cac80c No.15912654
https://hothardware.com/news/blizzard-pays-workers-to-quit
https://archive.fo/ThJiy
>It looks as if Blizzard is trying very hard to shed some employees without having to institute "official" layoffs in some departments. Reports indicate that some very enticing offers have been made in at least one of Blizzard Entertainment's European offices.
<In Cork, Ireland Blizzard has been offering impressive incentives to get workers in its customer service department to voluntarily leave their positions. The incentive has reportedly been offered on numerous occasions over the last few months. Some anonymous sources claim that workers have taken up to a year's worth of pay to leave Blizzard.
>Reports also indicate that a large number of workers have taken various incentives, with some stating that the number is at least 100 people. People who have been offered the incentive and vacated positions include managers and back office staff members. With so many workers quitting positions in customer service, many will wonder how significantly wait times for Blizzard fans needing help will increase. It sounds as if the workers who have chosen to stay will have a substantially higher workload. Fewer people in the department could also mean more frustrated customers waiting for needed assistance.
<As for why the reductions in workforce in the Ireland office, reports indicate it has to do with Blizzard acknowledging the decline of monthly active users for its titles resulting in less overall revenue for the company. The silver lining here is that Blizzard certainly could have simply laid these workers off with little or no severance, and instead, it has offered big payouts to get folks to leave voluntarily.
>At BlizzCon in November, the negative reception to Diablo Immortal was so strong that it affected the company's stock price. Investors feared that Blizzard was not in touch with its fanbase.
Is it the beginning of the end bros?
ab5466 No.15912660
a44e07 No.15912664
>>15912654
>>At BlizzCon in November, the negative reception to Diablo Immortal was so strong that it affected the company's stock price. Investors feared that Blizzard was not in touch with its fanbase.
i don't understand /v/, how could this possibly be happening? you guys have phones right?
d7accb No.15912667
The real news is Blizzard is admitting, with these layoffs, that their WoW subs numbers are in steep decline.
cef1bf No.15912673
I remember reading about Blizzard hiring the lead designer for some other RTS series, maybe Age of Empires?, to have him work on a new Warcraft only to cancel the project the moment the company he came from folded just to fuck him and any potential competition over. I'd love to find the source for this.
cac80c No.15912683
It just keeps getting better
https://wccftech.com/decisions-blizzard-being-driven-finance/
https://archive.fo/kvQLR
>A new report published last night on (((Kotaku))) expanded on previous claims from inside sources that Blizzard had been cutting development costs. As it turns out, this has been a company-wide policy for the entire year, particularly after a speech by the new Chief Financial Officer Amrita Ahuja (who joined Blizzard in March 2018 after many years at Activision) reportedly told every team to reduce spending.
<Furthermore, several former and current Blizzard employees anonymously told Kotaku that the finance group is now leading strategic decisions for the first time in the company’s history.
>"Over the course of the last year, Blizzard has been trying very actively to find creative ways to cut costs that won’t draw negative press attention. That speech from Amrita about cutting costs, that wasn’t a one-time thing. We were told to cut costs on a monthly basis.
<Finance in general in Blizzard has been one of these invisible functions that’s there but doesn’t have a say. Now they’re suddenly in meetings.
>A lot of decisions now are being driven by business folks, marketing and finance folks. There’s a real struggle now between developers and the business people. Strategic decisions are being driven by the finance group.
<Blizzard is a special place. A lot of people are worried about the future of Blizzard, if the Activision method seeps in more, what that’s going to become."
How long until they rebrand as just another Activision studio?
cd12d9 No.15912685
Sounds like blizzard is saving these people from having to jump ship later.
64762e No.15912690
It just means this is the end of Blizzard's boom. Diablo Immortal (china) and lootboxes (casual-cattle) will keep them afloat without any uncertainty, but it's a complete crapshoot as to whether or not they'll be able to mass-market another forced hit like Overwatch or get incredibly lucky like they did with Hearthstone ever again.
In a sane world they'd have burned their reputation into the ground by now, but with Tencent's backing and a rabid fanbase willing to put up with anything they do it's only a matter of time until they're floating along just like before.
3d5c2f No.15912692
Merry Christmas, /v/.
Merry Christmas, Blizzard employees.
968fc0 No.15912885
>>15912654
>Is it the beginning of the end bros?
The writing was on the wall with Morhaime left. It's not Blizzard any longer, just Activision using Blizzard's name.
>asmongold shits all over wow and bfa, the forums get shut the fuck down for 3 days
>seagull shits all over overwatch, the forums get shut the fuck down for 3 days
>hots gets put on life support, all funding is immediately diverted to overwatch league
>overwatch league has been operating in the red for its entire duration, hots' defunding is a last ditch effort
>blizzard is trying to recoup their losses with the currently ongoing "see you later" sale, by making their already paltry cash shop library even smaller and the metric leak has shown that they will re-introduce those items later down the line "by popular demand"
>their final attempts are with warcraft 3's re-release and wow classic, both of which will also flop because it's the exact same shit you've been able to play for free for the past fifteen years
>blizzdrones are waking up
>gameblog journo faggots, notorious for fucking blizzard's cock, are also waking up
http://archive.is/rwkUM
Yep, it's done.
