To those defending this pure unfiltered greed Blizzard has been doing recently by saying " well by paying for it your supprting the game meaning we’ll keep getting content" let me tell you a quick fact.
Overwatch 1’s LootBoxes, Just the lootboxes made Blizzard over $1,000,000,000.
Where did that Money Go? not back into the game, you can’t say in good faith that the amount of content we’ve gotten is anyway what is expected from a game that made over a billion dollars, bad balancing, Recycled events. and only a couple years of support content and if you’re thinking that most of that money went into other parts that Billions dollars, is just from lootboxes, not counting the loads of money they also made from just sales so no matter what there’s still a tom of money that can he put into the game. How much money does the game have to make in order for the content to improve cause the answer seems to be infinite.
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Its needs to keep making money to justify keeping it running
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Ok? does it cost a billion dollars to keep a game running? and give it events, and skins, and characters over a span of 3yrs
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Are you trying to ask a question? Your rant here is not very well written.
I think we all know ow2 took too long and they outlined a plan for future content releases.
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Actually, the developer team size has at least tripled in size since launch so they have increased the resources the game is getting.
The reason you aren’t seeing the results yet, is because they made the (questionable) decision to focus on PvE and only now have pivoted back to PvP.
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I second the other replies here. And, keep in mind, this time (OW2), Blizzard basically made promises about what content they’ll regularly give.
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They’re just moving people around the company from project to project, don’t forget they also fired something like 700 people.
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The lay-offs were in non-development areas, marketing, esports, etc.
Activision Blizzard does have a history of shifting developers around, but they’ve long announced plans in earnings calls to majorly grow development team sizes across the company. OW2 isn’t the only one with a with a bigger team right now.
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Yes but the question is will that content be worth These greedy business practices that are objectively damaging the actually gameplay experience
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Look, I agree with you, but that’s not the reality we live in. If you want the dynamics of our economy to change you need to start by voting in candidates that will enforce restrictions of corporations.
So long as corporations are chasing endless quarterly growth they’ll never be happy that a game is merely profitable. For a AAA publisher, Overwatch’s monetization is generous to a fault. A few casual or new players might buy loot boxes to get a few skins they want, but the average person who plays a few hours a week will by this point have gotten nearly every cosmetic in the game without ever spending a dime.
That’s not sustainable for the likes of Activision Blizzard. They’re not going to invest more money into a game if it’s not going to increase quarterly returns.
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Ok but what about overwatch 1? even before OW2’s announcement weve been getting subpar content with Many recycled events and bad balancing which most certainly doesn’t make sense for game that made so much money, and the point of that is that is to show that it doesn’t matter how much money overwatch makes the greedy execs won’t put the money back into overwatch so all of these new monetization schemes aren’t going to be for the benefit of Overwatch like most people hope
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According to insiders, Kaplan and Sonny considered OW a finished product, not a live service. They wanted to focus all their resources towards finishing OW2 and selling that as a standalone product, too, which meant hoarding the new PvP content until PvE was finished.
The game had pretty solid updates for the first three and a half years. Three heroes a year, new maps about as often, new events, fairly frequent balance changes… But after they announced OW2 in November 2019, development on OW1 essentially stopped.
The only reason we’re even getting OW2 as soon as we are is that Kaplan and Sonny got replaced with Aaron Keller and Walter Kong, who wanted to pivot the game to a live service + seasonal battle pass content model, in large part because players were unhappy with the lack of content from 2019 on.
The unfortunate reality is that if you want to get a game like this greenlit by a company like Activision, you need a monetization model that will not just be profitable, but more profitable over time. Hence a reliance on FOMO and paid content over stuff that can be earned just by playing for free.
Oh, and the layoffs as Jinx said were in non-development areas. Unfortunate though they were, they have been actively growing their teams for a while.
The reduced output over the last few years can be mainly attributed to a mix of the pandemic + work from home transition and the brain drain caused by people leaving the company over working conditions in the aftermath of the allegations and investigations.
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IKR? Seems people think ‘make money once, problem solved’ is the extent of their business knowledge… 
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and ok it’s not a live service, so then from what you’re saying is that OW2 will be game that had a billion dollars put into it, well we knowthat answer that the answer is again no, lacklust number of heroes added and the game feels more like a big update than a proper sequal
and I’m not going to snort 3lbs of Copium in order to think that somehow the PVE will be where all that money went because i again highly doubt it. and what u said about them having to make continuous profits over time means that we really won’t over get to see all that money being put back into the game no matter what.
And I’ll be Honest with you, if they have to teeter om the edge of Pay 2 Win in order to keep this game afloat because the millions upon millions of dollars OW1 made wasnt enough. I’d rather let the game die. better to die as a name with respect than to live on as a shambling corpse like Call of Duty kept only alive only to milk players
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Money doesn’t have to be put in the game. They’re making for them only . That’s why you work. Do you work to give money back to your boss ? No . Same things for overwatch selling contents to make money.
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Well no duhh the point is that we should’ve been getting way higher quality content in OW1 if the argument for Having these new monetization is that the game needs it, and by participating in it it’ll help the game and bring in more content
the whole point of me bringing up the whole billion dollars thing is to show that, no it doesn’t, Because if that’s true than Overwatch 1 should’ve have had way more and better content than it did get, and if OW1 didn’t get it then why should we believe that OW2 will.
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They need to make money, not just to further develop the game, but to warrant the development in the first place. That’s business.
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I swear that guy, or rather a kid most likely (LuckyTiger), has no idea what theyre talking about and is just parroting F2P stuff because all the corporations got the zoomers on the F2P train and now they have to talk about it like its somehow such a “moral” model.
All i see of that guy is just trying desperately to get a “gotcha” moment, but never succeeds. lurks on the forums and waits for someone to like his reply or reply to one of his posts just so he has something to do.
He honestly does not add anything of a valued discussion ever… nothing that Ive seen before.
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https://www.pcgamesinsider.biz/news/68135/report-blizzard-cutting-development-costs-in-wake-of-overwatch-success/
"Overwatch, which according to Activision Blizzard’s most recent investor call has raked in $1bn in revenue since its May 2016 launch.
“We are being told to spend less at every corner because we have no new IP,” said one former developer.
“Because Overwatch set this bar of how much we could earn in a single year, there’s a ton of pressure from Activision to get sht moving. They want something to show shareholders.”
Earlier this year, CFO Amrita Ahuja told staff at a ‘Battle Plan’ meeting that one of Blizzard’s goals for the year was to reduce the amount of money it was spending.*
“This is the first year we’ve heard a priority being cutting costs and trying not to spend as much,” said an employee present at the meeting.
“It was presented as, ‘Don’t spend money where it isn’t necessary.’”
Another ex-Blizzard employee added: “You would’ve thought Blizzard was going under and we had no money. The way every little thing was being scrutinised from a spend perspective. That’s obviously not the case. But this was the very first time I ever heard, ‘We need to show growth.’ That was just so incredibly disheartening for me.” "
Money went to the execs. Dev time with the smaller post launch team went into OWL and minor updates. Sequel gets the OW team their budget back and allows them to expand again to work on PVE content that’s… nowhere in sight, which is the entire reason for going to a predatory F2p model to begin with.
Also you don’t need a giant team or a billion dollars to push out 3-4 heroes a year +skins
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