I've never seen a company squander as much goodwill as Blizzard.

It’s a cultural issue.

People at Larian had one objective the entire time - making a genuinely good D&D based game. If the money comes, that’s incredible. And it did come.

People at blizzard make games with the goal of making money. The era of making something fun has been long over in this studio

It seems that publicly traded game companies simply can't help themselves from becoming this (e.g. Activision/Blizzard, Ubisoft, EA).
It's very sad, but at least there are still a few private AAA companies and indies who seem to make fun games for the sake of fun games.
- Once you go public, you've practically forced yourself into aiming for infinite growth. "Just enough" revenue is not in the vocabulary of these people
- That’s what happens when MBAs start making too many product decisions at a tech company, and game companies are no exception.
- Not even just game companies. Publicly traded companies are a curse on humanity.
It's an ownership issue.
Larian is privately owned by Swen Vincke. They can concentrate on making good games because they don't answer to anyone but Swen.
Blizzard is publicly owned. It has to answer to greedy and short-sighted shareholders.
I don't buy or play their trash any more. It ain't the 90s or 00s any more. Blizzard is ass.
Ea, ubisoft, Blizzard. The games aren't even that good
- Yeah, pretty much. A lot of their games appear on a 80% sale half the time, and even then it's still not worth it. It's not even about the money, it's about being disrespected by the dogshit they continue to release.
  I would rather give my time to a passionate indie studio, where the people put together a genuinely unique experience

Even if Blizzard games haven't had a high note since 2016, I would like to remind everyone that the company still had absurd amounts of goodwill and customer loyalty for a large and corporate studio at the time, with fans owning and actively collecting literal decades of merchendise.

Things only really truly collapsed for Blizzard and saw their goodwill vanish when they openly supported and endorsed the chinese oppression of Hong Kong.

Specifically, the winner of a Hearthstone tournament was interviewed after his win and gave the pro-Hong Kong slogan "free Hong Kong, the revolution of our times", which there was absolutely no rule or stipulation against. China demanded that the company not endorse that (because authoritarianism), but Blizzard ACTIVELY WENT THE EXTRA MILE to strip the player of his prize money and ban him from all future events alongside other punishments, specifically in the name of appeasing the chinese government.

It wouldn't be fair to expect a game company to singlehandedly stand up to an authoritarian regime that loves to make people disappear. But it is absolutely fair to recognize that Blizzard's actions very clearly demonstrated that they weren't just doing this because they were threatened into it- they were more than happy to actively endorse the chinese government's oppression of Hong Kong. And THAT is what we should always remember about Blizzard's morals and principles, or lack thereof.

That's the event that gave me the push I needed to request deletion of my account with them. I won't give them another dollar for as long as I live.
- Same, was just starting wow classic with my partner as she'd never played wow before, that made us both cancel immediately and never give them another cent.
- Same! Still kinda miss hearthstone but in the end it was just a game.
Reminder that that event happened IN TAIWAN.
- That makes it even more hilarious.
I'd forgotten all about that.
All the sex pests felt like a "good" reason to quit WoW but I'd say my real reason was it had become a piece of shit that didn't value my time, and I'd honestly been looking for a reason to quit for a long time.
- The removed a bunch of portals from WoW in order to "make the world feel big" (make you waste more time traveling instead of doing fun things).
That's exactly where they lost me forever. Truly a despicable bunch of assholes.

Just wait until GabeN retires and the inheritors of Valve start to enshittify it. Unless GabeN had a good succession plan in place, or GoG can swoop in and become the new standard, things might get rough. I might stick to retro games from then on.

