I adored Blizzard's output for ~20 years - I have every collectors edition they released from Warcraft III to Overwatch - but I'm basically done. The scandals, the shitty monetization, and the half-baked products all point to a radically different culture and company than the one that released Starcraft in 1998. No king reigns forever.
Guild Wars is the only game made by an "ex-Blizzard" staffed studio that I feel has had any significant amount of success. Just goes to show how much these things are collaborative efforts that rely on a particular environment to come together.
Not quite the same as an entirely ex-Blizzard staffed group of people, but Riot Games and League of Legends as well. Tom Cadwell[0] was there from the very beginning of League's life and has had considerable influence over the development and growth of the game. Before that, he was on Warcraft 3's development team and supposedly (supposedly because I can't remember despite being on the War3 forums, and can't find evidence of it) had a hand in developing its fairly successful esports scene. And before that, he was actually one of the first Starcraft pro gamers in the late 90's, just before the explosion of esports in South Korea.
He's kind of a one-man army, but his influence definitely has shaped the more popular games and industry landscape today.
GW was very much a result of the founders attempting to recreate all the good things (at least in their opinion) about Blizzard's work environment without carrying over the bad things. They put a lot of thought into things like code ownership policies, schedules and even office floor plans.
I still feel disappointed about GW2. GW1 had the most ambitious and innovative and interesting class build system we'd seen 'til then and arguably ever since. It was crazy what was possible. Also still the best structured PvP we've ever gotten in an MMO.
You aren't kidding. I loved GW1 and theory-crafting new builds. I had a tremendous time doing competitive Guild-vs-Guild at a high rank, random arenas, and Heroes Ascent. I remember grinding an obscene amount for prestige titles, and I found the rarest item in the game which I still remember selling for 900 ectos (it was the only sword with a different damage type, useful for min-maxing against an opposing monk, and the only place it could drop in the game with perfect stats was as a reward in Heroes Ascent).
GW2 was easily my personal biggest let-down in gaming of all time. They eliminated GW1's namesake PVP mode and the entirety of its super-deep build and combat system.
I think their main goal in GW2 was to build a "true" MMO instead of GW1's instanced gameplay. I think GW1's build system just wouldn't work very well with that design. It would be difficult to balance world content for groups ranging from 1 to 8 people - many GW1 classes would also have a hard time soloing without picking very specific secondary classes and builds.
So I can see why they went down the route they did. I agree it's a bit of a shame though. Would kill for a GW1 re-release with some updated graphics and QoL improvements.
It feels like another MMO following the WoW bandwagon. GW1 was so unique and I feel fills a niche that would still be relevant today if it had active support with new expansions and regular updates.
Maybe it made sense for them in order to reach a bigger audience and maybe it paid off for them. I just wish they hadn't gone the "true MMO" route.
That chart must be from before 2011 because the wikipedia entry for Flagship Studios (the single largest receiver of Blizzard talent in the chart) says it went belly up in 2008.
Holly "Windstalker" Lonsdale is Vice President and Executive Producer of World of Warcraft now.
That woman knows how to milk it.
She oversaw Everquest 1 and 2. Expansion prices of 150€ were common.
WoW just isn't quite there yet, but it will be eventually.
I'm not a WoW fan. I blame it for many things, but I'm bored and saw Dragonflight being in Pre-order advertising and checked out the prices. 50€ bare minimum. No thanks.
I'm no longer playing that game, I moved back to piracy.
Paying a subscription fee to play a game who's main design is to keep you playing so you spend more money in the in game shop is not my kind of entertainment.
Is there really a problem with lack of competition in video games? There may not be a ton of companies able to pull off the highest budgets, but there seems to be a lot of companies making good games and successful independent projects
I'm not sure i 100% grok the OW2 backlash we're seeing at the moment. It's a f2p game and has a middling reward model for the battle pass. That's pitch fork worthy now?
One thing notable about the way Blizzard has been operating lately is that they remove the existing thing when updating the old thing. I've heard you automatically get "upgraded" to Warcraft III reforged if you have it installed and are logged into Battle.net. I hear Overwatch 1 is similarly wiped out and no longer playable.
