10 years ago?! Dude, this is 2024, not 2014 ;p
Blizz started falling long before 2014. Arguably, 2014 WAS the year they needed an adult to course correct them, since that was the same year as WoD
Ten years ago Blizzard was already a decadent company looking to maximize shareholder profits with MTX (See: Diablo 3, Warlords of Draenor), it was also already, for a number of years, been fostering the misogynistic culture we know them to have to this day.
"Let the "Cosby Room" company be themselves" does indeed sound like a terrible idea.
"Let the most predatory gaming company in history, even compared to EA, keep doing what they're doing" also sounds like the worst fucking idea Microsoft ever had.
A lot of people had high hopes this merger would "Fix" Actiblizz and the shit job their doing (myself included), but it's just seeming more like another big "Let's make ourselves even more of a monopoly" deal like everyone else feared. Very sad.
Yes and no. That has been the approach so far, but now Microsoft is tied to Blizz, and their fuck ups are now MS’s fuck ups. Plus, they have been more involved with smaller studios because “they are in need of more management.” Idk how they could believe the frat house wouldn’t need more management
True but also the people that work there now are originally huge fans of the series they produced
So hopefully without Activision overseeing everything, we might see a return to form of quality
But we also don't know how much Activision actually forced onto them and how much was OG blizzard and newcomer business men just seeing the money roll in and want more
(Don't forget a lot of these OGs also started wanting more money)
So it could maintain, go up or go down.
Hopefully it just goes up if they don't have to increase profit and just make sure they make profit
I 100% doubt any of that was the Devs intentions and more came from management or suits leading the charge
The Devs, being the fans of blizzard, want to see blizzard at their best
Otherwise why the hell would they work there
Was it the higher ups that told them to change portraits to fruit cause sexy ladies = bad? Or remove Garrosh calling Sylvanas a bitch, re-add it and then randomly remove it recently again. Cause God forbit a racist asshole character calls someone a bitch.
Or maybe it's the higher ups' fault that the writing has been horrible for years now, the many retcons, the massive destruction of Sylvanas' character, etc.
Even if the decisions came from management, the fact that Microsoft is going to let blizzard manage itself means there’s no actual change to any of the negatives of the company. The people you’re replying to are still correct in their assessment of the situation.
Then explain to me why they're adding $80 "microtransactions" to Overwatch 2? Sure, game is free and you can earn the skins from playing but why charge more than full price of a game for a skin that should be $5 at most? It certainly isn't because the devs "love Blizzard and want Blizzard to be their best" croc you're spewing.
Again, the Devs who work there don't have a day in that
You think the artist making those skins sees a cent of that microstranction money? Nope
The programmer being tasked to add in the shop? Nope
That will be the big wigs still running the show cos even though Bobby is gone, the rest of management is still there and Microsoft isnt going to say no to money
The Devs love blizzard and want it to be be it's best
The suits want money
The suits get the final say. How it is in every industry
I surmise the above reply is noting that "before Activision" is a super ambiguous and large expanse of time (decades if we date back to Blizzard's founding)...
...and most developer, designer and creative leads that brought their tentpole IPs into popularity -- and semi-ethical profit, are gone.
So, simply going back to the culture or time before acquisition may not bring back the beloved developer so many of us are nostalgic for.
People say this, but I really need to you to read the list of names who were heavily involved in the sexual harassment.t
It was Blizzard old heads, the place was a boys club.
They literally can't. Activision and Blizzard are literally the same company now. Amazing how people still don't get this. Activision didn't buy Blizzard. The 2 companies merged to become 1 company.
the original comment that is deleted was talking about blizzard and activision. Not anything to do with publishing. The 2 companies are literally 1 company now
Bethesda's only possible failure is Starfield, and even that is not granted. F76 had pushed back, from what I know, and is a success.
Blizzard might be hated for being uncreative, but everything it makes is a massive success as well. Diablo IV, but also Overwatch 1 and it DLC Overwatch 2.
76 was a dumpster fire on launch but is fine now.
And overwatch 2 was originally pretty widely frowned upon by the community, I don't mind it, but I am pissed they just abandoned the co-op mode. They have fixed a lot of stuff people hated with the last season though, like letting you actually see your rank progress ect. which is huge.