Blizzard got Bioware'd. This is the point where the Titanic has broken in half and now it's on its rapid, downward death-spiral and everything is in freefall.
Good fucking riddance, Blizzard. Eat shit.
b32ced No.15912935
>>15912690
>Immortal in China and lootboxes will save them
Wouldn't be so sure, anon. China's been cracking down on foreign vidya, and if the economy goes full bear, people are going to spend less dosh on frivolous shit like p2w mobile games; diablo branding or not. And there's a big push in europe to crack down on lootboxes. (Belgium banned them, I think.) Cali would absolutely be the kind of shithole to proactively regulate them in the states, and no doubt a lot of cucks at Blizz would agree with them.
Also, Blizz is a fucking big company and, even if those rumors of paying staff low salaries are true, they still have to be spending $200k per employee per year (when you factor in taxes and benefits), which means probably more than $1m per day.
>euro layoffs
This is something you'd only see in europe where a company pays employees to fuck off. oc attached One of the articles even mentioned that blizz had been raising the offer for a while until people started to take it, which meant they want people to leave.
here's some other ((coincidences)) that have been happening over the last half year that paint a grim picture for blizz
>BFA beta full of bugs, bugs get reported, nothing fixed which means blizz either didn't care and went full marketing promo on the beta or didn't have the time to do anything
>sub leak pegged it at 1.7m right after BFA launch, blizz goes full SHUT IT DOWN and deploys bribes to get (((journalists))) to 'debunk' it
>core features of BFA broken (azerite armor, island expeditions), front of box adverts totally missing (zandalari trolls, fat humans)
>forums trending toward general negativity, despite constant efforts of MVPs and wannabe MVPs to defuse any negative commentary
>SC2 popularity waning
>Blizzcon debacle and leaked proof of Diablo team getting taught the dark arts of P2W from Activision's partners in China
>official trailers and youtube vids getting downvoted en masse
>regular journos and assorted blizz bootlickers starting to shit on them
>Dreadwake mount promo that was more than likely a Blizzcon reward that was pulled in out of desperation which would also explain why the gift offering for blizzcon attendees was much lighter this year and the mount's just a reskin of an older one from last year
>current cash shop 'See You Later' bundle mysteriously released just in time to have it impact Q4 financials
>core system changes made silently in 8.1 and only addressed by blizz after the community called them on it
and so on. from the outside, it looks like Blizz is a mess internally, no one knows what's going on, and they're panicking because they probably feel the activision axe over their heads and have to get some more money in before shits start getting raw
combien this with bethesda fucking up as is their wont, EA shitting the bed with BFV surprising no one, and the general collapse of all vidya company stocks, and 2019 could be a hell of a year.
c34b07 No.15912989
>>15912935
DI isn't foreign, it's made by chink company.
e38a1e No.15912992
>>15912683
>Amrita Ahuja
>hire a female pajeet as your CFO
>company's finances collapse and layoffs ensue
Like pottery.
b32ced No.15913004
>>15912989
Sure, it's just a clone of an existing Netease game, but blizz is going to ahve to edit the fuck out of it to appease the chinese censors.
>>15912992
definitely feels like atvision sent her in there to get that house in order before they bring down the hammer.
ff09ef No.15913013
Wait I thought hiring women and only minorities was the way to go. Why would Blizzard start hiring competent workers now?
c34b07 No.15913018
>>15913004
From what I understand you just reskin skeletons and zombies as goblins and furfags and you're set.
It won't fail in china.
>>15912992
DESIGNATED
b32ced No.15913024
>>15913013
they're not hiring, anon. theyre laying off experienced staff to save money.
>>15913018
under the old ministry regs maybe, but if those rumors of a new, stricter review group is true, it could cause them problems. it'll probably still make them some money, but it probably won't be nearly enough to keep activision happy
c34b07 No.15913031
>>15913024
>spoiler
At no point in history did they manage to make activision "happy", anon.
b32ced No.15913045
>>15913031
Sure they did, anon. right up until WoW's lightning in a bottle faded and they stopped reporting sub numbers to the shareholders
3d5c2f No.15913056
>>15912992
>that resume
<most jobs lasted less than a fucking year
Wow, that fucking sucks for a prospective CFO.
ee9211 No.15913089
>>15912992
What does an "analyst" do? besides collect a fat paycheck
8bae59 No.15913231
b32ced No.15913253
>>15913231
I doubt we'll ever see anything on par with the crash from the 80s, but I could see the incoming bear market really upsetting the established order. best we can hope for is a big publisher like EA or Activision collapsing or going 100% mobile or something.
a7006a No.15913369
Lots of companies do this, they give people bonuses if they retire early, since the longer you work for one the more your pay goes up. By the time you build up enough clout at a job to be paid well you become a detriment to your employer and they will try to burn you off like a tick, and this is just one method they use.