The thing that's weird is, I don't think this is normal at all. On Nintendo's end, you can still play Splatoon 2 just fine even though Splatoon 3 came out, even on multiplayer. Multiplayer games often have a long life after they're superceded, even if it's a smaller contingent. If you boot up Quake 3 Arena or Unreal Tournament 2004, you can see there are still players online pretty much always, even if it's a small contingent.
The only good reason I can think of for utterly axing old games is so that you don't have to compete with them. Why buy Reforged for $40 when you could get the original better Warcraft III on GoG? (You can't, of course; you can only get Warcraft I and II on GoG, at least now.) In case of Overwatch, they WOULD have to continue to run the servers. But surely, the majority of players would switch to the new game anyway, right?
My opinion should be taken as a grain of salt because Warcraft III is one of the last games I really liked that much from Blizzard, to be honest. But still, something stinks over at Activision Blizzard, and it's somehow not just Bobby Kotick.
WCIII TFT is quite easily blizzard's greatest game simply because of the world editor.
I have played a bit of WoW, SCII, and Overwatch, and nothing will come close to finding a new custom game Sunday morning at 2 am and having fun with a random lobby.
The "melee" (standard mode) matches were great too.
I have played a lot of games and genres and nothing will ever top that experience for me.
I know this sounds trite, but you should give OW2 another go with a group of regular friends. You can setup custom games with super goofy rules or use some of the excellent existing custom game codes, and not even touch the competitive aspect of the game.
Almost every single game with a group of regular friends will eventually become fun, and if he wishes to do the things you just mentioned he could do it in most source engine games with a lot more freedom.
Agreed. I mini boycotted Blizzard since 2012 because of starcraft stuff, and I fully cutoff blizzard from my spending in 2018. I didn't even try reforged, and I played both custom and standard games in WCIII religiously. I was good at both dota and 1v1 (semi pro in the latter).
This was a such a bizarre move for Warcraft III - a game that was 18 years old when Reforged came out. I kind of get OW2 more: it's basically a F2P patch, like what happened with TF2 or Evolve. If they had just said OW is going F2P it's what I would have expected - the weirdest part is calling it a sequel at all.
But Warcraft III feels like it's from a completely different era, so it's kind of shocking that they replaced it with Reforged. It's like if Valve patched CounterStrike 1.6 so that it's just CS: GO with shittier graphics.
I think there is a reasonable explanation for removing OW1. Queue times were already a huge problem (which is a large reason why they moved to one tank, as nobody wanted to play tank). Keeping around OW1 would have fragmented the player base and would have hurt the OW2 launch.
That said, there are plenty of more cynical reasons why Blizzard removed OW1 which are likely also true…
I have no sources on hand and no desire to find any, but I think that OW2 was a partial refactor of OW1, if that makes sense. They'd always planned to sunset OW1 for the release of 2.
Ages ago, there was a large update to OW1, which I believe had something to do with 'readiness' for OW2 in the form of major engine changes, etc. Nothing was really new after that patch, but it was massive, and may have actually been a full reinstall. Memory is flaky there, and I don't want to look for details while at work.
I'd bet $1 that the megapatch (and patches since) would have been designed with OW2 in mind, since OW2 took a long time in the oven. Extrapolating a bit, I think of it as running the OW2 engine in OW1 compatibility mode, or something.
To be super pedantic, you bought a license for the software. That is just the truth us consumers have to deal with, and you can support DRM-free purchases like via GOG to help turn the tide.
Also existing owners of OW1 were given additional stuff for OW2. Of course, I (as an owner myself) don't think it was a good compensation and hate Blizzard for removing the old game. But there is enough justification that your original price has been repaid in content.
Sure, that's their motives of course - to move people to a newer game and not have any distractions like lingering old stuff.
If you only played for free then it may sting but you have no right to compensation, only to annoyed venting.
But people are saying they paid $60 for it. They have a right to compensation. Moreover, it feels like this should not only be handled by individual damages related to the value of the product but also a fine or punitive damages related to what they thought they would gain from the scheme.
