Bobby Kotick is a level of evil you'd normally expect from an arms dealer, not a toy maker. The fact that Blizzard was unmasked to be doing the kinds of things Konami would be frantically taking notes on is surprising only in how long it took to come to light.
Really that's a problem of videogames as a whole. When you look at it, Kotick was great at his job, but his job was making investors happy, not ensuring that the company would be sustainable on the long run. And make no mistake, he's far from the only cancer in the industry because for better or for worse we as gamers have allowed the "free market" to take over. It's no longer about entertainment or fostering communities but about how much can you squeeze from people before everything implodes. And we keep allowing this crap. Diablo Immortal is still raking millions from people with no money sense or self control, people keep praising Blizzard for whatever bread crumbs they use to keep their flock safely chained down. Look at this shit with WoW's latest expansion. "They changed", "oh now with Kotick gone we're back to the good days", like battered wives trying really hard to pretend that the toxic environment Kotick fostered hasn't polluted the company beyond repair. This is the world we keep allowing by not cutting them off for good. The only way things will change is if we stop allowing this and stop falling for the same paid shills who try to gaslight us into believing that this is the new normal.
For Konami, at least the Yakuza allegations make it easy to shirk responsibility. I don't think any criminal organization has any dirt on Kotick for him to say "they coerced me to do this".
It's one thing when YongYea says a gaming company is hated, but when the Company Man is saying your game company is hated, you seriously have an optics issue.
im sorry but im pretty sure you or anyone for that matter does not require some youtuber to spell out objective and obvious facts about a entity to know what said entity's overall general perception from the public's side. i sincerely ask this: when was the last time have you ever looked at a major event that occured in the world and took a finer detail of said event, dug through all the muck that is mainstream media and formed your own personal, and honest opinion about the event?
@@imgladnotu9527 Who pissed in your coffee? UA-cam comments crack me up. People pop blood vessel's over absolutely nothing. Hope you're doing alright because damn.
I worked at Blizzard starting 2005 until I was laid off in October of last year. The biggest problem is, without a doubt, Vivendi Universal giving up control of ABK to Bobby Kotick. While things were already going downhill, this is where the “profits over gameplay” mentality really started to get down to the game team management level. By the time I was laid off (while Hearthstone was still profitable), player enjoyment of an expansion was a footnote in the game shop’s presentation of how well their work increased sales; this was at the last team review I was in. Given that Microsoft laid off an additional 1,900 people in one go just this year, across ABK and XBox, I don’t see things changing.
Sorry to hear this, but thank you for sharing Love blizzard but also screw the capitalists at the top of the table, and the shareholders fiending from beneath.
@@tylerblue9691 On the plus side, since these companies are laying off the people who actually make the games, there are a ton of new studios starting up and a lot of people doing solo development. The best thing we can all do as gamers is to not worry so much about the big studios and focus on trying to support the smaller start-ups that are making the kinds of games we want to play. Studios that aren't run by publicly traded companies can survive on significantly less revenue than large studios, so they can be supported by much smaller fan bases. I'm working on a project in MonoGame that's inspired by a trilogy of games I loved growing up, and if I can sell even just 10k units a year at $15 each, I'd be good. It really doesn't take a lot to support employees, it's executives and investors that make everything expensive and require millions of copies to sell if you want any hope of a sequel.
As one of the 1900, I saw the trend over the past about 7-8 years. The pillars that gave Blizzard a soul and guiding light were paved over in pursuit of profits. I used to think things could change but since January and knowing that one of the more unique parts of Blizzard is now gutted(Customer support/Game Masters; yes they existed but were getting more and more rare over the past ~5 years), I have zero faith in the company being more than just "another game developer". Now I feel the direction is steered 100% by shareholders and profits with little concern for long term growth and reputation for (Blizzard) quality.
@@DamplyDoo it went from a painstakingly crafter masterpiece where every detail was carefully placed to a soulless corporation that only cares about money
@@DamplyDooas I understand it, post-launch updates started to make contentious changes which removed combat options that made characters interesting to play, then there was the transition to Overwatch 2 which exacerbated all of this. not to mention the cosmetics, where the first game had lootboxes, and the second has several of them as expensive purchases, just this month there's been a lot of frustration over new crossover character costumes costing _$25 each_
Sadly, Blizzard died the second they were bought out by Activision. I remember years ago hearing about the acquisition and knew exactly what it meant for the future. Speaking for myself, I haven't purchased another Blizzard product in quite a few years now due to all the things listed in this video and the ridiculous cost of their games. The amount of money they bring in from microtransactions (macro-transactions is probably more accurate now), is staggering and doesn't justify price hikes of that magnitude. It's the same old story that many corporations beholden to shareholders have in common: It's never enough profit. They have to have *all* the money, and they'll dig into their customers to get it no matter the cost to their reputation.
Activision brought it in 2008 around, that's a downfall time already. Never trust vivendi was a better company than Activision. You can see some dramatical changes after 2004 in wow project, the Blizzard developers lost much of their innovation after wow period. I don't mean that wow isn't a wonderful game especially vanilla. What exactly I mean is Blizzard can't make their works as good as before. And things would be worse as time goes by.
Sigh, I remember back in 2005 that Blizzard was my favorite PC game maker. They had Diablo, D2, Starcraft, Warcraft, and WOW - all absolutely great games for the time.
Amazing how years ago games were developed by a small team of people none of which had a ton of experience making games as it was so new. Nowadays they have much bigger teams and the teams consist of people who have been playing and making games for decades yet they can't turn out a decent game to save their ass
@@tylersmith9868Games used to be designed and produced to be the best as possible product. Now they are designed in board rooms in order to make as much money as possible, then the game is made around those constraints as a minimally viable product. Support developers that are passionate about their game, not companies that are passionate about milking your goodwill.
"Do you guys not have phones?" was the moment where it was blatantly clear how out of touch they were. Blizzard used to be a company of gamers making games for gamers. In the Activision-Blizzard era they were now a business statistics company that looked at the gaming world and said "oh! A majority of games are played on phones now!" and wrongly assumed that their *PC gaming* fan base would want the next installment of the franchise purely on mobile.
Before even watching this, I would say it was the huge lawsuit that happened a few years ago. Really showed how scummy the whole company has been for a very long time.
Yeah. I mean what did people expect though it’s corporate, they’re notorious for that sh!t. Never watched wolf of wall street? Most of the corporate offices are the same, barely any exceptions, especially if men are the majority who’s working there. That’s just how it is and always will be. It sucks but some things never change.
No one deserves the hated label more. How the great have fallen so low. Sc2 overwatch and Warcraft were some of my all time favourite games, and I’m so disappointed with how things have become
Lol I'm not saying it was a good thing, but I feel like the breast milk theft was the most entertaining thing to come out of blizzard in a while. The idea of it is so absurd it's downright funny.