11c649 No.15913406
>>15913369
>trying to make blizz sound composed with all this shitshow going on about their problem
do it again, i'm not convinced
18525f No.15913457
>>15912667
their cash cow can't pay for everything if it dies
6f09e9 No.15913707
>>15912683
>business folks,
>marketing and finance folks
By allah if I'll ever hear someone say "folk" irl I'm gonna folking punch them in the throat.
cef1bf No.15913862
>>15912885
>gameblog journo faggots, notorious for fucking blizzard's cock, are also waking up
I wouldn't say they're waking up so much as the checks are starting to bounce.
6b748b No.15913928
They completely lost the expertise and capacity to actually develop videogames a while ago, but in an ironic twist their own fanboys have been keeping them afloat and unaware of the problem until it's grown too large to ignore or rectify. Every reddit faggot who moaned about 'toxicity' whenever criticism was raised, who kept supporting the latest WoW expansion or hearthstone jewry is directly responsible for the company's downfall. And even now they'll smother blizzard with praise while mumbling about how it's totally activision's fault and how 'their' blizzard would never come to this without being corrupted (lol) by an outside entity. Good job, fanboys.
Here's how to save blizzard:
>invent time travel
>go back in time and shoot everyone who would go on to make the burning crusade expansion
>progress the main warcraft story in new installments of the RTS game while WoW is just used to flesh out the obscure corners of the world not visited
>because blizzard quality real time strategy games take time and care to make, don't be shy to wrap up the fucking story instead of leaving us hanging. Maybe end it at warcraft IV. Get around to either destroying or redeeming the horde or both and then let it just be over.
>don't get cucked out of capitalizing on the DOTA craze by riot and valve
>put a miniscule amount of effort into diablo 3 so you're not still 'fixing' the game years later
6ca747 No.15914045
>>15913707
Dont move to the south or Appalachia.
4e5aef No.15914055
I knew it was going to happen, but I didn't think they would be going down so quickly.
>>15913928
It's pretty interesting how despite the low quality of everything that they produced, they still managed to stay afloat and maybe even make a decent profit.
It took a huge PR shitstorm and a succession of blunders to shake their ivory towers.
>>15912667
They are having financial meetings for the first time in the company's history, trying to cut costs and get their ship in order.
But the ship is ready to capsize.
>>15912992
When I read the name I thought it was a man.
How silly of me, I should have known better.
a0e1b9 No.15914060
What are they even spending all of their money on? Aren't Hearthstone and Overwatch making a bunch?
Or have those memeships sailed already?
72e7d9 No.15914075
>>15914060
Overwatch was forced, ActiBlizz spent a lot to make it popular as an epic esport. I'm not sure it's that profitable.
640d1d No.15914081
>>15914060
Overwatch has either plateau'd or is falling off, and Hearthstone did that ages ago when it was realized that you need to spend tons of dollarydoos on new cards to be able to compete with whales and autists thanks to power creep in the expansions.
cef1bf No.15914082
>>15914060
Do you have any idea how much Blizzard pisses away shilling their garbage every year?
4e5aef No.15914086
>>15914075
They forcefully shut down any competitive scenes for OW that were not handled by them.
For a game that's on the competitive level of a Nintendo title (meaning you get a "press X to do something cool and kill everyone" option every now and then), if there ever was any hope of it succeeding as an esport, they killed it in its infancy.
>>15914060
OW has been dead for a while and HS has been slowly bleeding users.
747b27 No.15914095
>>15914060
They dropped normalfags with overwatch to chase the esports meme.
Shockingly the mario party of shooters lacks the stability and balance esportists crave.
72e7d9 No.15914101
>>15914095
The few ecelebs they got they ban to virtue signal.
b654fc No.15914107
>>15912654
>Getting Bioware'd
Pathetic
6873aa No.15914112
>>15914060
OW on life support, they spend money to hype up eSports shit and it's costing them players.
Hearthstone is dying even faster with the power creep of real dollarydoos cards (which they refuse to ban in tourneys or tweak because they'll lose all their whales)
b39d4e No.15914115
>>15913369
>since the longer you work for one the more your pay goes up
There's no law that says this. If they give people more money it's because they choose too. So they can just choose not to do it, too.
>build up enough clout
At a call centre?
640d1d No.15914162
>>15914115
>So they can just choose not to do it, too.
No shit, but the whole point is that they're trying to preserve their pseudo-image of being the best place to work in the industry. Not to mention they already chose to give those people raises.
9a0d7a No.15914221
4c5308 No.15914437
>>15912654
>Investors feared that Blizzard was not in touch with its fanbase.
Did they only notice this now? how the fuck did they not notice this sooner? do they just not look into the companies they are investing in? didn't anyone wonder why so many people were complaining?
I know the investors most likely haven't played a single game in their life but surely they can go to any forum or whatever and see people are angry.
640d1d No.15914443
>>15914437
The investors are far more out of touch than the companies they invest in. Many of them have a middleman that decides what to invest in for them. They usually look at aggregates and stock reports and try to decide what to invest in based on that. It's rare to see an investor with deep knowledge of a particular market.
