Chinese market.
It's an intl trade issue, it's impossible to expect every company to stand up to the CCP when they use access to one of the biggest markets in the world as a weapon
The point is, this is a long term issue of national security. US companies bolstering a foreign authoritarian regime by facilitating it's propaganda and censorship gives aid an comfort to a regime incompatible with our values.
The rank and file employees who by all accounts had nothing to do with this decision, and don't support it?
I generally agree with the position against censorship on behest of an authoritarian government, but I find the harassment of Blizzard employee's appalling.
The employees by and large who are attending BlizzCon want to do so to celebrate their hardwork and interact with their fanbase. I hardly think they deserve to feel dread.
If you're referring to GP's comment "They should be dreading it" then yes, obviously. They are and absolutely should be dreading this event. I would be. Wouldn't you?
> I generally agree with the position against censorship on behest of an authoritarian government, but I find the harassment of Blizzard employee's appalling.
No one has said anything about harassing Blizzard employees. What on Earth are you talking about?
> The employees by and large who are attending BlizzCon want to do so to celebrate their hardwork and interact with their fanbase. I hardly think they deserve to feel dread.
Too bad. They should be dreading this event. Blizzard have publicly fucked up in a very big way, and now the people that represent Blizzard are going to have to deal with that.
Yes, them. Exactly them. They're likely going to be faced with protestors and other types of pushback, and it seems rational to not look forward to that. They're at the event representing their company, and so they must face the conequences of those decisions.
They should not, themselves, be directly blamed, but it's their job to front for the company, and that won't be a comfortable thing to do right now. Now though, if they decide to keep working for the company, they are complicit In it's actions because now they know better. I wouldn't expect them all to quit at once, but if they don't start looking around for other opportunities then they share an increasing part of the blame.
We all face this in our work. Decisions we disagree with, we must decide if it's something we can live with it not. If we decide we can live it then some level of culpability accrues to us. Certainly this can be mitigated by working to change things from within, but it's still a factor.
Every employee tacitly uses their labor to support the actions their company performs. They obviously don't have 100% culpability for everything the corporation does, but it's definitely not 0% either.
At the end of the day, while china is a huge market, it isn't the whole market.
That does mean, however, if you think that Blizzard's actions are immoral, then vote with your wallet. This doesn't work in every case (particularly where companies have practical monopolies on essential goods and services), but at the end of the day, Blizzard is a company that peddles luxury products.
Blizzard though set themselves up as being a bastion of western values, the turned against that when it came to Chinese criticism.
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Businesses should have no power except to sell their products and services (Not even indirect power that helps them sell their products and services better)
They both were anti Hong Kong, but few remember and care Apple's actions.
Asking in case I ever F up and need to go damage control.
* Apple's decision hurts vast groups of people, not individuals. People have problems emphasizing with huge groups (e.g. Hong Kongers, Ulghurs, Muslims, Catholics) but are very good as emphasizing with individuals. This is why propaganda aimed at appealing to emotion always focus on individuals: especially children/women. Blizzard went after not just individuals, but tournament winners/players.
* Apple's product is less liquid than Blizzard's. I can stop playing instantly. I can unsubscribe from WoW instantly. Selling my phone and moving to another platform is much harder. The alternative offerings are also all extremely pro-Chinese Party, so even if I went off-Apple for HK reasons, I am just making the problem worst. With games, there is competition and there is no lack of good games in each category (save perhaps RTS, but SC2 is tiny for Blizzard).
Censorship sucks and all, but in the end the actions taken by Apple didn't really harm anyone. Blizzard definitely fucked over Blitzchung.
Blizzard took away the winnings from one of their own loyal / hard working gamers, whom other gamers are sympathetic to as it could have been "them". This was a public forum with a specific person who seemingly did nothing wrong being punished unfairly, leading to the controversy were seeing.
Apple just removed some apps that people in the west weren't really using that much. More anonymous and somewhat blameless, a-lot of people aren't app developers and can't relate to that experience.
HKers didn't really care either, those who had installed the app still have it on their phones and the rest have no trouble accessing the same information from tens of other sources.
On the flip side, if Blizzard just suppressed the stream but didn't "retaliate" with the bonus punishments, they would be in a lot less of a bog right now.