I mean, that's the SaaS model, and I suppose it does make sense for multiplayer games which require ongoing maintenance, but I agree, it's not what I'm looking for for my gaming.
It certainly isn't unprecedented, which is probably the worst part of the whole thing. That said, I think that it is at least a partial component of the OW2 backlash, so it's hard to ignore here :(
I think most people expected more and instead got less is the gist of the situation. I'm pretty surprised they released a game with less features, the same maps, and didn't deliver on many of the promises.
I played a final 40 hours of OW1 just before OW2 came out then played 40 hours of OW2. 5v5 in its current state has problematic balancing issues, but I will set those aside with the assumption that they'll eventually be fixed. I will also set aside the total destruction of the metagame as that is their business department's plan.
The real scandal with OW2 is that they removed all performance feedback. No more being on fire, no more end-game cards where you could give kudos to a player on either team. In its place is nothing and there is no business justification for it. Defeats are crushing, victories are hollow. No levels or loot boxes. I can't ask my friends to come back and play because it's just bad. I'm just not going to play anymore.
The original Overwatch would release new heroes for free, and cosmetics for that hero would be available for random drops/purchase just like any other cosmetic item.
In OW2, the new heroes are on tier 55 of the battlepass, if you're a free-to-play user. If you buy the pass, you unlock the hero for play instantly. As far as I know, there is no word on hero availability for those who do neither, for when the pass duration runs out.
Having played the first game, the monetization model of the second feels like a slap in the face. They've added new categories of worthless junk cosmetics to pad things out. It feels like they looked at other battlepass models, and threw a bunch of random shit together to pad it out.
But hey, if you don't want to grind too much, you can always buy the Battlepass +20 package, and knock out the first 20 tiers instantly!
It's very likely that they just include the new heroes in the existing new hero grind. If you get just OW2 (without having owned OW1), you have to go through around 100 games to unlock the entire roster.
OW1 monetization was wildly better. While you could buy lootboxes, yes, the game was extremely generous in giving you free lootboxes, and you could easily earn a half dozen in an afternoon of play. That, and all content could be unlocked as a "free" player by merely playing the game which you purchased once.
In contrast you'd need to spend the full purchase price of OW1 several times over just to buy the skins that aren't even available in the battlepass.
Everyone I knew that actually played OW1 enjoyed blizzard's implementation of lootboxes, and afaict everyone dislikes the new monetization.
Someone who didn't pay for OW1 might have no ground to complain, but in my case I paid for OW1 which now doesn't exist and I am left with OW2 which locks away any kind of progression unless I pay.
It's a bait and switch and the community is rightfully angry. If they wanted to make a f2p OW they could've released OW2 as a standalone, except they knew no one would have migrated so instead they killed the old one.
No they don't. They aren't even shutting down the free to play CoD: Warzone 1 when 2.0 releases. I can still play CoD games I bought on PS3, online. But somehow OW1 had to go.
I quit OW when role queue was introduced. It felt like Blizzard was forcing a certain "meta", and while it might have been necessary for high-level play it seemed awfully restrictive at n00b level I played at. It didn't help that Mercy, who I played a lot, was balanced to be "not fun" around the same time.
For me OW2 commits the same major sin that Warcraft 3 Reforged did. Replacing its predecessor with no option to play the older game as it was. I understand not wanting to split the community, but if someone doesn't like OW2's 5v5, or monetization, or whatever, their only option is to quit.
Also, given that OW2 made every cosmetic more expensive to acquire, it's only natural that people would draw comparisons and get mad.
(sorry for the rant, but it's really all I can do at this point, and I really like[d? :( ] OW)
in the time since OW released, it has been on a long timescale average my most-played game.
There are some other good points in sibling comments, so I won't address those. The biggest problems I have are(in order):
1) It seems like they have moved from a Skill Based Match Making algorithm to an Engagement Optimized Matchmaker, or at least tipped the balance much farther away from skill based match-ups, and it really shows. Way too many games are a complete route one way or the other, and even in Competitive mode games are now often very uneven, where they used to be fairly balanced, and evidence suggests that they are using a stats based skill adjustment system rather than something like Elo that is based on wins. This would make using a non-skill based matchmaker for "Competitive" possible, and is evidenced by people getting placed in matches that have huge differentials in player rank even in metals ranks during primetime, something that virtually never happened in OW1 as far as I know.