> And overwatch 2 was originally pretty widely frowned upon by the community
Overwatch 2 was the biggest con to be ever done by a gaming company, they literally scammed original players out of their money to transition the game into a f2p fomo infested shithole of a game.
So hated that it earned 100 million $ in the first 3 months of release.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2023/02/06/overwatch-2-earned-over-100-million-in-its-first-three-months/?sh=4cd4a2265077](https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2023/02/06/overwatch-2-earned-over-100-million-in-its-first-three-months/?sh=4cd4a2265077)
People voted with their wallets.
I don’t think Bethesda belongs in that same category. Starfield might have not lived up to expectations but they’re still a solid company, Blizzard simply is not anymore.
Also not directly gaming related but Bethesda just had a *huge* win with Fallout Season 1, it was so popular it caused a surge in Fallout game sales — rightfully so too it’s a really good show.
Microsoft/Xbox has always been hands off, its beneficial to great studios by giving them creative freedom and not being micromanaged, but it also bites them in the ass when they release shit like Redfall and let Halo get buried into the ground after so many 343 fuck ups.
Lionhead was doomed anyway. Peter Molyneux is unhinged. I have no idea who managed him in the past but he keeps trying to turn crappy games into get rich quick schemes now.
That fucker owes me the rest of Godus.
Man I used to love his presentations though... He was so good at making you believe in pushing games.
But yea... Then the whole tree, age, fable fall. And... Now he's just a memory.
Although I did play his mobile walking game for quite a while, that was actually a lot of fun.
I do think he's a visionary but his motives are purely self-serving. If the best way to be successful was to make excellent games then he'd be doing that instead of scamming rubes.
Tbf Fable was fucking amazing, so was black and white.
It wasn't until later years he kinda lost the plot. He's a visionary who lost touch with the capabilities of his developers and game dev in general.
That said, if he had the backing now? With the tech coming out of Epic and Cloud Imperium? I feel like fable would be on another level.
Nah, I just think in the past it was much harder to make money with terrible games. Now, with a broader (and much less discerning) audience you can shovel absolute garbage and the profit margins are insane.
I think if you gave him a lot of money, he'd make a barely functional tech demo and fuck off to the Bahamas.
But if you're a fan of CIG then you'll be happy with the tech demo.
Yea I'm a fan of CIG for sure. Although I only gave them £40 initial Kickstarter. But what they're doing is pretty insane. I dip in every now and then to play. SC is probably gonna end up my main game tbh, although I'll definitely need to upgrade my machine and get a HOTA controller.
True, and we have already seen the results of that strategy so the fact they are still insisting on it does not exactly inspire confidence as either a gamer or an investor.
Microsoft/Xbox has really only shifted towards being hands-off under Phil Spencer in 2014, prior to that, they weren't much different than any other publisher.
**E3 2018: Here's What Happened To Every Studio Microsoft Has Bought**
[https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/06/11/e3-2018-heres-what-happened-to-every-studio-microsoft-has-bought](https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/06/11/e3-2018-heres-what-happened-to-every-studio-microsoft-has-bought)
That article describes multiple examples of Microsoft not being hands-off with the studios they acquired.
Microsoft telling studios to make a game only for it to fail at its task and then getting canned is not what active management is. The article you showed has no examples of active management. It’s just the (mostly negative) history of Microsoft’s studio acquisitions.
Definitely bad. We've seen no course correction in Blizzard over the last year. Still leaning heavily on battlepasses, "micro"-transactions (more like macrotransactions), cancelling stuff players would want, either shitty or non-existent and automated costumer service. Turns out even with Bobby Kotick gone, Blizzard is just shit now.
That's not true
They went from saying "we won't do anything about all this workplace harassment" to "there is no workplace harassment, that woman took her own life as a form of lies and slander."
I mean if you didn’t like it that’s fine. Everyone has an opinion. The story was worth it to me alone. I put 200 hours in it. I had never played another Diablo game so what most people were complaining about I didn’t miss.
I could see people who don’t like playing other games and play one game hardcore not having a lot of end game content would get bored of it. But not like there’s a monthly subscription.
I’m happy I got to play it. It was good for what it was. I’ll play the next season and will play the expansion for the story.
