I’m curious how much of these crunch related illnesses are exacerbated by it being computer work… my grandfather was a pipeline welder and according to his former coworkers, my grandfather would work 12-14 hours nearly every day. But his work is naturally physically active, outdoors with no time on computers at all. My grandmother has never heard of my grandfather having had any mental attacks of any kind from overwork. When you hear about people dying from overwork… you usually find out they were office workers of some kind.
Bobby's corruption might already be too wide spreaded inside Activision-Blizzard's leadership, so removing the prime evil alone might not be enough to cure Blizzard. I suspect that what Blizzard needs right now is a complete overhaul in the leadership department, because the current leaders seem to focus too much on the raw numbers.
Activision will have the best solution to this problem and it’ll be Diablo immortal levels of mtx at launch 😂😂😂 and don’t give me they said it’s only cosmetic and no power because immortal devs said the same shit and got caught lying
I had zero expectations for D4 prior to that Preach's Blizzard episode, but after watching that I regained a little bit of hope for Blizzard and D4. But now it went straight back to zero. I don't feel comfortable paying 80€ for any game, let alone for a game of which development required heavy employee mistreatment. Employees: "Can we get better working conditions, pretty please." Blizzard: "FU, make me money, you peasant. You should feel privileged working for us." Me: "I know my way out--> "
It's sad how often the options facing these companies is either "crunch them to death to release a minimum viable product" or "punt a broken product and hope we can Cyberpunk it." Remember when the Blizzard motto was "we'll release it when it's ready?" Funny how the death of that philosophy has coincided with the quality of their games. But hey, their bottom line has been fine, so who cares?
23:26 There are different types of stock vesting but in short if the stock isn't vested they don't have it at all. Two types of vesting stock are ESOs (employee stock options) and RSUs (restricted stock units). Vested RSUs are simply gained by the employee once certain conditions are met, vested ESOs give the employee the right to buy the stocks at a specific price. Idk what Acti-Blizz uses.
I can actually confirm that take on crunch. I offered to cover extra shifts for people so they could do Thanksgiving with their families, and one long week was fine. But then the rest of my department got COVID and I ended up having to cover every shift, including missing my weekend, until they could come back. That second week was brutal, even though there really wasn't that much that changed from the previous week. I just hit that crunch wall hard
If you had a functioning brain you would know that being crunched and burned out in the creative field makes your end product much, much worse, so you would care a lot about it. Honestly, you should care because it's morally right to want better living conditions for people, specially the ones who create the stuff you want to pay for. Also because if they don't get good living conditions, they may not be around to make more of the stuff you want, and if they do, as I said, the end product is worse for it. Much worse.
@@evilphygm7514 I don't care. Some games with crunch turn out well, some don't. And some games without crunch turn out bad anyway. All I care about is the end user product that I'm paying money for. If more or less crunch helps that then whatever, as long as the product is good. You are the one without a brain here because I'm not advocating for more crunch. What I'm saying is that what happens behind the scenes is irrelevant. As for the moral good of it, let me ask you, do you support Chinese goods? Do you have an iphone that was built with literal child slave labour? How about the reports of the workers who make transistors in Taiwan which is in the silicon of your favorite electronics? Do they not matter? Of course they don't. Get off your high horse or practice what you preach and get offline because some part of your device that you're posting on was built with blood and sweat from those less fortunate.
In every other business it's just called overtime. I don't know why it's so different in gaming. There's factories where I work that are running 12 hour days 6-7; days a week and it's just overtime
So it's a game that's built on other people's misery, overpriced that the developers also think will fail. Blizzard really doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
No no no no, the Seasoned Journey together with the Battle Pass does make perfect. It's more ✨ENGAGEMENT✨ and more opportunities hook people and form habits and then greedily reach deeper into the payers' wallets with even more Premium Bttle Pass. Give that Seasoned Journey a premium option, call it the Veteran's Path, lable it as DLC and say that it provides "more content" aka another checklist or maybe the same checklist but with higher numbers, and then slap the regular old Battle Pass on top with its own premium version. And BOOM, record revenue for the game for a month or two. It makes perfect sense, just not for us or the employees.
In retrospect, maybe Danuser writing about the broken machinery of death wasn't an attempt at making a compelling story, but was in fact a cry for help, and an analogy for the working conditions at Blizzard.
D3 has a secret development hell level. Clearly whomever included that level felt that working on d3 was miserable despite what some of the leads are saying.
You're wrong about Anthem. Management (and the director) sat on their asses for YEARS before being forced to make SOMETHING. Devs didn't know the game was releasing at all until the announcement.
@@RurikhanUnleashed You went pretty much skin deep in the video, that's all. I could've gone a bit more in depth and said a lot more about all the wrong they did, which was a lot. Like the whole trailer for Anthem being all fake, and they made it on the spot because they had basically no game. Even the flying was fake since they removed it earlier in development. They only had the base javelin model, from what I recall. I should've just said you were being too cursory? instead.