4bcab0 No.15914456
>>15912654
Reminder that Diablo 3 the 2nd expansion was cancelled despite insane sales numbers because Bobby was upset at the loss of the real money auction house and couldn't sell Diablo 3 "As a service" etc, and game was too old at that point to put in loot boxes, and that Diablo 4 instantly entered production after the backlash to Diablo Immortal and will likely contain some degree of these things in it
The best part is the AAA crash is happening and they still don't understand why, people want games, not "Services" and lootbox fests
97c2c7 No.15914461
>>15914456
There will be crash but it will be crash of everything
4bcab0 No.15914464
>>15914437
Almost literally every AAA company has been hit hard in the last 6-12 months, even Rockstar is taking a huge hit and none of them understand why
Meanwhile any idiot on the street who happens to game casually could tell you it's franchise fatigue, yearly games with little content, "Services" and Yearly/Seasonal Passes and loot boxes
Game installs are upwards of 70gigs+ now and barely contain a tenth the content that came on DVD's just over a decade prior
006b6f No.15914468
>>15914437
Investors usually don't know anything about the industries, they're just people with a ton of money backing the favorite horse to win. They probably had no idea what a fanbase actually is until just now. These are the same investors that walked out of a shareholders meeting with Nintendo execs complaining about how all they talked about were video games.
4bcab0 No.15914471
Reminder:
"We can't make Final Fantasy 7 remake one game because there is simply too much content, so we're splitting up an already existing game into three parts to sell you at full price"
And yet, AAA still doesn't understand why it's dying fast
cef1bf No.15914473
>>15914456
Also the first expansion sold barely a quarter of the base game's figures.
4bcab0 No.15914486
>>15914473
Still sold over 5 million copies, meaning the fans of Diablo were willing to come back as long as they fixed shit, hell I still play it
Bobby doesn't want your love however, he wants your sheekles
8cfcb9 No.15914490
I'M SO SORRY THE GAMERS DIDN'T GIVE YOU MORE MONEY!!!!!!!!
431026 No.15914491
640d1d No.15914492
>>15914486
It was just okay, but still sucked compared to even Path of Exile. Every build is a crit build, all the gear is still boring as fuck.
b77dea No.15914496
>>15912654
>the negative reception to Diablo Immortal was so strong that it affected the company's stock price. Investors feared that Blizzard was not in touch with its fanbase.
>fanbase
more like normalfags.
bb0130 No.15914503
>>15912885
>blizzdrones are waking up
If only. At best they are getting fed up with the new lows that Blizzard keeps hitting. It's not like they'll suddenly develop some perspective overnight and see that they themselves are personally responsible for videogames turning to shit by supporting WoW when it was "good". To them, it's modern Blizzard that is shit.
b77dea No.15914517
>>15914490
post the webm, anon.
3c62e0 No.15914614
But the question is: does this kill the Blizzard?
I don't think so, but at least the are following in the footsteps of EA, and normalfaggots really start to notice the practices these companies follow.
3b0854 No.15914617
>>15913231
According to some, we're already in it. Look at some of the big AAA gaming companies stock 6 months ago. It has been on a steady decline since then. A crash won't be on an epic scale as the 80s but it does feel like we're in it if we base it on what is happening. Incomplete games at launch and nickel-and-diming of the customers. I'm sure you can also point to other years where this is true but there was a lot more companies doing this consecutively that people are really showing how tired they are of it. Then you've got the abandoning core customers for mobile, censorship and the Chinese invasion on the horizon and gaming is looking to be in a weird state in the coming years. We'll probably have a better understanding of the damage once 2019 ends.
I remember somewhere like in the early 2000s that people were saying that investing in gaming is smart because it was recession-proof or something dumb like that. I guess people don't think that gamers could just stop spending $60 at launch just because a big named company released it in an unfinished state and there is nothing better out during that time. True gamers, the ones before the influx of the casual audience, could wait 2 years for their next game in a franchise to release and they can certainly wait if they have a sufficient back catalog. This may be the time for companies to learn from their mistakes and take gaming seriously again. I'm not sure if we're in a crash but I'm of the belief that such a thing ebbs and flows every now and then. It's not a matter if there will be a crash or not, it's a matter of when it will happen because that is how the economy works.
b32ced No.15914631
>>15914614
Corporations are notoriously hard to kill unless they utterly, irrevocably, and completely shit the bed. (Like what happened to ENRON or THQ.)
No, I think Blizzard will probably share the fate of a studio like Bioware or Westwood and be slowly bled out and poisoned by its corporate parent. Then, in 2024 when the corpse is almost empty, we'll see stuff like a Warcraft RTS mobile game a'la what EA did to C&C, and probably some gachapon shit for a new Hearthstone.
Even if the AAA market hadn't stagnated and turned into a flavor of the month meme fest with everyone chasing trends, Blizz just doesn't have the capacity to produce good games anymore. They got too big and lost their soul in the process.
>>15914617
The bear market will be a major test for these big publishers, but only if it takes a further downturn and gets really bad. Tech stocks have dropped almost across the board but, the margins in vidya for profits are really thin (at least for AAA); so I'd expect increasing desperation from publicly traded companies like EA or Activision. Especially if their 'sure thing' sources of income like FIFA or CoD show increasing signs of wear.