Remember the friendship offering blizzard gave you too? Oh, you and your friend want to have some head to head matches but doesn't own and can't get ahold of the game? No problem, here is a clone copy you can install on your friend's pc that is locked to only multiplayer.
I put endless hours into Overwatch. I watched the League, and even made a point to interact with players on the team I supported. I happily put my money into the game in the form of buying seasonal boxes. But eventually, everything they did piled up. Blizzard stopped caring about the players and showed they didn't care about their employees or human rights. So, I dipped.
Hong Kong controversy, breast milk, Bobby death threat to a woman, the California investigation and sexual harassment insanity, Warcraft Reforged, WoW Prize money, WoW expansion problems, Overwatch 2 story mode cancellation, survival game cancellation, D4 mega problems, mass-layoff of staff especially community managers, QA, and GMs. Did I get everything?@@EnzoCroft
@@EnzoCroftReforged victim here😂😂😂 I knew it was bad but I gave it a chance to experience the new UI. I regretted ever since. And they proved it officially when it just kept crashing during their esports event and they had to switch to legacy UI……
@@EnzoCroft Just adding to the list: D3 general mess basically spawning a new competitor because how shitty it was, DI phone meme, DI monetization, SC2 blunders in SK, SC2 do you want chat?, HS Hong Kong censorship, HS blacklist, the whole California lawsuit, OW attempt at censoring, HotS being canned, bullying, and current D4 mess. Despite all that, there are still a sizable playerbase willing to give Blizzard repeated chances.
Company Man: "Is it possible for Blizzard to ever restore their name. And if so, what would th-" Gamers: "Gonna stop ya right there mate. The answer is a firm, 'No.' "
@@juniorbitare3041 do you know how much potential income a company like that could have if they kept course for the next decade? Were talking about billions in profit
It seems like the layoffs always affect more senior people, then they're just promoting people before they're ready and hiring junior level again. With Hearthstone, you went from initially having a bunch of people with 15+ years of TCG experience to half the "senior" game leads being kids who had a couple high ladder finishes so they just hired them on.
They killed their own TCG for Hearthstone (which was pretty much number 4 behind MtG, PTCG and YGO) so the entire community including players, judges and designers were naturally merged into the new Hearthstone one, and then they decided not to run Hearthstone as a traditional card game anymore
It's not just Blizzard, EA, and Ubisoft, it's the ENTIRE industry (possibly excepting Valve/Steam). There was big money to be made and that became the priority. Nothing else mattered.
Make no mistake, Valve's driven by profits as well. Any company that's successful and wants to remain so has to be or the industry that they're in will leave them behind. The thing about Valve though is that they're more of a platform holder than a video game producer anymore and it's been that way for years. Their name's on the store and they run it, and that's about it. They make their money from the fees other developers pay them to put and keep their games on Steam. lol
Sadly, I almost did as well. Was going to Irvine valley college which is right down the street from the Blizzard headquarters in Irvine. Also glad I didn’t end up following that avenue 💀
The biggest problem with blizzard is that despite the widespread hatred from the gaming community, people still play their games. Diablo immortal got so much hate only for it to be their most profitable game in years. Gamers are choosing to reward blizzard’s behavior rather than penalizing it with low profits, so there’s no incentive for blizzard to stop their predatory practices. Why would you make a good game if players are perfectly willing to buy a cheaply made, bad game?
Old enough to remember when Blizzard was the most revered game company in PC gaming. Blizzard was synonymous with quality. Now it’s synonymous with greed.
I remember leaving a message on the Warcraft hotline of all things. They got the voice actor for the game to bounce back and forth between the orc and footman. I have no hope for Blizzard at this point. The enshittification is quite deep, and we have a preponderance of other, better options for electronic entertainment.
I remember when Microsoft was buying Activision/Blizzard, and some people spoke hopefully about it, thinking that it could change things for the better, to which I proclaimed: "How did we get to this? MICROSOFT is buying a company, and people are actually hopeful that this might make everything LESS scummy and horrible?!?!?!"
Frankly at this point, it's not like they can make it *worse*. I'm just waiting for my current wrath guild to be done. I don't want to leave my friends... but that's all. Once they're done I'm done
If, during an oil change, the waste oil accidentally falls on your lunch and vastly improves its edibility, by washing away some of the astronomical mercury content, you need to buy your food elsewhere. There is no salvaging the meal. Throw it away and go to a different restaurant.
This one stings me on a personal level, cause growing up, I gravitated towards Blizzard's IP for entertainment. Immersive storytelling backed by gameplay was what set Blizzard apart from the competition like Command & Conquer. At least from my end, I got to see the StarCraft franchise getting a proper (not necessarily good, but compared to Diablo and especially WarCraft) sendoff, so the lore there has not been messed with. What really soured me about Blizzard was the merger with Activision, who are hated cause of their own penny pinching and price gouging policies. Let's be real, the one with the purse strings generally has more power, and it was only a matter of time before Activision was able to slowly sideline Blizzard's old guard in favor of their own puppets. I always say Blizzard's real date of "death" was 2016, not 2018. The infamous BlizzCon debacle that year was all the ostracizion and sidelining of Blizzard's "old guard" coming to light, rather than a sudden reaction. Think of it like a room keep being filled with gunpowder, waiting for a spark to ignite, which inevitably happened. This pains me both as a gamer and a game developer, cause no matter what you do, it's the publishers who get the final say since they provide the funding. Without the cash, any game project just stops, as I really doubt any game dev wants to work for free (barring their own passion projects). Plus, publishers these days are getting impatient, demanding their return on investment (ROI) as fast as possible, hence why good game development gets sidelined for monetization. This is kind of the reason why people keep saying the AAA game market is declining.
Blizzard is Blizzard in name only. Anyone and anything that made the company good is gone. It's just another hollowed out "asset" for people that don't understand the industry.
having worked in the bay area during the late 2000s; Blizzard was already byword for resume glitter. AKA do your year and leave because Irvine treats new hires like trash. WoW just did a big big number on expectations and expectations even while in Vivendi., a number Activision Kotick could not resist.
A terrible company that emerged when they merged with another terrible company, that led to terrible treatment of their own IPs, but the terrible treatment of their playerbase and their workers had been well entrenched before that. Also doesn't help the biggest rivals to Overwatch 2 were Overwatch 1, and Call of Duty. They were basically fighting *themselves* . Also it seems that Bungie for some reason decided to copy them and make Marathon a disappointment too. So that's nice but that's really more a Bungie Bungle.
Never played a game from them, but I liked their South Park episode. I remember the "Do you not have phones?" comment and that was stuck in the game community for a long time.
Remember in Dark Knight Rises when Bane says something like "Victory has defeated you" to Batman? That's what happened to Blizzard. Overwhelming success led to overwhelming arrogance. They thought they could do anything they wanted and could treat their customers like idiots and get away with it.
People will say this, but the even funnier reality is that Blizzard has ended up losing the market to newer micro-transaction spamming game companies who do all the things people riot over when Blizz does them. Ironically, riot is picking up tons of the devs that were the ones causing all these problems at blizzard.