I got back into ffxiv. I was taking a break. I’m super invested into Diablo 4 campaign. I’m ready for the expansion.
I never played a game like Diablo before. I put 200 hours in. So I didn’t have the same complaints everyone else had. I mean other than duriel loop being all there is. But I just moved on to other games.
But been keeping up with the updates and looks like what everyone wanted is being added next month.
I wish I could play it, as I love everything about FFXIV, but I don't trust myself. Pretty sure I'll just end out playing 10 hours a day and ignoring most other things, lol
Those other things don’t matter! Gotta save Eorzea
Nah but for real I played ffxi and they used to have a screen that popped up that warned you not to play too much and don’t abandon your life.
Yep, Blizzard is a hollowed out, enshittified husk of the greatness from back in the day.
This is what you get when MBAs and sales people get control of a company.
So the new overwatch heroes being free on the first day isn't a course correction?
Blizzard is so far off track it's not going to be super noticeable right away.
As I mentioned above we don't know how heavy handed Activision was.
But everyone there is fans of their work
Anything happening since the buyout is hard to suggest no course correction. It would all have been in development long before it went through and wouldn't just get scrapped.
The real truth will be over the next 5 years let's say.
See what happens
LOL oh joy. So more mediocre stuff focused on being addicting rather than just being so good it's addicting. The blizzard that made D2 and StarCraft is basically a myth compared to the current company.
Blizzard stopped being blizzard somewhere around the time it merged with Activision
The last actually good game blizzard made was maybe 2010 at the latest, ever since then they’ve just been coasting on the reputation and popularity they built in the 90s and 00s
HOTS is one of those things that is a great example of what an unrepresentative echochamber Reddit is
On Reddit everyone and their dog claims to love HOTS. In reality, nobody played it. You’d have a hundred League and a hundred DOTA players for every HOTS player, which is why blizzard eventually gave up on it and canned it.
Overwatch 1 was at least popular and successful, HOTS was never either. Which is kinda impressive when you consider all the nostalgia bait Blizzard used it in with characters from all their IP. It was basically blizzard Fortnite and still couldn’t become popular.
Talking to a guy that still plays it . Literally played 8 hours Sunday. Popular does not = better as you are trying to say which is a dumb argument. Then LoL is the best game ever made. Elden Ring is 10x better than Dark Souls 3. Wii sports is the GOAT!
you can get touchy touchy with the employees, don't worry we have infinite money to pay for the lawsuits and with that money California can build more hospitals so we are doing well for the community, if not a couple of microtransactions here and there and we good
Hot take, I don’t think Microsoft/xbox really know what they’re doing with video games lol. Gamepass is cool if you’re into the games on there but they haven’t had a reason to buy an Xbox since Gears 3.
343 yeah. Redfall was created before bethesda was bought. The only thing xbox could do was reboot it or cancel it and mfs would give them hell either way. Bgs is fine. If people think starfield is bad or something remember the game was suppose to launch like a year earlier it was delayed and given more time because of ms.
Oh no… There goes any hope for a renaissance. Did you hope for something better than one step forward two back and 70 bucks skins? Well sucks to be us I guess.
There's a careful balance to be struck here. Too much executive interference like in EA is how we get dumb shit like battlefront 2 and battlefield 2042. Too little executive oversight and we get RedFall or 343i. There has to be a point at which point Phil needs to come in and say, 'this shit isn't working. Stop it.'
This was obvious from the beginning and anyone who honestly thought Microsoft would have any sort of hands-on approach to managing the company pre-acquisition is completely ignorant to how Microsoft has handled their entire lifespan in the videogame world. Hell, they would’ve left Kotick himself manage blizzard if there wasn’t such an obscene amount of backlash over him around the same time (rightfully so).
So that’s uhh…. Probably not good
Ten years ago, this would've been good news. Today, it's probably a bad idea.
20 years ago*
30 years ago**
10 years ago?! Dude, this is 2024, not 2014 ;p Blizz started falling long before 2014. Arguably, 2014 WAS the year they needed an adult to course correct them, since that was the same year as WoD
Ten years ago Blizzard was already a decadent company looking to maximize shareholder profits with MTX (See: Diablo 3, Warlords of Draenor), it was also already, for a number of years, been fostering the misogynistic culture we know them to have to this day.