2019 could be a lot of fun.
3c62e0 No.15914657
>>15914631
Great point, this could also be very likely. I am very curious to see what the future holds; major companies failing over and over again has been awesome the last couple of years.
36957f No.15914700
Corrupt nobles, born in their position, out of touch with the serfs that provide them with too much money on their hands to know what to do with.
Thought we had the world's knowledge at our fingertips yet the internet has been muddled with so much fake sensationalities and "I love science" casualfests that true knowledge is harder to seek than ever, hidden beneath thicker layers of shillery.
cef1bf No.15914871
>>15914617
The only reason the 1983 crash nearly killed console gaming in America was because Atari had a near monopoly on the market. From an economic standpoint things are crashing harder now than they were back then but fuck if the average Joe would be able to tell thanks to all the alternatives. Always remember the crash was only really recognized outside of the stock market historically speaking. Back then most people just saw game prices going down drastically.
4c5308 No.15914937
>>15914871
>Back then most people just saw game prices going down drastically.
That is exactly what is happening currently, mass effect andromeda was in the bargain bin within like a month and shadow of the tomb raider was half the price a week after launch.
Then again things have been super cheap on steam for a while now so I guess its not as noticable.
cef1bf No.15915002
>>15914937
I don't think that really compares to being able to buy a bucket full of Atari games for 10 bucks less than a year after they came out.
cd12d9 No.15915041
>>15914437
Investors are just people with too much money to waste. These are probably people who never even play games but blizzard lied about being the top and these idiots fell for it. You can see this is the case because they start screaming until after Blizzard started dying and not before when the sighns were there.
Best case scenario these idiots will further push Blizzard to chase fads that are already gone and lose more money.
60f38b No.15915568
>>15915041
Blizzard Battle Royale when?
cef1bf No.15915598
>>15915568
The newest WoW expansion already did that from what I've heard.
b32ced No.15915629
>>15915598
You heard wrong. I don't think Activision would try to over saturate their BR offerings between what they've already got in CoD anyway.
cac80c No.15915636
>>15914060
They're somehow losing money on Overwatch League
>>15915041
>Best case scenario these idiots will further push Blizzard to chase fads that are already gone and lose more money.
You mean like what happened with Heroes of the Storm? The one game that people that still gave a shit were working on?
8a50bd No.15915729
>>15912667
WoW has been dead for years. You can only keep an MMO up for so long until it stagnates and any attempt to update it ends up a bigger mess. It should have been shelved for a new MMO a long time ago.
>>15912885
They needed to be put down.
b32ced No.15915744
>>15915729
They tried to make a WoW replacement, remember? That rumored Titan project; 'cept it died and they aborted it.
I think WoW's been a blessing and a curse for Blizz - so successful it put them on the map and made them darlings to Activision, but also so successful that they probably were told 'As long as it still makes money, you keep doing it'. If the rumors about paring down the dev staff are true, and since they still charge a sub fee, it means that it's making just enough for Activision to keep the sub fee up and some skeleton crew working on active dev.
None of this excuses Blizz's crazy and idiotic design decisions or their PR gaffes in the last year, though. Maybe they're getting andromeda'd and a bunch of diversity hires are fucking them over. Good riddance.
45c564 No.15915753
>>15914075
Overwatch certainly was forced. Go into a gamestop or best buy and look at the piles of overwatch merchandise sitting in bargain bins. Amiami has been trying to dump off overwatch nendoroids for several months. Blizzard pushed for all these insane merchandizing schemes and they never caught on. If there's anything good to come out of the fortnite craze is it drew all the attention and money of normalniggers away from the rest of the cancerous game industry.
8a50bd No.15915762
>>15915753
It blew up because of the porn as well. But the girls in overwatch are as replaceable as any generic attractive girl in vidya. Maybe if Overwatch was mostly about attractive girls shooting each other's clothes on until their underwear remains, it might have been more popular organically but this is SJW Blizz unfortunately for them.
It's as you said, Fortnite was pretty much the Overwatch killer.
a4b6d4 No.15915764
Can these companies ever truly die? They've gotten too big and so has the industry. People keep arguing back and forth if a crash is even possible at this point but can these companies truly crash and burn? I so want it but I'm unsure if it's reality.
8a50bd No.15915765
>>15915762
>clothes on until
*off
b32ced No.15915767
>>15915753
>Overwatch Nendoroids
Yeah, I saw them when I was in Japan a few weeks ago. And they were in no danger of selling out, hah.
>Fortnite
2018 is fucking nuts. Could you imagine if someone posted on /v/ on Jan 1st, 2018 saying 'Epic Games will have the most popular game in the world this time next year - screencap this post!'? They'd get laughed off the site. Excellent point about BR shit taking the attention of the normalfags away from old standbys like Blizz, though.
>>15915762
ActiBlizz's investors are apparently also mad that OW isn't getting Fortnite's numbers. Haha.
>>15915764
Truly die? Not unless they go full retard and have a major scandal or pull a THQ. But they could fundamentally change and go to only mobile or something like Konami did; which is basically death.