A perfect example of why Blizzard is hated is what they did with Wow Plunderstorm that was just released. A Battle Royale game set in the Warcraft Universe no one asked for and they literally tied unique Word of Warcraft rewards to this game. Terrible.
This is one of the most consistent channels on UA-cam by far. Really love what you do here and always find myself saying this when I find myself on this channel.
The story of its never enough. Create great products and make huge profits. Eventually its not enough. So you cut here and there. It works fine at first. Then you cut some more. Still working. Then you cut some more and cross that line when products start to suffer. But the fans of the past stick around. Cut some more and those fans start to get mad. Cut some more and you start to bleed. Then you have to get creative to charge more from fewer and it's still working in the books but in reality the ships taking water and is in trouble.
I believe the "Cosby Suite" was in reference to the carpet of the hotel room, which looked like Cosby's sweaters. I don't think Cosby was widely known as a sexual predator at that time. But yeah, Blizzard is terrible.
Not related...but could you do a video on Joann Fabrics? They recently filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. I don't closely follow how companies are doing, but it took me by surprise. I love your videos by the way!
Add me to the group of long time gamers who always liked Blizzard games and it actually got me to jump from MMOs to a first person shooter for the first time with Overwatch. I was an instant die-hard fan of the series and still play quite frequently. But being heavily involved and interested in Overwatch news for approaching a decade I've seen a lot of of this video unfold. It is clear as day that Bobby Kotick basically is 1-5 on your list. It is crazy he was able to stay in role for so long and that some other company could pick him up as CEO one day. I am happy the company landed at Microsoft though and while there was another round of layoffs i do have to imagine Activision Blizzard is not an efficient company and there was likely a lot of extra headcount. I take those headlines with a grain of salt because it is a business and as someone who works in retail we see it all the time. The rest of it though is so disappointing. I do think Microsoft will shut that behavior down though.
Just today, same day as this video dropped, they announced a new Overwatch character and that all characters will be free going forward and a not small amount of people immediately speculated that they have a controversy about to come out. It’s happened so many times that now when Blizzard has good news people think they’re trying to shine light away from a new controversy instead of just being happy
Worked there from 2013 - end 2018. #5 is all true and if you worked there you witnessed so many "WoW!" *this 💩 really happened* moments. it was crazy because that was the "DREAM". But you had to sacrifice so much to just work there. underpaid, overworked, pretty much salary capped unless you got a good manager, which was super rare or made friends with the "right" people. This place was so toxic, during a fully internal company only beta, one employee got banned because they went full twitch chat mode during a play session. But that person knew people, so that lasted all of two days. Don't understand how people still "dream" to work there, it's a job like everywhere else and you'll be underpaid for it. We called it the Blizzard tax.
It's no mystery what happened to Blizzard. Early on the company was a bunch of nerds who loved to make games. Then, after all of the corporate mergers, those talented nerds were pushed out and replaced with corporate hacks. The guys calling the shots at Blizzard aren't gamers anymore. The company's purpose stopped being "create good games" and transitioned to monetization. As a result the product suffered.
Blizzard used to be my absolute dream company to work for but these days I just see them as another company that thought they were invincible and it came back to bite them.
I played Hearthstone from Open Beta until August 2022. I honestly spent way too much money on that game than I should have. I loved it, but the ever increasing greed and trying to ring out more money from players along with the deeply unbalanced state of the game killed it for me little by little. Now it’s dead to me and I doubt I will ever go back.
Notice how when a certain type of person with a certain type of early life tab on Wikipedia, was hired as ceo, he ruined an entire catalog of masterpieces.
I’m such a mega fan of old Blizzard. I think the fall from such heights is what really hurts. “You were the chosen one” 😢 doesn’t begin to cover the sense of loss and betrayal.
Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier has an entire book coming out about the story of Blizzard this year, and it will be covering all these ups and brutal downs in depth.
This makes me feel so old. I saw the thumbnail and title, and I thought: oh wow company man is changing their direction, he’s reviewing the history of weather? So I clicked to learn wtf Blizzard is.
I have a hard time taking gamers who "hate" video game companies seriously. Gamers are the only group of people who will loudly complain about how unfair the pricing is, and how they're not making the games they want ... Then buy them anyway. If you don't like the game or the price is too high, don't buy it. Nothing will change if you keep giving them money.
They will bitch and complain for months talking about how this company lost its soul . They have lost faith this company can make any good games. But as soon as the next game is announced all is forgotten and they go back to deepthroating them. Bethesda and Bioware fanboys are notorius for this.
Hey, Company Man. Can you please do a video on the decline of Hanna-Barbera? The animation studio was known for their best cartoons such as Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, The Jetsons, Quick Draw McGraw, Johnny Quest, Magilla Gorilla, etc. Not to mention, they were known for their wacky sound effects we heard throughout pop culture today. I want to know how did they started and what led to their downfall.
That's exactly the case. I can't speak for every WoW fan, but if the next expansion isn't amazing, I think it's time I moved on (been playing since 2007, but taking longer and longer breaks from it).
I was a former female employee who worked there during 2015. I can confirm the inappropriate environment. I made the mistake of reporting it to HR after which the harassment ramped up and got worse. I even attempted to bring a lawsuit and was told nobody wanted to fight AB's lawyers. Only when the state of CA who was big enough to take on AB came into the picture did anything happen but for women like me it was too little too late.
Can't forget everything they did to Heroes of The Storm. My hatred for Blizzard really took off from how badly they screwed over all pro and causal players.
It was starting in the vivendi era, but really came to light with the activision blizzard for me. That is to say, how development was handled. You kind of missed that part. Blizzard used to run a very loose release schedule. The "it'll release when it is done, and not before" mantra was real. This caused headaches by their owners though as the sales made it up or mostly made it up. But the development times and the bleed on cash was an uncontrollable variable. Post activision, that stopped and now you see them pushing a scheduled release instead of letting it float. Also, two of the big IPs you mentioned (warcraft and diablo) all turned heads at the time. For warcraft, it was the second ip released as an rts. A very new genre that was founded when westwood released dune 2 followed afterwards with command and conquer. For diablo, it created the actionrpg genre. And it wasn't just the simple click hack and slash of it either, but the fact the game had infinite replayability as the entire dungeon was randomly generated. That well established character, the butcher was just as randomized. You could in fact have a dungeon run where he didn't show up. Most often did, but it wasn't guaranteed.
I have been to three BLIZCONS (I was there when Immortal was announced). We still play. We see the changes that have been put in place since Activision as not caring about the player base or our time. There have been many changes in the last year or so that have shown they are listening to the needs of their players. We are hopeful that things will continue in that direction.