This is really sad, and there is really a lack of awareness about these new systems and how, frankly, predatory the new generation matchmakers are. I've been playing competitive FPS(though often not competitively per se) for half my life and I'm rapidly being driven away from one of my favorite things. It's upsetting. Most people like winning, but when it constant feast or famine it really really really starts to feel like the games you win were just the MM giving you a win, and not earned.
2) They deleted a AAA, critically acclaimed, Game of the year winning game that everyone paid for, and replaced it with a buggy, janky F2P one. They removed a fair amount of content, and have had to disable 10% of the roster in the first 6 weeks because it's so buggy. They did add some content, 3 new heros and a handful of new maps, but it just barely balances out what they removed. And that speaks nothing to all of the other stuff that they removed from the UI, like Group finder. It also launched with some of the worst netcode I've seen in a non-indy game, players would briefly jump around the map before snapping back, extremely distracting in a game that is heavily based on tracking. OW1 never came close to this level of ineptness. Even today they announced a last minute delay to a balance patch that they have been promising for over a month, that was additionally supposed to re-enable a hero that has been part of the game since launch of OW1. Supposedly this is because the changes to a live service style, where they can easily adjust the game from the server side, which were-I guess-going to be a part of OW2, either weren't ready at launch or shipped in an unusable state.
But like, they could have launched OW2 as a F2P beta, and kept OW1 around until they had worked out the kinks, and then announced a sunset for OW1, or something they had already made it clear that OW1 was going to be replaced. Deleting a game that had an active playerbase of people who bought it and replacing it with a shittier, obviously half baked version, was a straight up dick move. Imagine if they did that to StarCraft when SC2 came out.
3) Meanwhile they removed one of the core features that got me to love Overwatch in the first place; it eschewed the "play to unlock" model that I have so learned to loathe as an adult, all heros and new ones were just part of the game. In OW2 new heros will be locked behind a battlepass. I have other problems with the F2P model, like it encouraging cheaters and low-investment players who don't know or care to learn to play a game that has significant depth around the cast of heroes(this is greatly magnified by the new Matchmaking which means that even someone who has >1000 hours will get in matches with them).
And to really rub the salt in the wound, they have been able to keep the new player shop filled with (shockingly expensive to this millennial) content. It absolutely feels like a cash grab at this point, especially considering today's patch delay(the second for this patch). It's also grimly foreshadowing that the hero that is currently disabled was only disabled because of an interaction with the hero that is currently locked behind the battlepass that let the new, locked hero get out of the play area and wreak havoc. Previously they would have handled it in reverse, especially considering the nature of the interaction (the new hero can teleport behind teammates).
The 2nd amendment exists because every human has a right to sacrifice themselves meaningfully to fight tyranny. Guns are a proxy for power, and the 2nd amendment says that citizens have a right to some power. Since citizens have a right to some power, our government cannot get too tyrannical because there would be consequences.
The right to unionize is the right to use the threat of force (collective bargaining) against tyrants (CEOs), exactly like the 2nd amendment is the right to use threat of force (use of guns) against tyrants (people who rule as kings).
Unions are the representation of the idea that employees should be able to exercise meaningful power over their CEOs, in particular to demand better wages and conditions.
Without collective bargaining, why would a CEO ever have to compromise or negotiate except with other CEOs? If multiple companies acted like a cartel, how would employees be able to fight that without collective bargaining?
Why are wages generally proportional to the job, and not proportional to a companies profits?
Just like in software, the structure can be sound, while the implementation is poor. I think a lot of the problems people have with unions are implementation detail problems rather than structural flaws.
Not sure why you are doing mental gymnastics to justify unionizing is a constitution right by conflating it with the 2nd amendment when the 1st amendment already guarantees the freedom of assembly which is widely understood to support unions.