Diversity and Inclusion should not be necessary for a video game, just give me a good game. I dont care if you cant sympathise/connect with the game because it doesnt have enough people with Y Gender and/or Z skin tone, ur the problem here Edit: Grammar
They revealed the release date at the Game Awards because it leaked and they decided to get out in front of it. I'm a bit in the middle on the whole thing. On one hand, they lost nearly their entire team over the last 3 years and they're largely staffed with less experienced people. They have been miss-managed and poorly directed for quite a while. This gives me a lack of confidence in the game over all. However, when it comes to crunch, I don't have sympathy. Deadlines are the solid reality in the industry. Busting your ass in the final stretch is to be expected and it's part of the job. I work in an industry where we can go from 40 hours a week through most of the year to 70 hours a week in October - January every single year. We know it's part of the job. We signed up for it. These people picked Blizzard. How many of the complaining employees are like the Starbuck's Barista crying on tiktok because they had to work 7 hours a day? It's potential controversy and thanks to people like Jason Schreier making a name for himself with stories like Anthem and Bioware crunch, it's a super easy and convenient way for "journalists" to make financial gain and notoriety by querying low quality employees on what makes them unhappy. I have a friend in my FF14 FC that works for Blizzard doing QA who absolutely loves the $25 door dash. He works from home and it just means that he doesn't have to cook. It's actually not an unpopular benefit given that most of them are remote. It's a reality of softdev and if they can't handle it once a year to every other year, they're in the wrong industry.
Their hq is in California and the cost just living there is way beyond most places in the United States so they are driven by money but not because of greed it is just to get by home food and other needs to get by.
Ruri's office building arc is the best arc.
I’m curious how much of these crunch related illnesses are exacerbated by it being computer work… my grandfather was a pipeline welder and according to his former coworkers, my grandfather would work 12-14 hours nearly every day. But his work is naturally physically active, outdoors with no time on computers at all. My grandmother has never heard of my grandfather having had any mental attacks of any kind from overwork. When you hear about people dying from overwork… you usually find out they were office workers of some kind.
As long as Bobby Kotick remains in the same territory as Blizzard, Blizzard will never truly have a redemption arc, nor a proper comeback.
Bobby's corruption might already be too wide spreaded inside Activision-Blizzard's leadership, so removing the prime evil alone might not be enough to cure Blizzard.
I suspect that what Blizzard needs right now is a complete overhaul in the leadership department, because the current leaders seem to focus too much on the raw numbers.
Activision will have the best solution to this problem and it’ll be Diablo immortal levels of mtx at launch 😂😂😂 and don’t give me they said it’s only cosmetic and no power because immortal devs said the same shit and got caught lying
no way! impossible! Preach saw very happy team when he visited Blizzard................
"Now that those who complain the most left, our survey shows that the work conditions are better then ever"
I had zero expectations for D4 prior to that Preach's Blizzard episode, but after watching that I regained a little bit of hope for Blizzard and D4.
But now it went straight back to zero. I don't feel comfortable paying 80€ for any game, let alone for a game of which development required heavy employee mistreatment.
Employees: "Can we get better working conditions, pretty please."
Blizzard: "FU, make me money, you peasant. You should feel privileged working for us."
Me: "I know my way out--> "
Anthem killed me, I wanted that game to be great. I loved the idea of mixing an mmo with gundam style characters.
Iron man online, that had an immense potential, they royally fucked that up, it's still unbelievable
It's sad how often the options facing these companies is either "crunch them to death to release a minimum viable product" or "punt a broken product and hope we can Cyberpunk it."
Remember when the Blizzard motto was "we'll release it when it's ready?" Funny how the death of that philosophy has coincided with the quality of their games. But hey, their bottom line has been fine, so who cares?
23:26 There are different types of stock vesting but in short if the stock isn't vested they don't have it at all.
Two types of vesting stock are ESOs (employee stock options) and RSUs (restricted stock units). Vested RSUs are simply gained by the employee once certain conditions are met, vested ESOs give the employee the right to buy the stocks at a specific price. Idk what Acti-Blizz uses.
but i thought blizzard changed because dragonflight had a decent one week
I can actually confirm that take on crunch. I offered to cover extra shifts for people so they could do Thanksgiving with their families, and one long week was fine. But then the rest of my department got COVID and I ended up having to cover every shift, including missing my weekend, until they could come back. That second week was brutal, even though there really wasn't that much that changed from the previous week. I just hit that crunch wall hard
Mise well not buy anything then. "Crunch" is in every profession. Factory work, Hospitals, etc...
I honestly don't care at all about whether or not the employees are in crunch or not. I just care about the end product that I'm paying for.
