Pray tell, what exactly is the problem with him responding here? He answers fun questions he is criticized. He answers serious questions he is criticized.
This is going to come as a shock to you but most of Blizzard’s management didn’t START in Blizzard even before they joined up with Activision.
He doesn’t tell me what I want to hear. Ooh you better believe that’s a paddling.
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Activsion is the Parent company, possibly making financial suggestions/ultimatums and telling them to put a link to Call of Duty (or whatever the heck game that was) on the launcher. They might be the ones suggesting to eliminate lots of customer service jobs, now that the days of “one on one” GM/customer interaction are long over and things are more automated.
Activision isn’t sitting there saying, “Make sure you put in more RNG this expansion, oh and something called “AZERITE ARMOR”, and make sure you keep in that Titanforging thing that a few people hate. OH, also REALLY drag out the Zandalari and Kul’tirans!”
So scapegoating Activision, for things they probably have nothing to do with, is silly and naive. It makes you look like some overzealous Blizzard fanboy, still somehow holding on to the notion that your “pals” at Blizzard can do no wrong.
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This is not what’s happening.
Activision Blizzard doesn’t have any control over Blizzard Entertainment, or rather they do, but, they don’t use it, preferring to let Blizzard do their own thing. This is how it’s been since 2008 when the merger between Vivendi and Activision happened in the first place.
The reason Black Ops 4 and Destiny 2 are on the Blizzard launcher is because Blizzard wanted to put them there (by their own admission).
As for them issuing ultimatums, this doesn’t happen. Tom Chilton (who was the former game director for WoW from Cataclysm to the start of Legion) stated quite clearly in an AMA how much control Activision Blizzard has. They issue no demands, nor do they give suggestions. Twice a year (sometimes not even that) the staff at Blizzard will give presentations to Activision Blizzard showing where they’re at with their work and what their plans are.
That’s it, end of story.
I imagine you’re right.
Problem we’re having right now is, after the awful Diablo Immortal presentation, people wanted someone to blame. Kotaku ran an article quoting disgruntled (unhappy) current and former employees who indicated the Blizzard CFO who came from Activision Blizzard (and recently left for Square) was pushing cost cutting measures. This led to the conclusion that Activision Blizzard was taking a more active role in things Blizzard was doing and everything since has been read through the filter of Activision Blizzard is meddling in Blizzard’s affairs - even though CFO’s focus on two things - cutting costs and increasing revenues - and Blizzard has been doing the same exact things they’re pointing at (store mounts, bundles on the store, holiday sales, offering buyouts to people in positions with no opportunity for advancement) for years. So, the echo chamber narrative on YouTube and on the Forums is all of what’s going on is (obviously) proof Activision has taken over.
Patrick Beja (from the Instance Podcast and former Blizzard Employee) had a pretty interesting back and forth with Bellular on Twitter about it.
I don’t think Activision is more involved with Blizzard - I think upset gamers want someone to blame.
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It wasn’t ready to announce? They’ve already basically confirmed it’s being worked on and if the interviews are to be believed they’ve basically scrapped 2 previous versions and started over (iteration which is something Blizzard typically does even if it means throwing away years of work). People act like this mobile version means they couldn’t possible be also working on a PC version
Yea I hate the microtransaction mess Diablo 3 has become…
That. and only that.
I wish you could tell us what’s going on inside blizzard HQ. I think the reason we community jump. To conclusions is because we don’t have answers so we create ones that fulfill our biases. I’m sure the answer is much simpler than conspiracy theorists would have us believe, but because we don’t get clarification, we don’t know. They could be right.
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The thing is, Battlenet allows them to use existing infrastructure to deliver/manage games and handle authentication. Why would Activision, or King for that matter if they also did PC games, want to spend time, money, and effort to replicate something that was already being done at a sister company?
Remember, Blizzard was going to retire BattleNet at first. Then they changed their minds and expanded on it…
Actually it’s called the “Blizzard App” and the login window has the Blizzard Entertainment logo. So if this was “Activision influencing Blizzard” the first thing to change would have been that logo.
And I would rather they cut costs by utilizing existing infrastructure like BattleNet. That’s actually a smart business decision.
You guys need to stop blaming Activison for the failures of Blizzard. Activision didn’t put out this failure of an expansion that left many guilds and friend lists mostly empty, Ion and Friends did.
Give credit where credit is due.
When the developers who put out this failure of an expansion do something you like it’s all “omg thank you Blizzard!!!” but when they do something you don’t like everything turns into “OMG Activision is ruining WoW!”.
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Better communication, both quality and quantity, would go a long way towards easing that frustration. There’s only so long people can be completely baffled by Blizzard’s recent poor performance before they start reaching for irrational reasoning.
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Activision owns Blizzard as one of their studios, just like EA owns Bioware. Originally, it was stated they would not interfere with the day to day operations, but it has definitely gotten more and more obtrusive over the years.
They are the guys paying the bills, so hence why they are meddling.
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Not to offend your position, Ythisens, but most people in corporations who aren’t executives (including Community Managers) have no idea how their company works. You’re probably in the dark just as much as us when it comes to critical strategy decisions being made at Activision-Blizzard. Many of the people on the Heroes of the Storm team didn’t even learn of the decision until Mr. J. Allen Bracks post. That’s fairly common for large multi-national corporations.
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I worked for a company that was bought by a large public company. The public company promised independence. Slowly, over years, the public company pushed out the old guard and replaced them with the public company’s kool-aid drinkers. Eventually, everything that my company wanted to preserve by staying independent was destroyed, replaced by the public company’s bs. Still independent on paper, but in practice completely subsumed.
This is essentially what I see has happened here.
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Well, I do not accept again that kind of response,
This happened in the past.
You are severely underestimating the intelligence of your customers, a lot of the people commenting about the concerns of Activision/Blizzard probably have more financial background than you, so, sorry, I’m extremely pissed off with that childish response Ythisens, because again, you don’t give a real response, just a “Guys you don’t have a F*** idea how big companies work”.
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Ummm because you and the community don’t do research. The people that say this are those here in General Discussion who just say stuff they know nothing about. Have you heard ANYONE from Blizzard say Activision has a say in Blizzard games? No, you haven’t because it isn’t true. The community always looks to finger point so what better way then to take something they know nothing about except for the stock name and just say, “Activision is ruining Blizzard”. Do they have facts? Nope.
-_-
smh
Josh Allen == Lore
J. Allen Brack == Blizzard President
I think a few posts nail the issue of why people blame Activision. A large part of Blizzard games always consisted of Blizzard fans. We jumped from warcraft, to diablo, to starcraft… depending on which game was coming out. I think it’s easier to blame the company’s shift on an outside source rather than admit that we might not be dealing with the same company we’ve known for so long.