Sad blizzard has joined the ranks of EA. Blizzard had a huge IP list of great games with WoW being there #1 game of all time. But I think everyone knew when activision took over that things were taking a turn in the wrong direction. Now like every other big game company, profits have taken over and they will produce crap games till eventually MS de-solves the company name and just takes their IPs. This is why I support non-AAA game developers. They produce amazing games without a massive team or billions of dollars that do extremely well so they can make other games. Which I honestly think is where the game industry is heading back to their roots. Small team equals a great game, where large teams equal junk games now.
The last Blizzard game I played with any regularity was Hearthstone and I stopped after Blitzchung. I have no intention of buying a game from Blizzard again.
you know, i was upset about Immortal upon first hearing about it from that presentation, but it’s a surprisingly good mobile game tbh. i’ve spent $0 on IAPs, as well.
Exactly. The elitst PC gamers gtot outraged, yet it wasn't trageted at them. Blizzard wwas targeting a while new audices and did so succesfully. The "backlash" was only becuase the elitist PC gamers did get what they convinced themselves they ere getting. The only mistake that Blizzard made was announcing it at BlizzCon. Do that any other time and those players don't care.
How the mighty have fallen. I had an instructor who said working at Blizzard would be a dream for all of us. After the news in 2021 broke he would no longer talk about the company anymore.
Very topical as I have a few friends who are currently playing through the Diablo 2 remaster. They didn't buy the remaster, but they are playing through it. I 100% understand and support them.
Honestly, Blitzchung incident is a shitty situation they were put in. It's important for game companies to stay neutral for most part but now you have someone who used your platform to promote their narrative, something that is clearly against any gaming policy. If Blizzard chose not to do something about it, there would be more bandwagoners who would do just the same while other players would just want to enjoy their games in peace. Damned if you do damned if you don't, literally.
When they announced that Overwatch 2 was canceling its plans for a story campaign, despite showing us trailers for it 2 years prior in their marketing, made me lose faith in the franchise.
I hate Blizzard because they allowed my World of Warcraft account to get hacked. I never gave anyone my password. Someone hacked it and deleted all of my characters with hundreds of hours of gameplay. All gone for no reason. They did nothing to stop it or bring my characters back. Blizzard is the only company that's allowed my account to be hacked, ever. I never played WOW ever since.
It's worth noting that in the Blitzchung incident, all players had to sign a document where they agree to not use their time on the stage to share political/religious opinions. Handwaving a signed document due to personal biases is a slippery slope and there really wasn't any good way out of that sticky situation. I believe there's a blog post where they explain this on the official site.
I came across that video while making it but didn't watch it to be sure I wasn't copying it in anyway. But from your comment, I'm guessing my video turned out pretty similar anyway?
Bobby Kotick is a level of evil you'd normally expect from an arms dealer, not a toy maker. The fact that Blizzard was unmasked to be doing the kinds of things Konami would be frantically taking notes on is surprising only in how long it took to come to light.
Really that's a problem of videogames as a whole. When you look at it, Kotick was great at his job, but his job was making investors happy, not ensuring that the company would be sustainable on the long run.
And make no mistake, he's far from the only cancer in the industry because for better or for worse we as gamers have allowed the "free market" to take over. It's no longer about entertainment or fostering communities but about how much can you squeeze from people before everything implodes. And we keep allowing this crap. Diablo Immortal is still raking millions from people with no money sense or self control, people keep praising Blizzard for whatever bread crumbs they use to keep their flock safely chained down. Look at this shit with WoW's latest expansion. "They changed", "oh now with Kotick gone we're back to the good days", like battered wives trying really hard to pretend that the toxic environment Kotick fostered hasn't polluted the company beyond repair.
This is the world we keep allowing by not cutting them off for good. The only way things will change is if we stop allowing this and stop falling for the same paid shills who try to gaslight us into believing that this is the new normal.
For Konami, at least the Yakuza allegations make it easy to shirk responsibility. I don't think any criminal organization has any dirt on Kotick for him to say "they coerced me to do this".
@@neh1234 The philosophy of "Infinite growth in a Finite space" is one helluva drug
@@neh1234 Ubisoft is a better example than Blizzard since they've been fucking their customers and shareholders at the same time
shareholder capitalism is pure, distilled evil. the customer is no longer king, just a resource to exploit @@neh1234
It's one thing when YongYea says a gaming company is hated, but when the Company Man is saying your game company is hated, you seriously have an optics issue.
It’s not an optics issue, it’s a substance issue.
im sorry but im pretty sure you or anyone for that matter does not require some youtuber to spell out objective and obvious facts about a entity to know what said entity's overall general perception from the public's side.
i sincerely ask this: when was the last time have you ever looked at a major event that occured in the world and took a finer detail of said event, dug through all the muck that is mainstream media and formed your own personal, and honest opinion about the event?
@@imgladnotu9527 Who pissed in your coffee? UA-cam comments crack me up. People pop blood vessel's over absolutely nothing. Hope you're doing alright because damn.
@@imgladnotu9527 are you a twitter user or something?
@@DiamondDust132they pop blood vessels? 🥺
The merger with Activision was the turning point. A lot of people were saying otherwise but the writing was on the wall...
It also involved those adorable fox and dragon of PlayStation.
I worked at Blizzard starting 2005 until I was laid off in October of last year.
The biggest problem is, without a doubt, Vivendi Universal giving up control of ABK to Bobby Kotick. While things were already going downhill, this is where the “profits over gameplay” mentality really started to get down to the game team management level.
By the time I was laid off (while Hearthstone was still profitable), player enjoyment of an expansion was a footnote in the game shop’s presentation of how well their work increased sales; this was at the last team review I was in.
Given that Microsoft laid off an additional 1,900 people in one go just this year, across ABK and XBox, I don’t see things changing.
Sorry to hear this, but thank you for sharing
Love blizzard but also screw the capitalists at the top of the table, and the shareholders fiending from beneath.
@@tylerblue9691 On the plus side, since these companies are laying off the people who actually make the games, there are a ton of new studios starting up and a lot of people doing solo development.
The best thing we can all do as gamers is to not worry so much about the big studios and focus on trying to support the smaller start-ups that are making the kinds of games we want to play.
Studios that aren't run by publicly traded companies can survive on significantly less revenue than large studios, so they can be supported by much smaller fan bases.
I'm working on a project in MonoGame that's inspired by a trilogy of games I loved growing up, and if I can sell even just 10k units a year at $15 each, I'd be good. It really doesn't take a lot to support employees, it's executives and investors that make everything expensive and require millions of copies to sell if you want any hope of a sequel.
It sounds like the industry needs way more competition
Thank you for your time and service, whatever it was, and I hope you find a place that actually cares.
As one of the 1900, I saw the trend over the past about 7-8 years. The pillars that gave Blizzard a soul and guiding light were paved over in pursuit of profits.
I used to think things could change but since January and knowing that one of the more unique parts of Blizzard is now gutted(Customer support/Game Masters; yes they existed but were getting more and more rare over the past ~5 years), I have zero faith in the company being more than just "another game developer".