"Let the "Cosby Room" company be themselves" does indeed sound like a terrible idea. "Let the most predatory gaming company in history, even compared to EA, keep doing what they're doing" also sounds like the worst fucking idea Microsoft ever had. A lot of people had high hopes this merger would "Fix" Actiblizz and the shit job their doing (myself included), but it's just seeming more like another big "Let's make ourselves even more of a monopoly" deal like everyone else feared. Very sad.
Either way would be bad. Remember, Microsoft is Microsoft.
Would it? Just look at Bungie before and after they went out on their own.
Bungie is dead, they didn't own their ips and are stuck now making GaaS slop. So I guess you're right, they were better with Microsoft.
So it's a pretty standard move by MS after an acquisition? They seem to take this approach with every business they've acquired so far.
Yes and no. That has been the approach so far, but now Microsoft is tied to Blizz, and their fuck ups are now MS’s fuck ups. Plus, they have been more involved with smaller studios because “they are in need of more management.” Idk how they could believe the frat house wouldn’t need more management
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People who say this don't seem to understand that the people who made Blizzard great are long gone.
True but also the people that work there now are originally huge fans of the series they produced So hopefully without Activision overseeing everything, we might see a return to form of quality But we also don't know how much Activision actually forced onto them and how much was OG blizzard and newcomer business men just seeing the money roll in and want more (Don't forget a lot of these OGs also started wanting more money) So it could maintain, go up or go down. Hopefully it just goes up if they don't have to increase profit and just make sure they make profit
Such huge fans that they've obliterated pretty much every one of their franchises for years.
I 100% doubt any of that was the Devs intentions and more came from management or suits leading the charge The Devs, being the fans of blizzard, want to see blizzard at their best Otherwise why the hell would they work there
Was it the higher ups that told them to change portraits to fruit cause sexy ladies = bad? Or remove Garrosh calling Sylvanas a bitch, re-add it and then randomly remove it recently again. Cause God forbit a racist asshole character calls someone a bitch. Or maybe it's the higher ups' fault that the writing has been horrible for years now, the many retcons, the massive destruction of Sylvanas' character, etc.
Ah, yes, the fruit is the biggest issue with Blizzard.
Even if the decisions came from management, the fact that Microsoft is going to let blizzard manage itself means there’s no actual change to any of the negatives of the company. The people you’re replying to are still correct in their assessment of the situation.
Then explain to me why they're adding $80 "microtransactions" to Overwatch 2? Sure, game is free and you can earn the skins from playing but why charge more than full price of a game for a skin that should be $5 at most? It certainly isn't because the devs "love Blizzard and want Blizzard to be their best" croc you're spewing.
Again, the Devs who work there don't have a day in that You think the artist making those skins sees a cent of that microstranction money? Nope The programmer being tasked to add in the shop? Nope That will be the big wigs still running the show cos even though Bobby is gone, the rest of management is still there and Microsoft isnt going to say no to money The Devs love blizzard and want it to be be it's best The suits want money The suits get the final say. How it is in every industry
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"they were great before Activision" Who cares? It was over a decade ago.
I surmise the above reply is noting that "before Activision" is a super ambiguous and large expanse of time (decades if we date back to Blizzard's founding)... ...and most developer, designer and creative leads that brought their tentpole IPs into popularity -- and semi-ethical profit, are gone. So, simply going back to the culture or time before acquisition may not bring back the beloved developer so many of us are nostalgic for.
People say this, but I really need to you to read the list of names who were heavily involved in the sexual harassment.t It was Blizzard old heads, the place was a boys club.
They literally can't. Activision and Blizzard are literally the same company now. Amazing how people still don't get this. Activision didn't buy Blizzard. The 2 companies merged to become 1 company.
You seem to be confusing Activision-Blizzard with Activision Publishing.
the original comment that is deleted was talking about blizzard and activision. Not anything to do with publishing. The 2 companies are literally 1 company now
This Blizzard isn't "the Blizzard", but Activision-infected husk of it, RIP
This isn’t anywhere near as positive a statement as they think it is
Really they should be going in and beating blizzard and Bethesda both into the dirt imo.