Blizzard pre-emptively (and severely!) punished Blitzchung for daring to support the protests during stream.
Completely different situations.
I think the biggest thing that sparked the situation was the casters. While some people feel that they were not neutral due to some comments made, Blizzard themselves in their response did not mention those comments. As such, it appears that Blizzard fired casters for merely allowing controversial topics spoken, which makes it very unclear how Blizzard wants casters to handle similar situations. In other words, Blizzard fired people who were neutral-ish and who were stuck between a rock and a hard place instead of clarifying the situation. TLDR: If a situation is complicated and unclear, clarify instead of firing.
I think it's easy to argue that Blizzard's actions were more egregious, but at the same time Blizzard as a company is also much less important from a cultural perspective (i.e. Blizzard is a popular gaming company whereas Apple operates the most influential application platform on the planet)
Dead Comment
More like the Singles Day of Blizzard now.
World of Warcraft is growing stale and they seem to not have a replacement (as far as zero leaks).
Overwatch has been a big success and leaks suggest Overwatch 2 with more PVE.
That's fine and all but that's not going to be the cash-cow that WoW was for them. I was a dedicated player since launch but left after Legion and won't be returning.
My only theory is that they didn't want to cannibalize the WoW playerbase, but that's how you get stuck in a rut as a corporation.
They scrapped it and its corpse ended up becoming Overwatch.
It's not (or at least, primarily not) that they're scared of cannibalizing WoW's playerbase: it's that MMOs are incredibly hard to get right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_(Blizzard_Entertainment_...
Since then, the MMO market, to my knowledge, has shrunk, as other genres have become popular. There's no indication that a World of Starcraft released today would be anywhere near successful.
Dead Comment
Their last Blizzcon was pretty bad ("Diablo for mobile: Don't you all have phones!?") and they somehow managed to make things worse right before this Blizzcon.
Things are looking grim for a company that used to be an industry game changer.
Eventually they rage quit because they never actually wanted to get better at the game.
This same thing happened with Dust 514, where there was nothing at all for the person who couldn't aim, (unlike EvE which has some barely passable PvE).
I'm guessing that Blizzard is looking at these stats, and noticing that people log back in for the limited pve content in OW.
Also, keep in mind that they don't even use subscriptions as a metric anymore, since now they have the in-game store with micro-transactions and the WoW Token which sells for more than the price of a subscription.
I wonder about this though. While Overwatch as a game has been successful, I've heard some people say that they feel like Blizzard has lost their magic after Overwatch and Hearthstone. I used to always be interested in any new game Blizzard was working on, but those days are gone.
I don't think they lost their magic.
I was a WoW hardcore player for years. I won't play Overwatch due to it being a twitch shooter but I love the art direction.
Hearthstone is awesome. Can be played lightly, whenever, and is extremely well built for a "card game".
https://www.newsweek.com/world-warcraft-subscriptions-triple...
Instead with the Hong Kong dust-up, I faced the facts. The blizzard I grew up with and loved is dead. Even with Wow Classic released, the world has moved on.
Instead I initiated a full Battle Net account delete, which nuked all my Wow characters, Hearthstone decks, etc.
Those transactions were a massive source of profit in later expansions and completely eclipsed subscription revenue. Even as the WoW playerbase dwindled, revenue grew thanks to things like game-time tokens, level boosts, mounts, cosmetic items, etc.
All of those things are 100% antithetical to the premise of Classic WoW.
I realized I was aging when I figured out that WoW Classic is Oldies Radio but for people in my age bracket.
It took four days for a response and then it was sort of half a response.
Individual employees now go and suffer the consequences on the front lines.
* make deleting accounts hard due to "technical difficulties"
* Wait until late Friday night to put out a press release, so publications are less likely to pick it up.
* Have the release contain a meaningless non-apology
* wait for a bit until everyone moves on to the next thing
The outcry was largely contained to a small Reddit and hardcore fan bubble.
The stock didn't suffer at all.
Blizzcon could be interesting though.
Didn’t they cancel all their PR marketing for Overwatch coming to the switch ?
Aside from existing fan outcry, it seems to me having them quiet their PR moves while entering holiday season would be the bigger consequences.
I don’t know for the small bubble, or we should at least include tech sites and youtube gaming channels in the bubble.
See: https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/10/verified-chinese-bli...