Hey there. I sense that you are really really frustrated. I understand your vitriol and dissatisfaction with ATVI and its subsidiaries. ANNNND… I think I understand your belief that current subs somehow support the toxic work culture that has injured people.
I would only urge you to reconsider the way your own words might come off to good people who just enjoy playing a game…AND…are hesitant to let their online social groups go. This isn’t JUST a game for many many good people…this is a community.
Being disgusted with a person because they continue to live in a city where the mayor is corrupt seems nonsensical to me…just a thought. Our community persists because of its people. We care about each OTHER… and less about the suits.
Of course we have feelings about this… we are discouraged as a community. BUT belittling us because we did not unsubscribe seems brash and hurtful when were all dealing with so much. Please reconsider your insult my friend. It hurts enough that our community is enduring dwindling numbers, bad press and corporate degradation.
I don’t believe you left any more than I believe every other “I’m leaving” post that has ever been made in WoW. If you’re truly serious, close your account.
Wouldn’t ascribe too much meaning to stock prices atm. Investors will only react when there’s a significant drop in players and (expected) profit - for now we can’t really expect that because regardless of how seriously you or I take the allegations, many players as well as investors need to see what happens next (settlement or not, what kind of settlement, how does Blizzard act from now on, how does Activision act, do players who quit because of this come back after a month or not, is Blizzards reputation redeemable or not and if no does its reputation even significantly influence profit…?) to decide if they still want to play or not.
Also, speaking from a pure investment pov: It’d be moronic to sell now. You should either buy or do nothing now in case the price is low-ish (do nothing if not) unless you actually think it won’t get better again and the company won’t recover from the worsening of its reputation (which would be kind of naive to think if we look at similar cases in the past). That is sad of course but how many cases do we know where a giant company actually died due to a bad reputation? Look at Amazon, Nestlé, Nike, etc. etc. - really bad reputations but I don’t see them suffering.
On another note we have to remember Activision Blizzard =/= Blizzard Entertainment and atm most of the reputation damage seems to concern Blizzard Entertainment.
But you can still buy it in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Xinjiang China, ect.
It is fairly well understood that they are doing this because it is a progressive cool points thing to do. I don’t care though I love me some Americone Dream and it appears my local store was trying to get rid of inventory, so it was deeply on sale last weekend.
Your chance to go moral high ground was with the Blitzchung situation. Blizzard supports an oppressive Communist regime in China and helps them silence those who would speak out against their atrocities. That’s significantly worse than this situation.
Yet I find it odd that people criticized Blizzard for their Chinese partner punishing someone who made incendiary political remarks on the the partners broadcast. I am fairly sure that if an American called for revolution on a Blizzard broadcast they would also have been punished.
What is going on now though is 100% on Blizzard and really makes their core values kind of humorous in light of what they actually did.
You do not get to shame others for how they handle this situation.
If unsubbing is the best choice for you, then it’s the best choice for you. That’s how you have chosen to handle it.
If staying in the game and finding strength and solidarity in the community is what’s best for them, then that’s the best choice for them. That’s how they have chosen to cope.
We don’t have to pick one of them, we can find both despicable.
I also don’t think they are comparable in a “this is worse/better than that” way.
The common denominator seems to be Blizzard loves to virtue signal while simultaneously silencing people who are being mistreated - be it within the company or by a government.
That’s pretty close to what my take at the time was. I support Hong Kong and I can’t find issue with what Blitzchung did on a moral level, but no one has a right to anyone else’s microphone. I think it’s perfectly fine to expect that players at an e-sports event don’t hijack your microphone for their own personal causes. So I do think that Blitzchung was partially in the wrong there. Now he may have decided that the cause he was fighting for was worth performing that wrong, which I can respect. But that doesn’t mean I’d find fault with the consequences.
No I’m very conflicted at the moment so yea I understand you find that weird.
As I said above, I don’t know if I’m staying or not yet. I’m kind of watching myself and how I feel while playing at the moment and also just listening to and reading differing opinions on what reaction actually makes sense - from players and developers.
For now I’m not planning on buying any more game time when the time I still have runs out (I’m not on a sub and I bought a token like 2 days before the news went public). Might stop playing before it runs out, might not.
At the moment I mostly log on once a day, run around in Korthia a bit and then feel uncomfortable playing after a relatively short while and log off.
The one thing that has been good about still playing was talking to random strangers on my server about it.
I don’t know what the perfect reaction is to be honest.