I interpreted it more as them explaining the societal value of unions via equating it with the 2nd amendment, i.e. 'they do these valuable things for us'. Not 'this is why we have that right'
What do you propose should be done when unions themselves acquire enough power and influence to begin to act in a tyrannical manner?
We've seen this happen with public sector unions in various places, for example.
Despite the employees having quite safe and comfortable working conditions, despite them being quite well compensated, and despite them even being able to have some input (via voting) over who their bosses are, it's not uncommon for these sorts of unions to impose varying degrees of disruption just to try to get even more money or benefits out of already over-taxed societies.
These sorts of unions and their members never seem to care much about the negative effects that public transit, public education, and other artificial work disruptions/shutdowns may have on society at large.
Anti monopoly laws apply to corporations, why not apply them to unions as well?
Why does 1 union represent port workers on the entire eastern seaboard? Its a little absurd(USA has some of the least efficient ports in the world too...coincidence?).
> Since citizens have a right to some power, our government cannot get too tyrannical because there would be consequences.
This is such a hilarious idea. Any amount of citizens that unite together armed to inhibit the government's "tyrannical behavior" (read: against white people, the government has already been tyrannical for many decades to an absurd degree without retribution) will find out three facts:
1. We spend almost $2T a year on defense so much so that a small fraction of that defense given to a minor nation was able to completely and totally repel a world power.
2. We spend almost $220B a year on police, a portion of which is spent on cheap outdated parts manufactured with the above money.
3. Every adult american buying an AR-15 comes out to $400B.
Each of these forces is designed with the sole goal of protecting capital and private property.
It's hard to follow though, because the Second Amendment has been held as an individual right (with some dissenting perspectives, of course), while unionization is inherently collective.
Obviously, but these arguments are basically just there to give a semblance of authenticity to the illegal union busting. A lot of rhetoric in these spaces just serve to confuse and enable anti-worker ideologes to feel a sense of legitimacy in denying people maternal leave and decent healthcare
[EDIT] Incidentally, I think there's some interesting cross-over here between Hollywood and video games: it's my understanding that part (though only part) of why modern movies lean so heavily on CGI/VFX is that that's one of the only major parts of movie-making that's not very, very unionized, along with that industry's cousin and the topic of this article, video games. I'd expect that when one of those unionizes, the other won't be far behind.
Is that better or worse than an industry that burns through and discards young talent as standard operating procedure?
I would argue that the product would only improve if it's harder to enter, but someone can have a 30 year career instead of a 5 year crunchfest. Who knows though.
Could you explain what you mean by this? How does demand to be a game developer require the union to put up barriers to entry? And also, how does this compare with the demand to be in hollywood vs the actor's union?
The actor's union is a huge barrier to entry. Any movie that includes a union actor is not allowed to have non-union actors if the budget is over some small amount (like $2MM or something).
The only way to get into the union is to be nominated by someone who is already in. The only way to get seen by those people is to work in adjacent jobs to acting, or get lucky and get on a small film with both union and non-union actors.
Once you're in the union it's great. It's a great example of how to form a union for creative people that mandates minimum pay and working conditions but no maximum, allowing for stars to get huge checks while making sure everyone gets good conditions and living wages.
It's supply and demand. Kids don't grow up wanting to be CRUD app developers, they grow up wanting to be game developers. This means that working conditions are notoriously bad (bad pay, terrible hours). To raise pay they need to constrict supply, to constrict supply they need to put up barriers to entry.
Actors union is a definite barrier to entry: you need to either be a notable independent actor/performer (rare), get a job on a SAG AFTRA because you have a talent that they can't find in union (rare), or show that you've worked in the field (non-union commercials/films) enough to be notable. Then you need to apply, pay $3k, pay ~$200 a year dues, and give up ~1.5% of all your contracts to the union. Then you can't take a non-union job (again restricting the talent pool).
I honestly don't see a ton of difference between the two: both establish choke points and collective bargaining in high demand fields to improve working conditions for the people that are in the union.
Protection of incumbent union members from masses of competitors.