Ugh, the thought of some generic investment company swooping in and running Valve hurts my heart.
I'm seriously concerned about this, yet I keep using steam because of the convenience.
- Steam is currently a good company so I am happy to support it. If it enshittifies then I will stop using it and sail the high seas if need be.
- Steam is privately held, so there's plenty of reason to be hopeful. The recent rapid enshittification of what feels like every company is mostly due to US laws that require publicly traded companies to squeeze every last dollar out or face severe penalties. Privately held companies are not subject to those laws, and so they can stay actually decent and care about their customers without threat of legal repercussions. An example is Lego Group - there's some valid criticism, but legos have stayed a top quality product for nearing a hundred years - and show no signs of suddenly degrading in quality. So, I wouldn't worry unduly about this until Valve announces an IPO. Then you should start worrying.
My hope is that Gabe actually gets direct brain connection technology off the ground and he uploads his consciousness into an everlasting machine so he never has to retire.
- Perhaps one encased in a giant stone bust of himself. With lasers.
Why should they enshitify a service that is printing money with minimal effort? Right guys 🥲.
- because they don't understand why it's printing money
- Because most of these MBA fucks don't understand the concept of piracy being a service problem. They have run perfectly fine systems into the ground because they insist on making it infinitely harder to use legit services than to just rip shit off.
- Because they could make it print even more money, and make the line go more up for a very short time!
  That looks good on the CV you know.
- Because it could be printing even MOAR money. Line must go up at all cost.
Luckily BG3 is on GOG. I don't think I've bought a new game on steam for years, granted I don't play a lot of games nowadays.
- I bought BG3 on GOG simply because it was on GOG, otherwise I would have waited a few years. I want to support AAA games being release on GOG at release because it doesn't happen much. GOG isn't gonna take over Steam, because largely the industry isn't going to support DRM free AAA games.
it's a very closely held private company, gaben absolutely has someone to take his place with ideals similar to his.
- You hope. It wouldn't be the first time.
Need someone to track videogame piracy rates and if steam gets enshittified make a graph and mark each of their bad decisions against it
Whether or not we believe it will be true, Gabe has said that he will release code that will allow you to play every game you've bought on steam without steam service if ever things headed in that direction.
I don't think he's really that involved into Steam or Valve proceedings anymore

They lost me before this line, but I will never forgive and never forget:

"What you guys don't own phones?"

It was evident that they had completely lost touch with their player base at that point
"You think you do, but you don't!"
- unpopular opinion: this phrase is right, sometimes. In that context, at that conference, bad call. But sometimes... people think they want something until they get it, and then they realize they don't want it.
They made me sad with Diablo 3. But they lost me at StarCraft 2.
D3 got better after years of updates. StarCraft 2's story was hot garbage and they turned a single full game into three smaller games.
Seeing Blizzard fuck over Overwatch fans was not a surprise to me.
- The story was absolute crap, but the campaign levels were still really fun.
  Also, each campaign did feel like a full fledged game from a content perspective. I can give blizzard shit for a lot, but how they handled sc2 (beyond dropping it completely) is low on the list.
- SC2's esport and competitive scene was incredibly successful. We got 14 years of incredible tournaments, content, personalities, streamers, etc... Seems like you are just a casual player that just missed the boat.

I miss the Warcraft II and StarCraft days. You could tell they were serious by their cutscenes, but also knew they were having fun, and wanted the player to as well, by the gameplay and Easter eggs. “Line must go up” took over, now it’s all cash grabs. I will not buy a game from them at full price again.

It hasn't been the same company that delivered that gaming magic in the 90s since, well, the 90s.
Their cutscenes still go hard honestly
- Meh, they are what I expect from a company that is that profit centric. Looking good is top priority for selling, after all.
- Its probably not that hard to make an inspirational 5 minute animation though, is it.
  I mean they likely have some great talent doing it, but its not the product, its not what we are paying for.
  At least they started putting more cut scenes in game rather than the single intro video to hype you on the game.

Blizzard is dead. At the time they were Activision. Now they are Microsoft. The blizzard that existed to make StarCraft, warcraft and diablo only exists in name.

I don't know, the World of Warcraft dev team recently unionized and got Chris Metzen to return as creative director. And, personally, as a current WoW player (War Within is great so far btw) the whole feel of the studio is so much better than during Shadowlands when things were bad and I quit the game. I think that Warcraft at least is having a bit of a comeback now.
Overwatch 2 is awful tho
- Chris Metzen
  I don't really know details about who does what at Blizzard, but isn't he the guy responsible for the utter train wreck of Diablo3's writing? Whoever wrote and approved "How tastes your fear, Nephalem?" did a bad job.

Ever since they banned that StarCraft II pro for protesting china in Hong Kong, I've uninstalled battle.net and didn't look back.

I rather buy a game from EA.