8a50bd No.15915779
>>15915767
Don't forget Overwatch mods banning their players over any little thing.
cac80c No.15915831
>>15915767
>But they could fundamentally change and go to only mobile or something like Konami did; which is basically death.
I think that's their plan going forward, abandon PC and console gaming for shitware mobage. The big rumor around them right now is they're developing their own Pokemon Go, but for WoW's battle pets instead of Pokemon.
https://pokemongohub.net/post/news/blizzard-allegedly-working-on-warcraft-go-a-pokemon-go-like-game-in-the-warcraft-universe/
https://archive.fo/ZL214
They literally have no new ideas, so they're just making inferior clones of shit that everyone else has already done.
c6c646 No.15915835
>>15912654
I assume its because they have to report larger numbers of layoffs which would put hard numbers into the news.
So they rather have the people "voluntarily" fuck off and keep the tanking foggy.
79da6b No.15915842
Something I would like to clear up that I saw in this thread. I was watching Reynad, someone with a lot of insider information, stream a few months ago and apparently almost everyone involved with Overwatch league made money off of it. It might not have been as much as the suits at blizzard who originally came up with it might have liked, but it was still a success if you look at it as cashing out on the meme-sports craze.
>Blizzard got millions of dollars for every OWL slot paid straight to them by teams who wanted in
>Investors got their value through self fulfilling prophecy because the perceived worth of what they got went up as more people bought in
>Most of the team owners cashed out after buying their slots and ended up retiring
>Players got their time making insane salaries for playing a dead game
The only people that are going to be out of any money at all are the poor saps who own the teams when the whole thing finally drops into the negative, which it supposedly hasn't yet. Though at a bare minimum they end up with investor clout from being a part of it as well as these new fancy e-sports stadiums they had to build which can be easily repurposed later. The whole thing was a huge bluff that everyone was in on, whether they knew about it or not, and it worked. Even when you factor in advertising and other miscellaneous costs on the part of Blizzard, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what they made because they didn't take on any of the risk from the whole deal.
c6c646 No.15915846
>>15913045
Still remember how the drones were eating up the Blizzard damage control claiming they would drop the WoW "sub" numbers because it was "innaccurate" but would replace them with something "more accurate" and never delivered
b32ced No.15915880
>>15915831
The Diablo Immortal announcement felt like it was proof of either Blizz being comically out of touch or them effectively telling their fans to go fuck themselves and that mobile is the future. Or, if you like conspiracy theories, it was something Activision forced them to do, knowing it would fail, so they could take control of more of the company.
I think Blizz might one or two major PC games left in them, but if their next big release is also a lukewarm pile of shit, it's going to get real bad real fast at HQ.
>>15915846
I'm seeling less and less Blizzdrones and more and more damage control from their community and PR teams. They post less on the WoW forums, and MVPs and assorted 'Blizz can do no wrong' bootlickers routinely get outnumbered and shouted down in threads. Hell, they even banned Asmongold from lots of places because they were so butthurt that he kept pointing out their failures.
c24968 No.15915993
>>15914437
The chinese have been enslaving people to farm gold in WoW for years and it never stopped Blizzard or its investors from carrying on as usual, so I'm not surprised.
>>15913707
You sandnigger folks get triggered by the darnedest things.
73e6a5 No.15916505
>>15912654
They have been doing this for forever. When I used to work there they laid off like 1200 people in 2011 when numbers started to tank during cataclysm and offered them what people called "the blizzard bribe".
4e5aef No.15916652
>>15915764
It's more likely they'll simply slide into obscurity as many have before.
Alive, but on life support and not doing anything relevant.
b224a1 No.15916679
>>15913369
No, nigger. I'm working at a place that has done that repeatedly over the past few years. Turns out those old people that you spend a lot on frequently have job knowledge that the young people either won't or refuse to pick up on. The end result is that the quality of the product suffers under new leadership, workers and other people like that, costs go up, downtime goes up. The company becomes a shit show, especially if there is a push for diversity at the same time. Then you see some real shit.
I can only imagine how much worse it is at a company that sells creative products as opposed to a manufacturing job.
e20be0 No.15916793
>>15916652
Blizzcon will become dead conventions.
684fbb No.15916809
>>15913089
We just look at data and tell people incapable of thinking for themselves what it means. t. analyst
6b060f No.15916984
>>15916679
>Turns out those old people that you spend a lot on frequently have job knowledge that the young people either won't or refuse to pick up on. The end result is that the quality of the product suffers under new leadership, workers and other people like that, costs go up, downtime goes up. The company becomes a shit show, especially if there is a push for diversity at the same time. Then you see some real shit.
Can confirm.
>I can only imagine how much worse it is at a company that sells creative products as opposed to a manufacturing job.
It's much worse. A good litmus test is to look at what type makes up their HR department.
684fbb No.15917057
>>15916505
Do you have any stories or interesting anecdotes from working there, anon?
>>15916679
This. Inevitably as new people replace older workers the company will have issues unless the older workers are deliberately assigned to train the new ones.
f1efbf No.15917079
>>15914631
>Westwood
Still the saddest story of them all. In Blizzard's case they were already going downhill when they got infested, but Westwood were still in their prime.
ebef97 No.15917173
>>15914437
>do they just not look into the companies they are investing in?