Now I feel the direction is steered 100% by shareholders and profits with little concern for long term growth and reputation for (Blizzard) quality.
Blizzard stopped being Blizzard once Blizzard North left.
“Was fired”.
@@AUZlE Look guys, I found the trewn supporter
And then it all went Blizzard South
@@maxpower2511what does that even mean
Yup! And you can trace where the games took a noticeable decline in q1uality and spirit to this event. You nailed it.
That first year or two with OverWatch was magical, Overwatch 2 is a perfect example of everything going wrong with Blizzard.
Such a bummer overwatch was a masterpiece for years
Seriously, the first 2 years of Overwatch was some of the most fun times i've had with any shooter game...then Brig launched and the downfall began...
I'm a noob, what happened to the game
@@DamplyDoo it went from a painstakingly crafter masterpiece where every detail was carefully placed to a soulless corporation that only cares about money
@@DamplyDooas I understand it, post-launch updates started to make contentious changes which removed combat options that made characters interesting to play, then there was the transition to Overwatch 2 which exacerbated all of this. not to mention the cosmetics, where the first game had lootboxes, and the second has several of them as expensive purchases, just this month there's been a lot of frustration over new crossover character costumes costing _$25 each_
Sadly, Blizzard died the second they were bought out by Activision. I remember years ago hearing about the acquisition and knew exactly what it meant for the future. Speaking for myself, I haven't purchased another Blizzard product in quite a few years now due to all the things listed in this video and the ridiculous cost of their games. The amount of money they bring in from microtransactions (macro-transactions is probably more accurate now), is staggering and doesn't justify price hikes of that magnitude. It's the same old story that many corporations beholden to shareholders have in common: It's never enough profit. They have to have *all* the money, and they'll dig into their customers to get it no matter the cost to their reputation.
Activision brought it in 2008 around, that's a downfall time already. Never trust vivendi was a better company than Activision.
You can see some dramatical changes after 2004 in wow project, the Blizzard developers lost much of their innovation after wow period. I don't mean that wow isn't a wonderful game especially vanilla. What exactly I mean is Blizzard can't make their works as good as before. And things would be worse as time goes by.
Sigh, I remember back in 2005 that Blizzard was my favorite PC game maker. They had Diablo, D2, Starcraft, Warcraft, and WOW - all absolutely great games for the time.
Amazing how years ago games were developed by a small team of people none of which had a ton of experience making games as it was so new. Nowadays they have much bigger teams and the teams consist of people who have been playing and making games for decades yet they can't turn out a decent game to save their ass
@@tylersmith9868Games used to be designed and produced to be the best as possible product. Now they are designed in board rooms in order to make as much money as possible, then the game is made around those constraints as a minimally viable product. Support developers that are passionate about their game, not companies that are passionate about milking your goodwill.
@@Rob-147 most indie games are poop
@@tylersmith9868 but some are great :)
@@tylersmith9868
Yet the triple A games are worse somehow.
"You guys don't have phones?"
No. Gonna buy me one?
@@Alverant You would still pay back for the phone by microtransactions with interest.
This is the comment I came here for
Such an out of touch response. Yeah, your customers spend $3000 on a custom gaming rig so they can play Diablo on a 5" screen with touch controls.
@@nothereandthereanywheremicro transactions don't work on me. I've never bought anything to make the 4skin look better.
"Do you guys not have phones?" was the moment where it was blatantly clear how out of touch they were.
Blizzard used to be a company of gamers making games for gamers. In the Activision-Blizzard era they were now a business statistics company that looked at the gaming world and said "oh! A majority of games are played on phones now!" and wrongly assumed that their *PC gaming* fan base would want the next installment of the franchise purely on mobile.
It almost takes a certain kind of talent to be booed off a convention you yourself is in charge of…!
@@RThyrring haha, that's for sure!
Boy, am I old. ... I thought was going to be about a treat sold at Dairy Queen.
Not this time but I have a different about DQ that talks about their Blizzard a little bit. Also an interesting topic.
😆
Me, a longtime viewer of the channel, and also a longtime player of Blizzard games: WHAT A CROSSOVER!
Same! 😂
Can't spell Blizzard without L
Can't spell blizzard without lizzard.
Can't spell Blizzerd
Can’t spell
Bizzard
You cant spell
Your narration has really improved in the last 5 years. Good work.
Before even watching this, I would say it was the huge lawsuit that happened a few years ago. Really showed how scummy the whole company has been for a very long time.
Yeah. I mean what did people expect though it’s corporate, they’re notorious for that sh!t. Never watched wolf of wall street? Most of the corporate offices are the same, barely any exceptions, especially if men are the majority who’s working there. That’s just how it is and always will be. It sucks but some things never change.
I still call them Breastmilk because of the breastmilk incident.
No one deserves the hated label more. How the great have fallen so low. Sc2 overwatch and Warcraft were some of my all time favourite games, and I’m so disappointed with how things have become
What breast milk incident? I don't know about that. Details, please.
@@ARedMotorcyclea blizzard employee was accused of stealing another woman employee’s breastmilk from the breakroom fridge or her office
Nevermind. I looked it up. Creepy.
Lol I'm not saying it was a good thing, but I feel like the breast milk theft was the most entertaining thing to come out of blizzard in a while. The idea of it is so absurd it's downright funny.
The Warcraft trilogy and Starcraft. Oh the days of installing a CD-ROM into your Desktop PC, and when dial-up internet was 28kbps. 😢
Remember the friendship offering blizzard gave you too? Oh, you and your friend want to have some head to head matches but doesn't own and can't get ahold of the game? No problem, here is a clone copy you can install on your friend's pc that is locked to only multiplayer.
Haha, I had the WoW CDs mailed to me because it would have taken longer to download them over dial up
I put endless hours into Overwatch. I watched the League, and even made a point to interact with players on the team I supported. I happily put my money into the game in the form of buying seasonal boxes. But eventually, everything they did piled up. Blizzard stopped caring about the players and showed they didn't care about their employees or human rights. So, I dipped.
Why did you edit out Bobby Kotick's horns?
Bobby Kotick doesn’t have horns to begin with, while parody images of him do.
He’s a terrible terror to begin with though.
No way, just 12 minutes? That's just the intro
Yup, warcraft reforged, the World of Warcraft prize money stealing, Overwatch 2 $40 story mode and then canceling the story mode, list goes on.
Hong Kong controversy, breast milk, Bobby death threat to a woman, the California investigation and sexual harassment insanity, Warcraft Reforged, WoW Prize money, WoW expansion problems, Overwatch 2 story mode cancellation, survival game cancellation, D4 mega problems, mass-layoff of staff especially community managers, QA, and GMs. Did I get everything?@@EnzoCroft
@@EnzoCroftReforged victim here😂😂😂 I knew it was bad but I gave it a chance to experience the new UI. I regretted ever since. And they proved it officially when it just kept crashing during their esports event and they had to switch to legacy UI……
I agree. There's still so much more to cover. Blizzard is a burning garbage can at this point.