Sometimes Blizzard says things but it just sounds like Winnie the Pooh's jizz gurgling out their mouth.
- what
Same, down with the CCP
Same dude. They had been on the downhill for a bit but I sold my stock and was done

Blizzard died quite a while ago. Even if the same dudes are still making decisions at the head of the studio after the Activision buyout, clearly they have dementia or some other cognitive defects.

I think the execs were always somewhat shit, even when they were making good games. It's just their creative team miraculously managed to make good games despite the shitty execs.
- Yeah, they used to have a Caste System in Blizzard HQ where badge color decided your importance. And get this, their tech guys, security guys, and hardware guys (not firmware) were all the lower caste lmao.
Firing Nethaera was a bullet in their brain.

It's a shame, I liked OW1, even with the tired meta and 6v6 more than I liked OW2.

The loot boxes weren't predatory, allowing unlocking of skins and content without spending anything extra was a nice balance in my opinion that I wish more games did.

They took OW1 and bastardized it, it deserves the rating it has. It used to be that new versions of games were better.

It really is a shame. I played so much OW1, and then suddenly it changed to be like all the other modern games with sleazy monetization that I avoid.
The loot boxes weren't predatory
Ehhh, they were basically the same thing as a slot machine. The battlepass is certainly worse, as it just encourages rampant (not so) microtransactions, but just because the current battlepass system is really predatory, doesn't mean the old loot box system wasn't predatory at all. It was just less predatory.
- Well I guess what I mean by that is that loot boxes were free to obtain AND open through leveling and weren't exclusive to forking over money.
  No lootboxes at all is the ultimate goal, but I'd take OW1 lootbox style over nearly any others.
It used to be that new versions of games were better.
I for one am very interested to see the quality differences between worker owned game studios and corporate studios. But last I heard they had only just started unionizing.
And a programmer friend I talked to couldn’t comprehend why he would want to be in a union.
- And a programmer friend I talked to couldn’t comprehend why he would want to be in a union.
  I also had a programmer friend that was anti-union. He was like "If the place I'm working at sucks, I'll just find another place." Very short sighted and optimistic.
- unions are a harder sell in an industry like tech where it's common to have a diverse skill set spanning work that could arguable each be it's own union. does a full stack dev have to join the database admin union before they can write sql queries?
  those diverse skill sets also make the individual value of workers fluctuate a lot more as well.
  I still like the idea of unions but I just don't know how you can make them work for tech;if anyone has any good resources on the subject I'd love to read more about it

It was easy to predict a downward slide as soon as they merged with Activision.

Rather than merged I think they were simply bought by Activision. An Acquisition is when one business entity becomes a child to another, a merger is when the two become one different entity.
- "Mergers" end up being acquisitions in the majority of cases. One company culture will prevail, one companies middle management will take over the administrative sides and depending on the structure also the technical side.
I didn't even know they merged with Activision. And I didn't even know that the latter has also gone worse than I expected. Which is a shame because I have fond memories of pre-2010s Call of Duty games.

Let me introduce you to Wizards of the Coast

IMO the issue isn't WotC, it's Hasbro. WotC is their golden goose and they're squeezing it for everything. I haven't checked their recent earnings calls but I wouldn't be surprised if WotC is still their only subsidiary where the revenue isn't declining.

Concorde would have loved to get 115,000 reviews...

That game flopped so hard.
- The beta was boring and it was free

Hulu was really good a decade ago. Then they put ads in and created a higher tier. Nobody was surprised when it happened again some years later.

In Ukraine starlink was being hailed as a hero before Elon decided to turn off Internet access in areas he deemed Ukraine to be "too aggressive".

Goodwill doesn't deserve it's reputation. It uses minimum wage exemptions for disabled people to pay it's staff below minimum wage.

Edit to add - Destiny 2 was the other one I was thinking of and couldn't quite place. Great PvE shooter with great story, and they killed it to force people to buy DLC.