Acting, stage acting, not Hollywood, is actually where I'm most familiar with this through friends. If you want to be an actor, move to NYC, and try to find a role, you get sent to the back of the line at every audition and probably they don't even get to you. There was another way in (this may be outdated now) where you got points towards joining by working for certain employers. That's why some of my friends played characters for an abusive boss at a now defunct space travel theme restaurant - just for points to join the union
There's already a big barrier to entry: low wages and even entry-level roles demanding lots of experience
When I started in the industry I couldn't afford a bed on my salary for about a year, and I only got my "in" by having a lot of experience doing indie development during high school and college - many people don't have the free time and resources to build up that portfolio.
Unionization is fine, but I think a better outcome would be these individuals having enough self-respect to move to other areas of the industry where their skills are still relevant, and they are not abused but are actually treated with dignity.
Though, it might be easy for me to say this, because I naturally delineate my passion from my paycheck.
Yes, or simply not even apply for jobs at companies which are well known to abuse their employees.
Unions are fine, but can take a long time. In the meanwhile individual action is still available.
Just like individuals are free to boycott certain nations products or services before official sanctions are put into place. Sanctions(unions) would have a larger impact, but people still have options before that happens.
An important point here is that the skills are easily transferrable to other areas of the tech world. It's not like asking a carpenter to become a metalworker.
As it happens, people churn out of the game industry - or at least individual studios - quite frequently due to these bad work environments! But due to the massive numbers of people who want to work in games, they just get replaced and the cycle of abuse continues.
Game developers are paid well above the average income for the country and you work in an office where nobody would possibly get hurt. Why would they need to be unionized over another industry? Especially coming from someone who's not pro-union?
While they may make above average in the overall assessment of income for a country, they make well below average for the type of work they are doing. Many game companies know they can pay below market wages because of demand for the jobs.
Source: When I quit game dev, I got a 60% raise and I was on the higher end of the pay scale at that game dev job. I know lead developers with nearly 10 years of experience making under 70k in games. I frequently offer them roles that would double their salary and they turn it down because they like working in games.
Some of the QA staff we had made barely more than min wage. It was really depressing talking to dudes that had been there for years being happy they were getting a raise to $17/hr.
I know a few non-union construction workers, and a few game developers. And the construction workers seem so much less abused than the game devs. (though the game devs do make more money)
I think the employers of carpenters have to be pretty aware that a union is likely if they step too far out of line, though. Game development companies don't really have that threat yet. It's possible, but it hasn't really happened before.
The construction workers also generally benefit from living in areas that they can afford to buy a home in. The game dev has the higher salary but if you are living in a apartment its of little consolation.
The game developer could just move out to the suburbs and commute alongside the construction worker (construction happens downtown[1], and those workers sure as shit aren't living anywhere nearby).
My family does it for a living, going back a few generations. You can choose to live and work in the city, but what most of my ancestors did was buy a house on the outskirts of a relatively wealthy suburban area, like you find around almost any city. Once the houses get far enough away that you can't reasonably commute to downtown they become more affordable. You can find a sweet spot where it is reasonable to drive to the houses of the people who commute into the city, but not to do so yourself. Then your charging city rates and paying country prices. Next best thing to working remotely.
But that same argument (live further out than work to save on housing) applies to most jobs.
Here in DC, teachers earn more the closer to the city they work and typically live further out than they work to save on housing.
Software is a bit of an anomaly here - some of the best paying jobs are out on the edge of the suburbs because that’s where AOL and Network Solutions and several other “OG” dot-coms were started. And AWS, Google, and others have since opened offices nearby.
The game developers that are trying to unionize here are the QA department, and their pay is not at all similar to programmers and other game developers. Their pay is likely closer to minimum wage than anything.
The game industry is notorious for expecting way, way above 40hrs/wk of work, especially as deadlines to release approach. Stories of game devs sleeping under their desks at night are shockingly common.
"Game developers are paid well above the average income for the country and you work in an office where nobody would possibly get hurt" is a claim that falls apart if you do much research. The industry is full of horror stories of people ending up hospitalized as a result of aggressive schedules (salaried roles with no OT pay or constraints on time! people sleeping in the office, working 6-7 day weeks for months at a time, etc!) and the pay really is NOT that competitive at most studios. There are outliers that pay really well, mostly ones backed by silicon valley investment money, but the median is not that good.
