I have deleted all ABK games from my computer and phone, and this will be my last post on these forums. If you have not seen this video yet, watch it. Then think about doing the same. This company is abusing its workers, and holding the rank-and-file accountable for leadership’s mistakes. The only way to tell ABK leadership that they are ruining their own brand, is to stop engaging with their products. Then, maybe, they will start treating their employees better, and in turn, their game players better. Blizzard has sacrificed quality of product and quality of workplace, for quantity of dollars, and enriching only a select few ALREADY RICH PEOPLE. The only way to hit them where it hurts is to say goodbye. Blizzard was once the greatest gaming entity in the business, now they should be relegated to the dust bin of greatest mistakes. Mike Ybarra, I’m talking to you. Bobby Kotik, I’m talking to you.
We’ve been through it all before. All that does is punish the actual devs.
Not spending money and refusing to play the game doesnt hurt upper management, it hurts the ground floor staff. If Those upper people see Overwatch 2 not making money and losing players, you know who is going to take the hit? Not them, the actual devs. All it does is give those executives even more reason to get rid of those lower employed people.
They will always continue to blame their staff rather than take accountability for their own failures. Look at Ubisoft, Blizzard, activision, CD projekt red, EA etc etc. its all just top level execs with bad management blaming bottom level people for low productivity and notice the only people that end up suffering are the bottom level employees. Those same upper management are still in place at all those companies even after everything. Its the ground employees that have been fired and/or quit.
The only time anyone from upper management take the hit is when there is a situation so publicly unstable they are forced to leave/be laid off otherwise the entire company looks bad. Ie. There was a director at ubisoft on AC Origins who cheated on his wife and abused his power as director to exploit and manipulate younger women for sex. He had to go or Ubisoft would have suffered immeasurably as a brand from publicly housing a sexual predator
We make like the developers are all good guys. Plenty of reports are out there on how they are overworked.
But this game, and the intolerance in this community from team play to even simply disagreement of ideas reflects a deficient culture. It’s messy but I’m not surprised there’s trouble. And I’m definitely not going to suddenly jump on the devs’ side given where this game is at.
I don’t like this way of thinking. You don’t support the devs by playing the games. All Profits go to the upper managment and layoffs happen even in record years.
And if all the revenue Blizzards makes goes to other companys instead you create jobs there and maybe they hire the staff of the now bankrupt Blizzards and they got a workplace where they are seen as real humans
And for those who had to move out of the city because of the increasing cost of rent during the pandemic who can no longer return to the office?
To people who WFH as a way to avoid the toxic work culture at ABZ?
I don’t get why you all like to pretend this is just a “lazy people don’t want to go to the office” when there are very real reasons someone physically can’t be able to return to the office after an extended period of time.
All boycotts do is hurt the ground floor devs. It’s literally current affairs. Look at all the recent hogwarts legacy drama due to Jk Rowling’s divisive political views on gender. All the people boycotting the game are doing so because they dont want to support JK Rowling in any way, when all they are doing is hurting the devs who spent the last 6-8yrs making the game.
Luckily we arent all braindead sheep and most intelligent people can understand that whilst she is the IP holder of the HP/WW franchise, she had no part in the development of the game. The game just happens to exist using her IP and warner bros. has already paid her for the rights to the entire franchise, likely on a set multi-year contractual basis. Ie. They pay $xxxxxxxx and they get the distribution and creative rights to make movies/games/media using that franchise but none of that is actually headed or produced by JK Rowling herself.
She is likely quite happy to sit back and let other people use her creative work for their own projects. So all the people boycotting the game are mostly hypocrites unless they completely boycott the entire franchise in its entirety. But from what ive seen is they pick and choose. They’ll boycott the game but they also went to Universal Studios last year and visited the Wizarding World park. So…
I think people latching on the RTO policy have wildly missed the point of why employees there are so thoroughly miffed.
This has very little to do with employees ‘being annoyed at having to commute’ and has everything to do with Bobby and his ilk peeing on their collective legs and calling it rain.
They won’t even answer all staff questions, they’re screening them like PR exercise.
They’re not getting full amount of the profit share bonuses they were promised.
They treat their few remaining QA people like dirt (insanity on live service games like Overwatch.)
Their CEO’s and managers try to say the loss of bonuses for them ‘isn’t so bad’ (after a strong 4th quarter)… which is a slap in the face coming from literal millionaires to their lowest paid employees doing the grunt work.
This whole ‘cry harder about RTO’ angle misses the point of Blizz employee outrage entirely. A total r/whoosh moment for people who can’t be bothered to read up on what the actual problem is.
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