@@EnzoCroft Just adding to the list: D3 general mess basically spawning a new competitor because how shitty it was, DI phone meme, DI monetization, SC2 blunders in SK, SC2 do you want chat?, HS Hong Kong censorship, HS blacklist, the whole California lawsuit, OW attempt at censoring, HotS being canned, bullying, and current D4 mess.
Despite all that, there are still a sizable playerbase willing to give Blizzard repeated chances.
Company Man: "Is it possible for Blizzard to ever restore their name. And if so, what would th-"
Gamers: "Gonna stop ya right there mate. The answer is a firm, 'No.' "
They could stop being owned by Microsoft lmao
Nah them being own by Microsoft is a plus compared to before.
@@fyodor8008honestly I don’t see how Microsoft could make it worst… or better for that matter.
Could make an RTS. Might be a start.
I’m angry at Blizzard because they are not even developing Starcraft 3 yet as an RTS.
Such a sad day to see this video growing up in the golden age of Blizzard. Oh how the titans have fallen.
Idk about fallen. They sold themselves at practically their highest valuation ever.
@@juniorbitare3041 and now the company is trash
@@juniorbitare3041 do you know how much potential income a company like that could have if they kept course for the next decade? Were talking about billions in profit
@juniorbitare3041 a few hyper rich have more money and their pocket and the entire company is burned to the ground, I would call that fallen
It seems like the layoffs always affect more senior people, then they're just promoting people before they're ready and hiring junior level again. With Hearthstone, you went from initially having a bunch of people with 15+ years of TCG experience to half the "senior" game leads being kids who had a couple high ladder finishes so they just hired them on.
"It says on your resume that you previously worked at KMart and completed a public library community course on Visual Basic? Hired."
They killed their own TCG for Hearthstone (which was pretty much number 4 behind MtG, PTCG and YGO) so the entire community including players, judges and designers were naturally merged into the new Hearthstone one, and then they decided not to run Hearthstone as a traditional card game anymore
It's not just Blizzard, EA, and Ubisoft, it's the ENTIRE industry (possibly excepting Valve/Steam). There was big money to be made and that became the priority. Nothing else mattered.
Make no mistake, Valve's driven by profits as well. Any company that's successful and wants to remain so has to be or the industry that they're in will leave them behind. The thing about Valve though is that they're more of a platform holder than a video game producer anymore and it's been that way for years. Their name's on the store and they run it, and that's about it. They make their money from the fees other developers pay them to put and keep their games on Steam. lol
Hard to hate Valve when they haven't made a game in years.
Video game industry is worth more than the movie industry now; yet the former is treated like it's something only nerds do.
Nintendo is actually a great company when it comes to their games. The only thing I hate about them is that the're too protective of their IPs
Aye we got a 200 million dollar budget for this game, But the CEO needs 199.8 Million for his bonus, so here's some scraps, go make a game.
I remember when I went to college for Game Design and wanted to end up working at Blizzard. Now, I'm glad I never did
Sadly, I almost did as well. Was going to Irvine valley college which is right down the street from the Blizzard headquarters in Irvine. Also glad I didn’t end up following that avenue 💀
The downfall of Blizzard came when it sold itself and it's soul to the highest bidder.
The biggest problem with blizzard is that despite the widespread hatred from the gaming community, people still play their games. Diablo immortal got so much hate only for it to be their most profitable game in years. Gamers are choosing to reward blizzard’s behavior rather than penalizing it with low profits, so there’s no incentive for blizzard to stop their predatory practices. Why would you make a good game if players are perfectly willing to buy a cheaply made, bad game?
Old enough to remember when Blizzard was the most revered game company in PC gaming. Blizzard was synonymous with quality. Now it’s synonymous with greed.
I remember leaving a message on the Warcraft hotline of all things. They got the voice actor for the game to bounce back and forth between the orc and footman.
I have no hope for Blizzard at this point. The enshittification is quite deep, and we have a preponderance of other, better options for electronic entertainment.
I remember when Microsoft was buying Activision/Blizzard, and some people spoke hopefully about it, thinking that it could change things for the better, to which I proclaimed:
"How did we get to this? MICROSOFT is buying a company, and people are actually hopeful that this might make everything LESS scummy and horrible?!?!?!"
Frankly at this point, it's not like they can make it *worse*.
I'm just waiting for my current wrath guild to be done. I don't want to leave my friends... but that's all. Once they're done I'm done
Well, so far things have been positive as Microsoft has allowed ACtivision and Blizzard autonomy to do their own business.
If, during an oil change, the waste oil accidentally falls on your lunch and vastly improves its edibility, by washing away some of the astronomical mercury content, you need to buy your food elsewhere. There is no salvaging the meal. Throw it away and go to a different restaurant.
You didn't mention the microtransactions. The more microtransactions that are in a game the less likely I am to play it
This one stings me on a personal level, cause growing up, I gravitated towards Blizzard's IP for entertainment. Immersive storytelling backed by gameplay was what set Blizzard apart from the competition like Command & Conquer. At least from my end, I got to see the StarCraft franchise getting a proper (not necessarily good, but compared to Diablo and especially WarCraft) sendoff, so the lore there has not been messed with.
What really soured me about Blizzard was the merger with Activision, who are hated cause of their own penny pinching and price gouging policies. Let's be real, the one with the purse strings generally has more power, and it was only a matter of time before Activision was able to slowly sideline Blizzard's old guard in favor of their own puppets. I always say Blizzard's real date of "death" was 2016, not 2018. The infamous BlizzCon debacle that year was all the ostracizion and sidelining of Blizzard's "old guard" coming to light, rather than a sudden reaction. Think of it like a room keep being filled with gunpowder, waiting for a spark to ignite, which inevitably happened.
This pains me both as a gamer and a game developer, cause no matter what you do, it's the publishers who get the final say since they provide the funding. Without the cash, any game project just stops, as I really doubt any game dev wants to work for free (barring their own passion projects). Plus, publishers these days are getting impatient, demanding their return on investment (ROI) as fast as possible, hence why good game development gets sidelined for monetization. This is kind of the reason why people keep saying the AAA game market is declining.
Blizzard is Blizzard in name only. Anyone and anything that made the company good is gone. It's just another hollowed out "asset" for people that don't understand the industry.
They also totally absorbed the Sierra name and left publishing the two PSone mascots under Activision.
having worked in the bay area during the late 2000s; Blizzard was already byword for resume glitter. AKA do your year and leave because Irvine treats new hires like trash.
WoW just did a big big number on expectations and expectations even while in Vivendi., a number Activision Kotick could not resist.
A terrible company that emerged when they merged with another terrible company, that led to terrible treatment of their own IPs, but the terrible treatment of their playerbase and their workers had been well entrenched before that. Also doesn't help the biggest rivals to Overwatch 2 were Overwatch 1, and Call of Duty. They were basically fighting *themselves* .