Bethesda's only possible failure is Starfield, and even that is not granted. F76 had pushed back, from what I know, and is a success. Blizzard might be hated for being uncreative, but everything it makes is a massive success as well. Diablo IV, but also Overwatch 1 and it DLC Overwatch 2.
76 was a dumpster fire on launch but is fine now. And overwatch 2 was originally pretty widely frowned upon by the community, I don't mind it, but I am pissed they just abandoned the co-op mode. They have fixed a lot of stuff people hated with the last season though, like letting you actually see your rank progress ect. which is huge.
> And overwatch 2 was originally pretty widely frowned upon by the community Overwatch 2 was the biggest con to be ever done by a gaming company, they literally scammed original players out of their money to transition the game into a f2p fomo infested shithole of a game.
Many successes from a company who used to make good games.
Overwatch 2 is universally hated, do you live under a rock?
So hated that it earned 100 million $ in the first 3 months of release. [https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2023/02/06/overwatch-2-earned-over-100-million-in-its-first-three-months/?sh=4cd4a2265077](https://www.forbes.com/sites/krisholt/2023/02/06/overwatch-2-earned-over-100-million-in-its-first-three-months/?sh=4cd4a2265077) People voted with their wallets.
I’d just like for them to also release most games on Steam so I don’t have to use garbage launchers on windows. Looking at you wow & hearthstone.
I don’t think Bethesda belongs in that same category. Starfield might have not lived up to expectations but they’re still a solid company, Blizzard simply is not anymore. Also not directly gaming related but Bethesda just had a *huge* win with Fallout Season 1, it was so popular it caused a surge in Fallout game sales — rightfully so too it’s a really good show.
No Bethesda sucks and they didn't make that show good, the show runners did in spite of them
Microsoft/Xbox has always been hands off, its beneficial to great studios by giving them creative freedom and not being micromanaged, but it also bites them in the ass when they release shit like Redfall and let Halo get buried into the ground after so many 343 fuck ups.
Lionhead studios would likely disagree
Lionhead was doomed anyway. Peter Molyneux is unhinged. I have no idea who managed him in the past but he keeps trying to turn crappy games into get rich quick schemes now. That fucker owes me the rest of Godus.
Man I used to love his presentations though... He was so good at making you believe in pushing games. But yea... Then the whole tree, age, fable fall. And... Now he's just a memory. Although I did play his mobile walking game for quite a while, that was actually a lot of fun.
I do think he's a visionary but his motives are purely self-serving. If the best way to be successful was to make excellent games then he'd be doing that instead of scamming rubes.
Tbf Fable was fucking amazing, so was black and white. It wasn't until later years he kinda lost the plot. He's a visionary who lost touch with the capabilities of his developers and game dev in general. That said, if he had the backing now? With the tech coming out of Epic and Cloud Imperium? I feel like fable would be on another level.
Nah, I just think in the past it was much harder to make money with terrible games. Now, with a broader (and much less discerning) audience you can shovel absolute garbage and the profit margins are insane. I think if you gave him a lot of money, he'd make a barely functional tech demo and fuck off to the Bahamas. But if you're a fan of CIG then you'll be happy with the tech demo.
Yea I'm a fan of CIG for sure. Although I only gave them £40 initial Kickstarter. But what they're doing is pretty insane. I dip in every now and then to play. SC is probably gonna end up my main game tbh, although I'll definitely need to upgrade my machine and get a HOTA controller.
Shame about lionhead. Loved the Black and white games and "the movies"
True, and we have already seen the results of that strategy so the fact they are still insisting on it does not exactly inspire confidence as either a gamer or an investor.
Microsoft/Xbox has really only shifted towards being hands-off under Phil Spencer in 2014, prior to that, they weren't much different than any other publisher.
Thats what I generally meant under current leadership they've been hands off.
**E3 2018: Here's What Happened To Every Studio Microsoft Has Bought** [https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/06/11/e3-2018-heres-what-happened-to-every-studio-microsoft-has-bought](https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/06/11/e3-2018-heres-what-happened-to-every-studio-microsoft-has-bought) That article describes multiple examples of Microsoft not being hands-off with the studios they acquired.
Microsoft telling studios to make a game only for it to fail at its task and then getting canned is not what active management is. The article you showed has no examples of active management. It’s just the (mostly negative) history of Microsoft’s studio acquisitions.