Investors are some of the stupidest people on the planet.
2cb79b No.15917201
>>15914437
Investors look at news (headlines) and price history. They're not really engaged in the comments sections, forums, or community. That's mainly the point of articles that say X game sold Y copies, or lots of types of articles. If they see a game is really successful, then they invest more. If they see some game has denuvo and denuvo means piracy is harder, then they have more faith in their investment in the company because that's the shallow depth of what they know.
E.g when a GamerGate thread said to tweet to Sony's stock ticker instead of some catchy new hashtag, its so it reaches the investors. A lot of people don't like DRM and censorship, but as long as Sony gets its investors the customer complaints can slide partly.
2cb79b No.15917207
>>15917201
+ I guess there's more implications for the market if the news and headlines is beholden to a video game company in such a way that they relent on publishing articles inconvenient to retaining the faith of investors.
f26410 No.15917253
>>15915744
>They tried to make a WoW replacement, remember? That rumored Titan project; 'cept it died and they aborted it.
because blizzard is notorious shit if they can't copy a concept from someone and polish it for mass appeal. literally since vanilla everything they tried to "invent" themselves was an utter shitshow. remember fucking meeting stones and through how many iterations it went with absolute retarded ideas like level ranges only to end up as dungeon finder (which they copied from console matchmaking)?
now that the whole industry is stagnating it's no surprise what's happening (and has for quite some time)
there's also the rumour that titan was canned to not compete with destiny.
0f8804 No.15917282
>>15912885
>asmongold shits all over wow and bfa, the forums get shut the fuck down for 3 days
>seagull shits all over overwatch, the forums get shut the fuck down for 3 days
Are those players or competing games or what?
cef1bf No.15917299
>>15917282
Ecelebs. Watch a single youtube video about anything even tangentially related to Blizzard and these fucks will fill up your recommendation tab.
c8d6ba No.15917561
>you get punished for hiring qualified workers over niggers and woman
>you are not allowed to fire them
>I wonder why we are losing money? Quick, someone! Blame nazis!
cac80c No.15917768
>>15917282
>Seagull bitches about Mercy's res
>Blizzard completely redoes the character so she flies everywhere and does an AoE heal rather than a mass res
>Game becomes even more "Press Q to win" as a result
Blizzard fucking hates their fanbase but the moment an (((influencer))) opens his mouth you'd best believe they're ready to come up with some bullshit game-breaking patch to try to keep him on the reservation
684fbb No.15917803
>>15917768
Didn't he quit anyway?
0ff0ea No.15918151
>>15917768
Turns out chasing after esports is a pretty fucking dumb idea.
e020bc No.15918162
>>15918151
What esports actually make money? Is it just MOBA shit?
0ff0ea No.15918174
>>15918162
Mostly Moba. Starcraft did and that basically ruined Blizzard who continued to try and bottle lightning.
79da6b No.15918214
>>15918132
>Muh infinite money
I wasn't saying that Blizzard has infinite money, just that they already made their money from overwatch league specifically. People in the thread kept saying it was a failure when in reality all they had to do was pump out a few videos and have some production crew travel between studios every week.
1e485b No.15918315
>>15918162
Chinese ruled ones like LoL maybe? No idea what is the situation for Dota 2, i know past tournaments made lots of dosh but i dont know about recent ones nor about the playerbase.
Starcraft is dead.
I dont know how big CSGO tournaments are but i do know its the game that suffers the most from the whole "If its not tourney friendly remove it". Things that were cool or part of engine advancements such as barrel with physics or shooting a glass and having it crack around the bullet hole were removed because "people hiding the bomb under a barrel/making barricades is bad" and "the cracks on the glass make it hard to see through so now the whole glass sheet vanishes after the first shot"
6ce478 No.15918330
So I assume HR said. "you don't have enough diversity!" but since they are hemorrhaging money from a series of fuckups and mishandling of IPs they can't hire anymore women, trannies and niggers so they are going to fire their actual working employees. Meanwhile, the execs will prepare their golden parachutes and flee like rats before it implodes.
2b896a No.15920486
YouTube embed. Click thumbnail to play.
>>15912683
>joined Blizzard in March 2018 after many years at Activision
Gee, what a shock, it's almost like this was part of a deliberate undermining attempt by Activision to acquire a majority in Blizzard and buy out all their IP after crashing the value.
15a756 No.15920565
there will always be another soulless corporation ready to pick up the scraps
c8d6ba No.15920608
>>15920486
There are always a bigger rat. maybe one day chinese will eat EA.
84cd71 No.15920780
>dumb gajin run company to ground
who raffing now?
b155cf No.15921991
Even if people don't think there's anything wrong with their behavior, people need to at least be aware of what Blizzard does.
6b060f No.15922020
>>15912683
> the finance group is now leading strategic decisions for the first time in the company’s history.