Also it seems that Bungie for some reason decided to copy them and make Marathon a disappointment too. So that's nice but that's really more a Bungie Bungle.
Never played a game from them, but I liked their South Park episode. I remember the "Do you not have phones?" comment and that was stuck in the game community for a long time.
@@RomanticPhantom0 I never played WoW but another MMORPG and the comrade from the episode speaks through the whole genre.
What they did to the kid who said free Hong Kong infuriated EVERYONE
Remember in Dark Knight Rises when Bane says something like "Victory has defeated you" to Batman?
That's what happened to Blizzard. Overwhelming success led to overwhelming arrogance. They thought they could do anything they wanted and could treat their customers like idiots and get away with it.
This. They were so arrogant it was inevitable. We were just too young to get
People will say this, but the even funnier reality is that Blizzard has ended up losing the market to newer micro-transaction spamming game companies who do all the things people riot over when Blizz does them.
Ironically, riot is picking up tons of the devs that were the ones causing all these problems at blizzard.
Yeah, the winners of this world usually get complacent. Like I always say, "complacency is an ugly thing".
@@shaso567 Well, “PC gamers” definitely were never the brightest group😂
Yup this is reason #6
A perfect example of why Blizzard is hated is what they did with Wow Plunderstorm that was just released. A Battle Royale game set in the Warcraft Universe no one asked for and they literally tied unique Word of Warcraft rewards to this game. Terrible.
If you had to pick only one reason why Blizzard sucks, it would be Activision and Bobby Kotick
This is one of the most consistent channels on UA-cam by far. Really love what you do here and always find myself saying this when I find myself on this channel.
Corporate Greed is one of the greatest evils to of ever existed. This is a classic example of it.
Two of the most beloved brand names in gaming that have been warped and reprogrammed into a giant sociopath corporate monster.
I will stick with the ice cream treat. Even when upside down, no mess.
So thick.
Yea my dad got laid off - He was in the XBOX department, and also the “Microsoft” on the HDMI Forum. Unfortunate..
The story of its never enough. Create great products and make huge profits. Eventually its not enough. So you cut here and there. It works fine at first. Then you cut some more. Still working. Then you cut some more and cross that line when products start to suffer. But the fans of the past stick around. Cut some more and those fans start to get mad. Cut some more and you start to bleed. Then you have to get creative to charge more from fewer and it's still working in the books but in reality the ships taking water and is in trouble.
Very well put.
The existence of Overwatch 2 is another reason for hate.
Oh boy here we go
I believe the "Cosby Suite" was in reference to the carpet of the hotel room, which looked like Cosby's sweaters. I don't think Cosby was widely known as a sexual predator at that time. But yeah, Blizzard is terrible.
Not related...but could you do a video on Joann Fabrics? They recently filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy. I don't closely follow how companies are doing, but it took me by surprise.
I love your videos by the way!
When people were expecting Diablo 4, they announced Diablo Immortal. When Diablo 4 finally came out, it was total garbage. 😂😂😂😂😂
I was there for the Diablo Immortal "situation" and let me tell you, the whole convention was talking about a Diablo mobile game being a bad idea
Except that it did make money.
@@chriskay1449 there are worse ideas that make lots of money. That means literally nothing.
Add me to the group of long time gamers who always liked Blizzard games and it actually got me to jump from MMOs to a first person shooter for the first time with Overwatch. I was an instant die-hard fan of the series and still play quite frequently. But being heavily involved and interested in Overwatch news for approaching a decade I've seen a lot of of this video unfold. It is clear as day that Bobby Kotick basically is 1-5 on your list. It is crazy he was able to stay in role for so long and that some other company could pick him up as CEO one day. I am happy the company landed at Microsoft though and while there was another round of layoffs i do have to imagine Activision Blizzard is not an efficient company and there was likely a lot of extra headcount. I take those headlines with a grain of salt because it is a business and as someone who works in retail we see it all the time. The rest of it though is so disappointing. I do think Microsoft will shut that behavior down though.
Hey, I think you should make a video on Standard Oil and how it's related to modern oil companies.
Just today, same day as this video dropped, they announced a new Overwatch character and that all characters will be free going forward and a not small amount of people immediately speculated that they have a controversy about to come out. It’s happened so many times that now when Blizzard has good news people think they’re trying to shine light away from a new controversy instead of just being happy
I miss Blizzard Entertainment ❄️
I loathe Deactivison-bLizard 🦎
I hate Blizzard because i don't have a cell phone! I don't need someone going around saying ain't you guys got phones?
shoutout to the story from that one episode of the Super Best Friendcast. "I have faith in three B's: Bethesda, Bioware, and Blizzard."
One more B to add there: BIG OOF.
Thank Ao for Larian
WoW has always been cringey to me.
This is Deckard Cain approved!
As someone who still plays overwatch, this hurt. Love your content I been binging your videos since I came across your channel.
Worked there from 2013 - end 2018.
#5 is all true and if you worked there you witnessed so many "WoW!" *this 💩 really happened* moments.
it was crazy because that was the "DREAM". But you had to sacrifice so much to just work there. underpaid, overworked, pretty much salary capped unless you got a good manager, which was super rare or made friends with the "right" people.
This place was so toxic, during a fully internal company only beta, one employee got banned because they went full twitch chat mode during a play session. But that person knew people, so that lasted all of two days.
Don't understand how people still "dream" to work there, it's a job like everywhere else and you'll be underpaid for it. We called it the Blizzard tax.
It's no mystery what happened to Blizzard. Early on the company was a bunch of nerds who loved to make games. Then, after all of the corporate mergers, those talented nerds were pushed out and replaced with corporate hacks.
The guys calling the shots at Blizzard aren't gamers anymore. The company's purpose stopped being "create good games" and transitioned to monetization. As a result the product suffered.
You do know that a good number of those "talented nerds" were sex pests right?
Blizzard used to be my absolute dream company to work for but these days I just see them as another company that thought they were invincible and it came back to bite them.
I played Hearthstone from Open Beta until August 2022. I honestly spent way too much money on that game than I should have. I loved it, but the ever increasing greed and trying to ring out more money from players along with the deeply unbalanced state of the game killed it for me little by little. Now it’s dead to me and I doubt I will ever go back.
Notice how when a certain type of person with a certain type of early life tab on Wikipedia, was hired as ceo, he ruined an entire catalog of masterpieces.
That Early Life section always explains so much
I’m such a mega fan of old Blizzard. I think the fall from such heights is what really hurts. “You were the chosen one” 😢 doesn’t begin to cover the sense of loss and betrayal.
Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier has an entire book coming out about the story of Blizzard this year, and it will be covering all these ups and brutal downs in depth.
@@SimuLord Thank God Jason Schreier has left the geek culture mill.
This makes me feel so old. I saw the thumbnail and title, and I thought: oh wow company man is changing their direction, he’s reviewing the history of weather? So I clicked to learn wtf Blizzard is.