Oh, I joined the union back when I was a gamedev precisely because some employees (of the company's subsidiary, to be clear on this matter) were not granted a paid vacation nor remote work in spite of a heavy flood that almost paralyzed the entire region. When you are not unionized someone will get hurt.
I've actually worked as a game developer (albeit on the online services side, so not touching C++ game code directly). I've done 80-100 hour weeks in the run up to internal milestones, betas, and full launches.
The pay, especially at studios, is very low by software engineering standards (only embedded is worse) and people can and constantly are hurt at the job. Divorces, alcoholism, and burnout are so common in the industry that they are just accepted and joked about. And I've seen real burnout. Like not being able to read properly after a couple all nighters, anxiety disorders from pagerduty, becoming fully despondent. Mental work is still work and overwork is still hurtful.
They provide much more value than they are paid meaning there is an imbalance of power between the market participants. This can be fixed via collective bargaining.
If only our government wasn't beholden to corporate power, they'd enforce the union busting laws. They know that if enough big companies become unionized, the workers would be able to exert democratic corporate power and influence government.
Agreed, also there were several high-profile reports of retaliation (Starbucks, et al) against union members. While they might have been settled out of court, it is not a good outlook for labor rights.
Don’t forget that the interests of unions are often the same interest as the employers.
My daughter has special needs, and we want to send her to a nearby public school. But the school isn’t in our district. So we have to pay for private school.
Teachers unions fought tooth and nail to prevent cross district enrollment using arguments from the 19th century.
I remember back when I was a level designer for a New Zealand video game company, I was paid $150 NZD per day, and that was my entire compensation. No benefits. That was twenty years ago, though.
The dispute that started the process to change the law was (if my memory serves) over a "model maker" making $NZ17 an hour back in 2010. Hardly big money.
Blizzard brought me some of the greatest joys of my childhood. I remember playing warcraft 1 in all it's 8-bit glory, I loved W3, I am playing my way through Diablo 2 again right now. But it just feels like right around the time of WoW they started to change and it became a priority on revenue over producing good games.
It seems like that is the inevitable result of any successful creator(s) they labor out of love and a joy for what they make and then once they get big enough MBA, managerial types, that are focused on metrics and numbers come in and like a parasite feed on the success of those who labored for love before eventually leaving it an unrecognizable bloated rotting carcass of it's former self.
Is there anyway to build something successfully that contributes to the world without it being subsumed by management culture?
Are they trying to stop the vote by addressing the issues making people want to unionize, or just trying to illegally stop legally protected unionization?
At this point, it would be better for all those involved [1] if the corporate entity called Activision-Blizzard was burnt to the ground and a new games company was built in its stead, with actually competent managers [2], a unionized labor force and actually enforced zero-tolerance policies on abuse of all kinds among some other nice-to-haves.
[1]: Obviously not Kotick and the rest of the scum, who not only tolerated but even engaged in the "alleged" instances of all manners of abuse for years. I actually wouldn't mind if they provided themselves as kindling on that corporate bonfire after having their golden parachutes cut away to pay damages/"reparations" to their victims.
[2]: ie. with at least a background in games development, not how to best financially screw their workers.
Microsoft should buy Activision-Blizzard, fully separate Activision from Blizzard, assign Kotick to work at a one-man game studio in Alaska or something, and completely rebuild senior leadership at Blizzard.
It's Activision Blizzard. That acquisition is just totally irrelevant based on every metric except maybe revenue. AB is primarily CoD. I'll take some minor consolidation over Kotick and his cronies keeping their jobs after what they did to the women working there, particularly the one who committed suicide because of them. I want AB to burn to the ground, but I'll take the current management being replaced as a consolation prize.
Modern Microsoft has been a surprisingly good steward to all of the game companies they've brought in. They bought DoubleFine and brought Psychonauts 2 to market after a decade in development hell.