D2's problem is different. To succeed critically they needed to produce The Taken King or The Witch Queen every content cycle, but there's no way to do that except release only once a year — but they wanted to release every 3 months, so they made shitty DLCs that everyone mildly disliked and hyped them up so people actively disliked them on release.
Then the shitty mini DLCs began cannibalizing the dev, time and monetary budget from the main DLCs and it fell into a downward spiral.
- Yeah that wasn't great but I think it was the part where they literally deleted a bunch of the story so you either bought the DLC or wandered the maps aimlessly killing stuff that really broke any good will left.
It's amazing how people still get things wrong ages after it's been corrected by the author and spread misinformation and the hate involved with it.
Elon didn't turn starlink off. It was always off. It was never ON to be turned OFF.
Further, allowing ukraine to use starlink as a weapon in an offensive attack was against the terms of service and would put spacex in a very difficult position with regulations. That's why the DoD took it over, and it's okay now.
- If it was always off then why did they lose Internet? And why was Ukraine's counter offensive bad but Russia's offensive okay?

Yeah but they'll never learn because tons off people keep shoveling money at them.

I think Activision might be on the way out, they've had playercounts decline pretty much every quarter and even though their SEC filings show an increase in revenue thats only because Blizzard and other new properties get filed alongside the rest of Activision, now.

CDPR? admittedly they're really good at gaining it back again, kinda homer simpsons vibes where they repeatedly fuck up but then make an honest attempt to make things right only to repeat the cycle all over again.

CDPR mistakes can be corrected, but blizzard games are designed from the ground up, with purpose, to be fuckup games in order to milk as much money as possible from it players. There is no correcting the boat for blizzard because for the managers of blizzard the boat IS correct
Hopefully their transition to unreal engine 5 gets away with a lot of their launch issues I genuinely love all of their games but their release dates being "game launch +1-2 years" hurts me.
CDPR is still on my "probably pass" list after cyber punk. I read the launch news, stayed faraway. I picked it up this year, after all the patches and work and... yeah it's still fundamentally broken.
Not in terms of balance or bugs, but it didn't have the magic. To start, I really don't like fantasy games. They're just not my thing. Witcher 3 had bad combat mechanics, could be terribly grindy and YET is one of my top five games. The story telling, from the plot itself the tiny immersive details in the world, hooked you. They nailed the big things, but it was the little things like sometimes you'd free someone, and realize they murdered a bunch of dudes who were minding their own business, and none of this was mentioned in or affected any other plot line, it was just a random detail in the universe.
Cyberpunk has a semblance of the big stuff, but exactly none of the soul. I cared about some of the main characters (emphasis on "some") but exactly none about the world. It never felt like more than a backdrop.
A loss and misstep is ok, particularly given a growing studio, the problem with CDPR is they think they fixed cyberpunk. With that mentality I'm giving their next game a huge berth.
And if you liked cyberpunk, enjoy. There are parts to be enjoyed. There are some neat plot threads, some nifty side quests, if you enjoy it don't let people ruin it for you.
- They lied about Cyberpunk. They knew it was bad on release and maliciously made decisions so that people would still buy it. That's not some minor thing, that's a crime. "We leave greed to others", yeah, right. And this problem was never addressed by CDPR, like it's a normal thing to do, they think it's okay.
Man, Cyberpunk was not a Homer-like fuckup. They were promising features which were nowhere near ready, while their whole game hardly ran at all. That's a crime, at least in my country. Homer doesn't do crimes...

If you think that's bad, wait 'till you hear about the working conditions.

In their defense their just keeping up with the standard in other publicity owned companies. Don't wanna rock the boat you know.
(This is a joke, please join a union in your field. Union strong motherfuckers!)
It's hard to make a good game when you're too busy trying to rape your coworkers.

I wonder why

Death to ActivisionBlizzard. Company of shitty games and sexual harassment.

Hey now, what did Microsoft's Activision Blizzard King ever do to you?

Review bombs are stupid and pointless. Especially in this case since most players are going through bnet and not steam.

24M active players.

Review bombs and "boycotts" are frustrating because it seems like the average player has the willpower of a hungry toddler. "Hey, don't buy this game. They make their developers work 20 hour days." -> "Oh yeah fuck them! ...ooh, but there's a shiny angel wing skin if I preorder? Well mmmmmmm well sure it's just $90 what does it hurt"
But I don't know. I'm kind of in a mood lately where I feel like I'm surrounded by overgrown toddlers.

The whole frat boy culture is what soured me on Blizzard.

I'm pretty sure is right there with them

"We could address the frat boy culture at our company and give reparations to the women who had their boob juice stolen... But will you settle for us changing McCree's name to.something the fanbase still won't acknowledge three years later?"