Always a good sign when the bean counters are put in charge of the plane. I'm sure there will be survivors in the non wreckage and all will go according to the flight plan.
d3717a No.15922048
>>15922020
This is basically the beginning of the Middle. Triple A companies will collapse in on themselves, while smaller, more focused companies take center stage, some of the more successful ones being splinter companies lead by devs that pull a Kojima, except they'll actually deliver good shit.
The next decade will see a sort of gaming revolution as these smaller companies rise up and take center stage with some genuinely good and original titles, while big companies like Blizzard weather just fine, but will have to re-evaluate how to make a good game.
d3717a No.15922116
>>15921991
Here's the thing about Overwatch.
I've seen people say it's TF2 with a new coat of paint, I've seen people claim it's SJW pandering trash. I've seen every argument around its presentation in media, marketing, and pricing.
I've never seen anyone say it wasn't fun to play.
3137e5 No.15922117
>>15921991
Nice try Blizzard, but reverse psychology is a meme
3137e5 No.15922135
>>15922116
>I haven’t heard anyone say it wasn’t fun to play
It’s not fun. If that isn’t good enough for you then start dredging through the archive for Overwatch threads.
3b42d6 No.15922142
>>15922103
>>15922123
Just because she looks like a cunt and deserves it.
06eb0f No.15922144
>>15921991
this reads like an "us gamers" meme from 2012
684fbb No.15922146
>>15922116
Your first day at Blizzard after the firings, I take it? The game is unfun and is explicitly designed to only be fun when you're playing with your bros and "popping your epic ults to win the game, dude!" The same ults that you can't lose once you have them. I've known blizzdrones to defend this, though, without giving a reason as to why it's good design other than "that's how the game works!"
>>15922142
Nagatoro is a good girl.
8fcc5e No.15922151
>go grocery shopping today
>see stuff like this right next to the tide pods
fbe9a3 No.15922155
>>15922116
>I've never seen anyone say it wasn't fun to play.
Maybe you should try talking to someone outside of work. I guess you'll have to now that you all got shitcanned.
6391c8 No.15922336
>>15922116
>I've never seen anyone say it wasn't fun to play.
Today I will remind them.
c5669a No.15922352
Overwatch is great game!
Stupid nobodys don't play!
Can't have opinion on with no experience!
Half off right now! Go try!
Think yourself dumb after!
Ha ha!
ae3c7a No.15922799
>>15922336
anyone care enough to read all that shit?
00320d No.15922901
>>15922799
It was interesting, covering a wide variety of topics on what makes Overwatch shit.
06eb0f No.15923056
>>15912683
won't come to that. they'll just get swallowed by activision and when the blizzard money stops trickling in and the last of the fans give up, they'll finally get "frozen" and hanged on a wall in activision's trophy room.
cef1bf No.15923115
>>15922151
>get a box of pumpkin poptarts as a gift
>they all have that pink haired turbo bulldyke on the front
Almost killed my appetite.
af8d3a No.15923132
>>15921991
Fuck off black procedure shill
a4b6d4 No.15923226
>>15921991
>he posted it again
none of those games are good, fuck off
b224a1 No.15923281
>>15917057
Some people cannot be trained. They are either too headstrong, stupid or all they care about is the position they think they are owed, and how they are going to get it.
b155cf No.15925825
>>15923226
What games would you recommend that Overwatch players would actually play? I've asked this question quite a few times but haven't gotten a good answer. People that play Overwatch have never heard of games like "Quake Champions." Please enlighten us if you have better ideas. Otherwise, arguments introduced without evidence will be dismissed without evidence.
9903bb No.15925848
>>15925825
Stop posting that image in general. It's a shit image. You're shit for posting it.
>>15923226
Splatoon, CSGO, and Smash are fun. His image is still shit though.
684fbb No.15925907
>>15923226
Splatoon is pretty good. Smash Bros too. CSGO was good at first but you should play Source instead.
>>15925825
>what games would you recommend that Overwatch players would actually play
What you're doing here is setting up the discussion so you get the make the rules. "Games that OW players would actually play" isn't quantifiable and you know this, so you get to decide the final list. I know you mean "which games would casuals like to play," and I know you're coming from a good place, but you should always recommend games that are actually good and not shit. You should also put more damning evidence against Blizzard in your image going forward.
b155cf No.15925945
>>15925848
>you should always recommend games that are actually good
People won't jump ship to indie games they've never heard of. You need to familiarize yourself with the "Mere-exposure effect."
>more damning evidence against Blizzard
Please, I'm all ears.
cef1bf No.15925963
>>15921991
Hey Mark please dump this guy's post history. I'm absolutely certain he spams other retarded shit.
56d225 No.15939841
>>15912654
But why not just fire them? Stock prices?
233622 No.15939881
I don't want to make a new thread but apparently Blizzard has plans to fire their CFO
https://archive.vn/MkJnT
Apparently the guy has only been their a year and he was being poached by Netflix.
27bcaa No.15939917
>>15939841
Buyouts are cheaper than wrongful dismissal lawsuits
762167 No.15939962
>>15923115
>poptarts
>as a gift
55eac1 No.15940029
>>15914456
I hate this fat kike so much. I hope everything he loves is destroyed.
82052a No.15940070
>>15940029
>Fat Kike
>Loving anything except money