Activision-Blizzard Thread: Just announced the Layoffs of 1900 jobs.

The Predaking

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Definitely not a good thing. I wonder if this could be the end for Blizzard?



Hey remember last year when we were pissed at CD Project Red for knowingly releasing a messed up a game?
 

CoffeeHorse

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CD Projekt Red is still desperately patching the game in an effort to save themselves from lawsuits.
 

The Mighty Mollusk

Scream all you like, 'cause we're all mad here
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For years and years, every new MMO was gonna be the big WoW killer. Now it looks like Blizzard will do it themselves.

Then again, at least as far as the game itself is concerned, it's a mercy kill.
 

Cradok

Active member
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Yep. It may have started as a second job if you wanted to raid, but that was a huge step up from prior MMOs, where it was a second job if you wanted to even play, and a third to raid. And various improvements were made through Pandaria that made everything easier, and crucially, more fun to play. Something changed at the end of Pandaria with the Timeless Isle of Grinding - at the time I stopped, I was still logging an hour or two every week I was actively playing grinding there, I never even saw all the rares, let alone got all the drops - and the start of Warlords with the garrison and its godfucking mission table.

From then on, everything was designed to not be fun, or hard, or anything other than strictly time consuming, and both of those play patters being at the centre of everything was the cause. Any time a patch or expansion came out, there'd be new layers of grind and bullshit and it became a second job to play again. It'd be disheartening how much more stuff there was to catch up on every time I wasn't maxing everything out every week. And, yes, I didn't have to do all the stuff, or keep playing, or anything like it, but... I'm a collector, a completionist, and it makes my brain chemistry sad when I don't indulge. So I got caught in a kind of paradox, where it made me grumpy to play and also made me grumpy when I wasn't playing.
 

Rust

Slightly Off
Citizen
For years and years, every new MMO was gonna be the big WoW killer. Now it looks like Blizzard will do it themselves.
I said for years only WoW would kill WoW.

Warlords of Draenor drew the blade.
Battle for Azeroth saw it dragged across its throat.
Shadowlands is just a bleeding out.

Even without all the business-side nonsense, WoW would be failing significantly. Like Cradok said, after Pandaria everything started turning to dross for the game. Too much emphasis on keeping people logged in and gatekeeping even minuscule rewards. Time Waste Isle might have been aptly named but its reward system was downright LAVISH to the kind of reward you can get from doing stuff in BfA or Shadowlands.

It also doesn't help that there's clearly no one steering the ship in regards to story or even a sensible plot. But speaking of the plot, in relation to the business-side nonsense it really does color story beats that boil down to "Silly Woman should stop being so angry about being mistreated no matter how justified. They should forgive. Specifically they should forgive the person who mistreated them."
 

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
Citizen
All joking aside, it really is sad that even in the best-case scenario, this could only ever lead to the company being dissolved and its assets fed to the vultures that are other scummy businesses, with the victims ultimately getting maybe enough money compensation to last them until they can find a job at another scummy video game company (if their status as "rabble-rousers" doesn't effectively blacklist them from ever finding one).

And the only outcome I would consider to be a happy ending, and the one that would need to happen before I would feel morally justified in giving them any money or attention going forward, would be if ownership of the company were handed over, wholesale, to the victims themselves so they can go back to doing what they love for a living and completely purge the brand of its taint. And you can get snarky about MURRICA being uniquely backward if you want but I'm not aware of a single country that has both the power and inclination to do something that drastic if this were to happen there. And perhaps this should be a wake-up call to the entire world that they ought to get working on that.
 

MadameVixen

Cat outta Hell
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I wasn't joking im actually worried about thr Spyro brand... and it took my this long to realize the name was a play on pyro
 

Steevy Maximus

Well known pompous pontificator
Citizen
All joking aside, it really is sad that even in the best-case scenario, this could only ever lead to the company being dissolved and its assets fed to the vultures that are other scummy businesses, with the victims ultimately getting maybe enough money compensation to last them until they can find a job at another scummy video game company (if their status as "rabble-rousers" doesn't effectively blacklist them from ever finding one).
Pfft, Activision has too many resources at this point. They will survive this, payout a few million bucks and be back to normal within a couple years.

The biggest casualty will be Blizzard. I think if this goes long enough, gets severe enough, I can easily see Activison shuttering the Blizzard studio and branding
 

CoffeeHorse

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Legal problems can't derail any ongoing Spyro projects if there are no ongoing Spyro projects.
 

CoffeeHorse

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I wish they would just sell it to someone who cares. I would trust Nintendo with it.
 


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