If you had a functioning brain you would know that being crunched and burned out in the creative field makes your end product much, much worse, so you would care a lot about it. Honestly, you should care because it's morally right to want better living conditions for people, specially the ones who create the stuff you want to pay for. Also because if they don't get good living conditions, they may not be around to make more of the stuff you want, and if they do, as I said, the end product is worse for it. Much worse.
@@evilphygm7514 I don't care. Some games with crunch turn out well, some don't. And some games without crunch turn out bad anyway. All I care about is the end user product that I'm paying money for. If more or less crunch helps that then whatever, as long as the product is good. You are the one without a brain here because I'm not advocating for more crunch. What I'm saying is that what happens behind the scenes is irrelevant.
As for the moral good of it, let me ask you, do you support Chinese goods? Do you have an iphone that was built with literal child slave labour? How about the reports of the workers who make transistors in Taiwan which is in the silicon of your favorite electronics? Do they not matter? Of course they don't. Get off your high horse or practice what you preach and get offline because some part of your device that you're posting on was built with blood and sweat from those less fortunate.
In every other business it's just called overtime. I don't know why it's so different in gaming.
There's factories where I work that are running 12 hour days 6-7; days a week and it's just overtime
So it's a game that's built on other people's misery, overpriced that the developers also think will fail. Blizzard really doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Dude leave Anthem alone! Stop it! Its dead! Every time i forget about it, you talk about it, then i get sad, i miss the game so much... 😅
Yeah I remember that video it was like Michael Myers looking right into your soul all that was missing was the Halloween music
No no no no, the Seasoned Journey together with the Battle Pass does make perfect. It's more ✨ENGAGEMENT✨ and more opportunities hook people and form habits and then greedily reach deeper into the payers' wallets with even more Premium Bttle Pass. Give that Seasoned Journey a premium option, call it the Veteran's Path, lable it as DLC and say that it provides "more content" aka another checklist or maybe the same checklist but with higher numbers, and then slap the regular old Battle Pass on top with its own premium version. And BOOM, record revenue for the game for a month or two.
It makes perfect sense, just not for us or the employees.
In retrospect, maybe Danuser writing about the broken machinery of death wasn't an attempt at making a compelling story, but was in fact a cry for help, and an analogy for the working conditions at Blizzard.
Those intro is what gets me lol. Keep them up
D3 has a secret development hell level. Clearly whomever included that level felt that working on d3 was miserable despite what some of the leads are saying.
what's even worse is that the game shapes up to be 🐴💩
where is the lgbt skins?
Wait until you see the female Barbarian up close.
......Classic, activision-Blizzard.🤑
You're wrong about Anthem. Management (and the director) sat on their asses for YEARS before being forced to make SOMETHING. Devs didn't know the game was releasing at all until the announcement.
How am I wrong? That’s pretty much what I said…
@@RurikhanUnleashed You went pretty much skin deep in the video, that's all. I could've gone a bit more in depth and said a lot more about all the wrong they did, which was a lot.
Like the whole trailer for Anthem being all fake, and they made it on the spot because they had basically no game. Even the flying was fake since they removed it earlier in development. They only had the base javelin model, from what I recall.
I should've just said you were being too cursory? instead.
Anthem coming out how it was still hurts. Got every achievement. Hurts to even talk about it
Diversity and Inclusion should not be necessary for a video game, just give me a good game. I dont care if you cant sympathise/connect with the game because it doesnt have enough people with Y Gender and/or Z skin tone, ur the problem here
Edit: Grammar
They revealed the release date at the Game Awards because it leaked and they decided to get out in front of it. I'm a bit in the middle on the whole thing. On one hand, they lost nearly their entire team over the last 3 years and they're largely staffed with less experienced people. They have been miss-managed and poorly directed for quite a while. This gives me a lack of confidence in the game over all.
However, when it comes to crunch, I don't have sympathy. Deadlines are the solid reality in the industry. Busting your ass in the final stretch is to be expected and it's part of the job. I work in an industry where we can go from 40 hours a week through most of the year to 70 hours a week in October - January every single year. We know it's part of the job. We signed up for it. These people picked Blizzard. How many of the complaining employees are like the Starbuck's Barista crying on tiktok because they had to work 7 hours a day?
It's potential controversy and thanks to people like Jason Schreier making a name for himself with stories like Anthem and Bioware crunch, it's a super easy and convenient way for "journalists" to make financial gain and notoriety by querying low quality employees on what makes them unhappy.
I have a friend in my FF14 FC that works for Blizzard doing QA who absolutely loves the $25 door dash. He works from home and it just means that he doesn't have to cook. It's actually not an unpopular benefit given that most of them are remote.
It's a reality of softdev and if they can't handle it once a year to every other year, they're in the wrong industry.
Their hq is in California and the cost just living there is way beyond most places in the United States so they are driven by money but not because of greed it is just to get by home food and other needs to get by.
And to make sure I am not mistaken for defending the bad leadership I am speaking about those devs that work ungodly hours under a deadline
I live in California. So shut up with your "insight." Its greed.