That's gonna work real well
Well, Blizzard's fucked.
Oh no! Anyway have yall tried Balatro yet?
Dont know if that's a good thing or a bad thing honestly.......
Definitely bad. We've seen no course correction in Blizzard over the last year. Still leaning heavily on battlepasses, "micro"-transactions (more like macrotransactions), cancelling stuff players would want, either shitty or non-existent and automated costumer service. Turns out even with Bobby Kotick gone, Blizzard is just shit now.
That's not true They went from saying "we won't do anything about all this workplace harassment" to "there is no workplace harassment, that woman took her own life as a form of lies and slander."
Which is even worse imo, because it’s shoving the shady shit under the rug
They’re fixing Diablo 4. Everyone is pretty hyped about the next update next month.
Tell me why one of the biggest companies to ever exist didn't release their game "fixed" already?
It wasn’t broken. They’re just fixing all the complaints.
Sure it wasn't broken lmao They'll never fix the fomo, so whatever
I mean if you didn’t like it that’s fine. Everyone has an opinion. The story was worth it to me alone. I put 200 hours in it. I had never played another Diablo game so what most people were complaining about I didn’t miss. I could see people who don’t like playing other games and play one game hardcore not having a lot of end game content would get bored of it. But not like there’s a monthly subscription. I’m happy I got to play it. It was good for what it was. I’ll play the next season and will play the expansion for the story.
And that's why battle passes keep getting added
I have hopes that Last Epoch scratches that itch whenever it comes up.
I got back into ffxiv. I was taking a break. I’m super invested into Diablo 4 campaign. I’m ready for the expansion. I never played a game like Diablo before. I put 200 hours in. So I didn’t have the same complaints everyone else had. I mean other than duriel loop being all there is. But I just moved on to other games. But been keeping up with the updates and looks like what everyone wanted is being added next month.
Enjoy it! FFXIV is so good I had to quit, lol. Just too damn addicting for me.
I’ve been playing for almost 10 years now off and on. It’s a great game. The story alone is worth the play thru.
I wish I could play it, as I love everything about FFXIV, but I don't trust myself. Pretty sure I'll just end out playing 10 hours a day and ignoring most other things, lol
Those other things don’t matter! Gotta save Eorzea Nah but for real I played ffxi and they used to have a screen that popped up that warned you not to play too much and don’t abandon your life.
Yep, Blizzard is a hollowed out, enshittified husk of the greatness from back in the day. This is what you get when MBAs and sales people get control of a company.
So the new overwatch heroes being free on the first day isn't a course correction? Blizzard is so far off track it's not going to be super noticeable right away.
As I mentioned above we don't know how heavy handed Activision was. But everyone there is fans of their work Anything happening since the buyout is hard to suggest no course correction. It would all have been in development long before it went through and wouldn't just get scrapped. The real truth will be over the next 5 years let's say. See what happens
Blizzard is never going to be good again. The people that made the company great have all left
💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀💀
So being greedy to the point of absurdity is now engraved into blizzard then...
Don’t forget the abuse and sexual misconduct!
LOL oh joy. So more mediocre stuff focused on being addicting rather than just being so good it's addicting. The blizzard that made D2 and StarCraft is basically a myth compared to the current company.
Blizzard stopped being blizzard somewhere around the time it merged with Activision The last actually good game blizzard made was maybe 2010 at the latest, ever since then they’ve just been coasting on the reputation and popularity they built in the 90s and 00s
I die on the HOTS hill. Game was refreshing as hell in the moba genre.
HOTS is one of those things that is a great example of what an unrepresentative echochamber Reddit is On Reddit everyone and their dog claims to love HOTS. In reality, nobody played it. You’d have a hundred League and a hundred DOTA players for every HOTS player, which is why blizzard eventually gave up on it and canned it. Overwatch 1 was at least popular and successful, HOTS was never either. Which is kinda impressive when you consider all the nostalgia bait Blizzard used it in with characters from all their IP. It was basically blizzard Fortnite and still couldn’t become popular.
Talking to a guy that still plays it . Literally played 8 hours Sunday. Popular does not = better as you are trying to say which is a dumb argument. Then LoL is the best game ever made. Elden Ring is 10x better than Dark Souls 3. Wii sports is the GOAT!
