Bobby and probably other execs are on the way out the door as they milk the company one last time with the merger.
I really don’t think they care in the slightest how much harm their actions have caused the company or its reputation at this point.
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I don’t think that’s fair though. If you work in game development you understand that if you ‘whistleblow’, if you leak the project, if you break NDA, you are going to be held very financially responsible, fired, and likely blacklisted from working in the field you got an education for. So even if any of them wanted to relay that information…you’re asking them to sacrifice their entire career for it. It’s impossible. Even if you’re fringe-involved…the risk of breaking an NDA is huge. My NDA for the Alpha of OW2 is obviously expired now, but it was no joke with the legalese for what you have to sign over and stuff. They make it clear; if you break your NDA, they will come after you. TBH, that’s fair, I can’t complain about that.
The dev team did absolutely nothing wrong here. They’re trying to put out the best product they possibly can under terrific stress and pressure, coming from both their ‘fanbase’, and their higher-ups. They’ve got it rough right now. If anyone wants to be angry with anyone, be angry with the execs. Be angry with Kotick
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I’ve worked in software development for 15 years. Devs taking the blame for BS execs come up with is normal literally everywhere. Get used to it. It’s always been that way, and it’s not changing any time soon.
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It’s only a “back office” job for a developer. From their perspective you are a customer of their employer. There is zero need for contact between them and the customers - they know this. They are tools who do as their boss says.
The last thing the average dev wants to spice up his life with is getting in contact with a bunch of angry gamers/trolls. They don’t care what you think or post about them on this forum because it simply doesn’t matter.
Greed… theres your answer.
You know you can leak things without being caught right? You know that is how we found out about the whole milk situation, and OW2 in the first place right?
Its the devs fault game kept falling.
Garbage balance, brig, sigma, orisa… Players started leaving, playerbase went down, then ACTI stepped in.
Failure of oversight. How many millions of dollars have we given this company and you couldn’t allocate enough resources that this game could stay afloat? CEO should step down imo.
I think anyone who is under the impression that “oh someone could’ve just been the whistleblower” really doesn’t understand the implications of being a whistleblower and is not putting themselves in that person’s shoes.
The games industry is one where everyone knows each other. Leaking any information about a project gets you completely blacklisted from the whole industry. The people who work in the games industry are also people who have a passion for it. They are often over worked and underpaid. It’s like being a musician and being banned from ever doing anything relating to music again in your life.
Nobody is going to risk their career, and not to mention possible legal liabilities on their underpaid salaries to whistleblow about how OW’s PvE was getting canceled. An act that is disappointing, but also in no way illegal.
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The developers who were able enough to not be blamed quit already. Those who stayed at Blizzard, a company that underpays, has severe cases of sexual misconduct under its belt and constantly does bad management moves, are those who aren’t good enough to get a better job.
Management sucks.
Developers probably suck, too.
Just my assumption, though. Bad management removes good employees.
If you dare leaking information as an employee not only you will get sued by your employer but also your career in that firm at least is forever doomed.
I hear, the secrets that you keep. When you’re talking in your sleep.
Unfortunately, they couldn’t care less. I am adamant in my belief that all suits are sociopaths. They care only for themselves and furthering their own greed.
They’d probably sell their wives and kids if it made them a substantial amount of money.
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Mike Ybarra is to blame and im surprised no one has brought this up.
But its not just Blizzard. Activision just straight up killed community support for older CoD games. And its not a new info that Kotick is a corrupt desperate man.
you know you can still get caught and face legal repercussions?
Integrity doesn’t exist anymore?
Integrity is a luxury you can afford when you are rich or you are super safe in your life. When your work depends on saying “Yes Sir … change of plans, we will try our best”, theres nothing much you can do.
The higher ups know that the entire OW team won’t leave in mass so in the end, they will always have the upper hand. And yes, after something like this happens, they should leave.
But “should” and “can” are not always on the same boat my dude. Thats reality 
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I agree. They’re just cogs.
NDAs exist to keep them in check even if the entire company does something screwy. So, unfortunately they get blamed even though they’d lose their jobs for telling us about it. It’s a lose lose situation.
I also think, even though OW “2” was going FtP anyway, they did it so if they cancelled something we can’t take them on any legal violations.
Yes, we buy things for anticipation, but we didn’t buy the game itself. I don’t think we can buy multiplayer games outright, just a license to play.
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If we’re talking something relating to peoples’ physical safety, livelihood, investments, whatever, sure, leak something. Not PVE in a kid’s game.
I think a culture of harassment of the nature described there is on a million higher levels than PVE being canceled. I’m going to feel differently watching my cubicle neighbor being routinely harassed than I am that some whiny kids are not going to get the PVE experience they expected.