I have a hard time taking gamers who "hate" video game companies seriously. Gamers are the only group of people who will loudly complain about how unfair the pricing is, and how they're not making the games they want ... Then buy them anyway. If you don't like the game or the price is too high, don't buy it. Nothing will change if you keep giving them money.
They will bitch and complain for months talking about how this company lost its soul . They have lost faith this company can make any good games. But as soon as the next game is announced all is forgotten and they go back to deepthroating them. Bethesda and Bioware fanboys are notorius for this.
they have lived long enough to see themselves morph into EA . Its a damn shame
🤓 Um...actually, it's Activision-Blizzard.
🤓 Um...actually, it's Activision-Blizzard-King.
🤓um actually, it's xbox-activison-blizzard-king
Why
Dude, that's cold.
@@derekbootle8316 "This guy stinks!"
Hey, Company Man. Can you please do a video on the decline of Hanna-Barbera? The animation studio was known for their best cartoons such as Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, The Jetsons, Quick Draw McGraw, Johnny Quest, Magilla Gorilla, etc. Not to mention, they were known for their wacky sound effects we heard throughout pop culture today. I want to know how did they started and what led to their downfall.
They're hated because we were promised dance studios way back in Wrath and still no one can teach my Draenei how to get down like a Blood Elf.
I still hate them less than EA.
but its a "hold my beer" fest
@@cmdraftbrn No, they spilt the beer and are hitting each other with the tankard trying to prove who is 'better' at this game
That's exactly the case. I can't speak for every WoW fan, but if the next expansion isn't amazing, I think it's time I moved on (been playing since 2007, but taking longer and longer breaks from it).
Mobile games are MEANT TO BE CHEAP 10 min games
PC is meant for hours to play
Simple as that
It's still so wild to me a video named this exists... What a sad bizarro world we've found ourselves in.
I was a former female employee who worked there during 2015. I can confirm the inappropriate environment. I made the mistake of reporting it to HR after which the harassment ramped up and got worse. I even attempted to bring a lawsuit and was told nobody wanted to fight AB's lawyers. Only when the state of CA who was big enough to take on AB came into the picture did anything happen but for women like me it was too little too late.
Do you think you could do a video about Boscovs? With the decline in retail, they seem to be a company that's doing pretty good and somewhat growing.
Can't forget everything they did to Heroes of The Storm. My hatred for Blizzard really took off from how badly they screwed over all pro and causal players.
It was starting in the vivendi era, but really came to light with the activision blizzard for me. That is to say, how development was handled. You kind of missed that part. Blizzard used to run a very loose release schedule. The "it'll release when it is done, and not before" mantra was real. This caused headaches by their owners though as the sales made it up or mostly made it up. But the development times and the bleed on cash was an uncontrollable variable. Post activision, that stopped and now you see them pushing a scheduled release instead of letting it float.
Also, two of the big IPs you mentioned (warcraft and diablo) all turned heads at the time. For warcraft, it was the second ip released as an rts. A very new genre that was founded when westwood released dune 2 followed afterwards with command and conquer. For diablo, it created the actionrpg genre. And it wasn't just the simple click hack and slash of it either, but the fact the game had infinite replayability as the entire dungeon was randomly generated. That well established character, the butcher was just as randomized. You could in fact have a dungeon run where he didn't show up. Most often did, but it wasn't guaranteed.
I have been to three BLIZCONS (I was there when Immortal was announced). We still play. We see the changes that have been put in place since Activision as not caring about the player base or our time. There have been many changes in the last year or so that have shown they are listening to the needs of their players. We are hopeful that things will continue in that direction.
Sad blizzard has joined the ranks of EA. Blizzard had a huge IP list of great games with WoW being there #1 game of all time. But I think everyone knew when activision took over that things were taking a turn in the wrong direction.
Now like every other big game company, profits have taken over and they will produce crap games till eventually MS de-solves the company name and just takes their IPs.
This is why I support non-AAA game developers. They produce amazing games without a massive team or billions of dollars that do extremely well so they can make other games. Which I honestly think is where the game industry is heading back to their roots. Small team equals a great game, where large teams equal junk games now.
The last Blizzard game I played with any regularity was Hearthstone and I stopped after Blitzchung. I have no intention of buying a game from Blizzard again.
you know, i was upset about Immortal upon first hearing about it from that presentation, but it’s a surprisingly good mobile game tbh. i’ve spent $0 on IAPs, as well.
Exactly. The elitst PC gamers gtot outraged, yet it wasn't trageted at them. Blizzard wwas targeting a while new audices and did so succesfully. The "backlash" was only becuase the elitist PC gamers did get what they convinced themselves they ere getting. The only mistake that Blizzard made was announcing it at BlizzCon. Do that any other time and those players don't care.
How the mighty have fallen. I had an instructor who said working at Blizzard would be a dream for all of us. After the news in 2021 broke he would no longer talk about the company anymore.
You forgot to put the legendary quote “is this an out of season april fools joke?”
Very topical as I have a few friends who are currently playing through the Diablo 2 remaster. They didn't buy the remaster, but they are playing through it. I 100% understand and support them.
Used to play HS religiously until the Blitzchung incident and the costs getting prohibitive. Tried D4… ugh!!!
Honestly, Blitzchung incident is a shitty situation they were put in. It's important for game companies to stay neutral for most part but now you have someone who used your platform to promote their narrative, something that is clearly against any gaming policy.
If Blizzard chose not to do something about it, there would be more bandwagoners who would do just the same while other players would just want to enjoy their games in peace.
Damned if you do damned if you don't, literally.
The Chinese market is the reason we have Diablo Immortal.
Blitzchung incident is good because now we knew where Blizzards interest were.
How about the bait and switch for Overwatch 2, sold as a massive PvE game only to have all that content cut AFTER it was sold.
Glad you put #2 where it was and not stringing us along. Great video.
Company Man is da 💣 💣💣💣💣
When they announced that Overwatch 2 was canceling its plans for a story campaign, despite showing us trailers for it 2 years prior in their marketing, made me lose faith in the franchise.
I hate Blizzard because they allowed my World of Warcraft account to get hacked. I never gave anyone my password. Someone hacked it and deleted all of my characters with hundreds of hours of gameplay. All gone for no reason. They did nothing to stop it or bring my characters back. Blizzard is the only company that's allowed my account to be hacked, ever. I never played WOW ever since.
lol
I grew up....feel bad for the layoffs however no different than every other similar companies.
Great video.
It's worth noting that in the Blitzchung incident, all players had to sign a document where they agree to not use their time on the stage to share political/religious opinions. Handwaving a signed document due to personal biases is a slippery slope and there really wasn't any good way out of that sticky situation. I believe there's a blog post where they explain this on the official site.
Are you gonna credit big boss for a lot of this information in this video?
I came across that video while making it but didn't watch it to be sure I wasn't copying it in anyway. But from your comment, I'm guessing my video turned out pretty similar anyway?