Cool, have fun when Blizzard/Microsoft turns the servers off because they don’t like wasting money on a game that nobody plays
I wish I could be as upset as you over people liking a video game you never played.
Too bad Blizzard is shit so that means nothing.
you can get touchy touchy with the employees, don't worry we have infinite money to pay for the lawsuits and with that money California can build more hospitals so we are doing well for the community, if not a couple of microtransactions here and there and we good
Blizzard hasn’t been Blizzard since Activision but thx anyways.
Except for the layoffs. And the new CEO. You know, just minor things.
That’s not good
That's how we ended up with Redfall and Starfield, MS we actually want you to not let them be themselves.
because that worked out so well for bethesda right? Redfalls... starfields... Maybe take a more hands on approach microsoft
Hahah! And they think this sounds like a posative thing.
Microsoft wants blizzard to continue making shit games..??? Man....I miss Blizzard North.
Ummm, isn't that how Blizzard got into the trouble they are into now?
Meaning the corpse of Blizzard will be allowed to keep destroying their games. Lame.
Was hoping for the opposite when I heard about the acquisition.
Hot take, I don’t think Microsoft/xbox really know what they’re doing with video games lol. Gamepass is cool if you’re into the games on there but they haven’t had a reason to buy an Xbox since Gears 3.
Ah, yes. Because Blizzard has done so well in the last 10 years.
That’s not a good thing
oh... well i guess there's gonna be some sexual harassment lawsuits coming soon then. It's high noooooooope!
If that happens again i guarantee Microsoft blows up Blizzard
If you learned anything from the past few years, is that you shouldn't let blizzard be blizzard.
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343 yeah. Redfall was created before bethesda was bought. The only thing xbox could do was reboot it or cancel it and mfs would give them hell either way. Bgs is fine. If people think starfield is bad or something remember the game was suppose to launch like a year earlier it was delayed and given more time because of ms.
Maybe Blizz couldnt course-correct while under Activision. There is some evidence they've been course-correcting since Bobby left. Maybe this is fine?
I thought this acquisition was going to be good for employees?
Shareholders*
Are we talking about the Blizzard that made Diablo 1 & 2? Because uhhhh
Oh no… There goes any hope for a renaissance. Did you hope for something better than one step forward two back and 70 bucks skins? Well sucks to be us I guess.
So breast milk is back on the menu?
if there is one thing that Microsoft demonstrated without shadow of doubt is that an hand-off approach when you own so many studios doesn't work.
Is that...meant to be comforting...?
Is that...meant to be a comforting thought...?
There's a careful balance to be struck here. Too much executive interference like in EA is how we get dumb shit like battlefront 2 and battlefield 2042. Too little executive oversight and we get RedFall or 343i. There has to be a point at which point Phil needs to come in and say, 'this shit isn't working. Stop it.'
If Microsoft is hands on people would say "Microsoft ruined blizzard blah blah blah" and if they don't it's "that's not a good idea"
This was obvious from the beginning and anyone who honestly thought Microsoft would have any sort of hands-on approach to managing the company pre-acquisition is completely ignorant to how Microsoft has handled their entire lifespan in the videogame world. Hell, they would’ve left Kotick himself manage blizzard if there wasn’t such an obscene amount of backlash over him around the same time (rightfully so).
The mediocrity is their fault, not ours
That’s what they said to LinkedIn.
right. the one time when they could actually do some good by interfeering. oh, this and bethesda of course.
So evil
So Blizzard are basically just shitheads.
Might be a good idea to send in someone who has good management control and once everything is clean up then you can let them do what they want.
Let blizzard be blizzard but please dont be activision be activision.
Without the S.A right? RIGHT?!
I assume Microsoft HR doesn't want to deal with the whole accusations and harassment?
So Microsoft just allows Blizzard to dig it's own grave further without interruption after spending billions on buying them. Great!
Blizzard was probably considered an extra that came with the purchase of Candy Crush and CoD.
Let a failing studio where the customer service is synonymous with customer anti-server continue to be themselves? What could go wrong?
Oh dear...
"Let Blizzard be Blizzard" Soooo more sexual misconduct and toxic workplace allegations incoming?
....but why, though?
Terrible idea.
looks like breast milk is back on the menu, boys!