I never said it was a bad thing. It’s a good thing with bad intentions behind the decision. It’s like a trojan horse I guess if you want an analogy. I’m just frustrated they aren’t going to be honest about and meanwhile people are only going to see “THEY’RE DOING A GOOD THING THAT MEANS THEIR INTENT DOESN’T MATTER!”
Even though the intent behind it is literally what people on these forums have been crying about for a week with the brutosaur outrage and that being the perception of evident greed by trying to force token sales so people don’t miss out on a novelty mount.
Then they throw up a pet with 3 million going to a charity from the proceeds and everyone acts like they aren’t as scummy anymore when the whole driving force behind this action is simply it’s zero loss to them, in fact they probably benefit from doing this and it stopped the outrage mob for a short bit.
That’s kind of a bad analogy, as giving to charity isn’t going to hurt anyone in the end, but sure. Also, i don’t see anyone who actively hates blizzard changing their mind over them doing a charity fund raiser.
It isn’t PR meant for those people. Blizzard has realized no matter what they say, or do a decent chunk of players are going to hate them. Usually the same people, sometimes a whole different crowd.
However it’s more that everything gaming news related is going to shove the “CHECK OUT THE NEW PET BLIZZARD IS DONATING PROCEEDS FROM TO CHARITY!” and that news inevitably will reach people who don’t have a solidified opinion of Blizzard.
Then a few years down the line a few randoms might see Blizzard and think “Oh this is a nice company, they had those charity pets I read about.”
True and I will not dispute that in any capacity. If anything the fact during Blizzcon when they announced a WoW Expansion, a new Diablo game, a new Overwatch game, and a few other things and their stock basically stagnated when it usually goes up at that time tremendously should be telling of just how much of a negative opinion people have regarding them. Their only two decent things affecting stock in a positive direction largely this year have been Classic and the new CoD game which well, Activision but merged company. That Hong Kong thing did not do them any favors, nor did their half apology at Blizzcon.
Regardless though, it’s incredibly hard for me to not see the motive behind their actions as anything other than purely self serving, which is why I argue on the technicality that this isn’t charitable. It’s a decent thing don’t get me wrong, but with self serving motives it ceases to be charitable.
Especially since we just had this same drama earlier this year regarding the toy sales supposedly going to prop up their esports, then when the sum was bigger than they were willing to add to the prize pool they just added part of it and pocketed the rest hiding behind legalese.
Why does it even matter? They could have simply sold the pet without the charity and the kids would get nothing. And did.you all miss the part where Blizz didn’t even pay taxes because of some loophole?
Every person can do the same thing and write it off. Are they now disgusting and shady for doing that after giving money to a charity?
Who cares who does what afterwards? Make a Wish and WE are getting $1.5mil each. There is nothing bad or immoral going on here.
To some, Blizz has a big ole scarlet (blue?) letter tattooed across their chest. They could be out literally feeding the homeless by scooping food onto a plate and people would find some reason to complain.
Edit: Oh, yeah, I forgot. One who tries to explain normal business practices and the process by which charitable donations actually make it to charity, gets branded a “shill”, a “bootlicker,” etc. Not in this thread, no … not yet. Soon.
I love how you act like Blizzard is just wholly incapable of donating themselves. Instead they are acting as a middleman and giving you a pet for giving your money to them so they can give to other people.
Like honestly think about it. They designed a pet. That’s their input here. Past that, it’s taking money from people, compiling it, then allowing them show off by signing a big check. They aren’t matching dollars here, they are literally giving nothing to it. The whole amount they are going to donate, is entirely from the playerbase who buys this pet.
If they were matching dollars then nobody would complain, they’re giving something of their own additive to the sum.
Like I said, all they’re basically doing is serving as a bank, collecting money. Then signing a check and taking credit for the donations because it comes to them in the name of Blizzard Entertainment, not the WoW community who is actually footing the bill.
You know what would have been a good way to do it, which would have upset no one and made a lot of worthwhile kids happy? If they’d done this:
"Special Charity Sale:
For a very limited time this very cute battle pet will be available for purchase from our store - 75% of the total monies raised will be split evently between X and Y charity. At the end of the charity event the pet will no longer be available, so get in now, get your limited edition pet and support two worthwhile charities."
That way, it wouldn’t have mattered how much was raised, we would know that 75% of what we gave them would go to charity and we’d get a one-off collectible battle pet.
They’ve never had a charity pet reach $3 million before. I don’t know why they have a cap at all, but they’ve set that cap at a level that it’s virtually guaranteed to never reach.
Or they could have just said “For every dollar raised, we will contribute X additionally.” Nobody would be griping, at the very least they’d be contributing rather than collecting the sum then taking credit for basically designing a pet, which is really just a downscaled model that took no time to create, collecting money then signing a check.
I think if anything they should have just encouraged people to donate of themselves with their large audience. At least then it looks authentic.
And no, I don’t care that they’re basically just collecting money to then give to charities and say “This is our donation!” I really don’t. I’m just calling it for what it is at the core.
It’s not sketchy behavior at all, as I started to describe in my post I quoted from another of these “shady charitable activities” threads.
Companies do this because only a portion of charitable donations result in a tax write-off, and the maximum write-off is what they are after. I’d bet that, in this instance, the write-off cap is right around $3 million.
I was gonna link info, but sheesh, the info is clearly and plainly available from a basic Google search.
Well, I should have known someone would downvote it. Anyways, I shouldn’t get inolved, this is a flammable situation. I still think it would have been a nice way to please people and make them feel that 25% of their money was well spent, and help kids at the same time.
Therinity was calling people bootlickers earlier. They were also trying to argue that Blizzard was pocketing all of the charity money despite the charities saying they had received money from Blizzard.
I understand what you’re saying, but this is the community we’re talking about. They found this to rage about. They’ll find anything wrong with a charity event to rage about.
Blizzard’s efforts have now been called shady, disgusting, sketchy, greedy, gross, scummy, etc. Yet two charities are each getting $1.5 million dollars. There is no winning for Blizzard in the eyes of these people.
