Very few of their “GM’s” have any power at all. That’s been discussed in this forum. They’re relegated to a CS position and work across several games. Most of them don’t know jack about anything as most ticket responses prove.
Blizzard is a grubby corporation that hasn’t bothered to improve their game at all. They’re main priority is making money while doing as little as possible, NOT making money while making a great game and certainly NOT making sure their employees are treated fairly.
I agree that’s a problem, but it’s a cultural one that spans every industry in the US… it’s hardly unique to Blizz. Cost of living in places like Irvine is just too damn high for a person in an entry-level position to afford. So you commute from a cheaper area and/or split rent. That’s just the reality of the US we live in
Oh look… “corporations bad! pay me more!” anger in a luxury industry…
And it always falls on looking at the low-skill worker getting minimum wage vs the CEO who is compensated by the Board of Directors, when the entire purpose of a corporation is to ultimately serve the corporation. Fostering goodwill by having beefed up salaries and benefits and such is certainly a valid business judgment, but no one is beholden to such things.
I also find it hilarious that the article tries to use RIOT as a foil when they have their own ridiculous corporate culture problems as well.
“Fair wage” is a nebulous and nothing term. If people really hate being low paid game testers for Blizzard, they can be low paid game testers for hundreds of other companies, because being a mere game tester doesn’t pay for crap because it is simple, unskilled, and necessitates a lot of time, not a lot of credentials, licensing, or education, like manning a till for a convenience store.
California is favorable to unions though so let them try to unionize, see how quickly the company goes to crap in quality then. /giggle
Yes, but that does not mean we should just accept it. Pushing for reforms that ensure workers can get paid enough to have basic quality of life, homes, etc. is worth it.
Convincing the peasants they should accept dirt floors, one chicken a year, and dirty water just because they were still alive and others were also living like them…did not make it a good life. Eventually the wealth disparity gets big enough workers make noise and it gets changed.
Not saying life in the US is as bad, but the wealth gap between the world of the wealth and the average person in the US is HUGE - and it is not really ok. We don’t really have much of a middle class anymore.
Complex issue though, and most certainly not limited to Blizz, or the gaming industry (which is known to be pretty brutal).
WoW is the best MMO in the world. WoW is the best MMO in history.
How can something be “the best” and be “so bad now”? It can’t.
So obviously “so bad now” is nonsense, baloney, an idiotic opinion with zero basis in reality.
Sure, WoW is “so bad now” if it is compared with “a perfect fantasy game”. But we all know that is fantasy, not reality. Is it “so bad now” compared to any real game? Any real game with more than a million players?
I don’t care that a handful of people are rich. How does that hurt me?
Why is wealth disparity “not really ok”? It has existed everywhere in the world, at every time in history. It is worse in communist and socialist countries. If you are not okay with reality, fine. But don’t pretend it is worse here than anywhere else or anytime else.
The US has more class-movement than most countries. If you track the same people for 15 years, half of the “lowest 20%” have moved up. Half of the "top 20% have moved down. In the US you are not stuck where your parents and grandparents were.
They get rich by largely underhanded means, stay rich by buying out those supposed to make laws and having them cut their taxes from little to nothing (and corporations use tax loopholes to pay $0 in taxes), while those same politicians say that it’s poor peoples’ fault and not the rich.
If you think wealth disparity doesn’t cause problems, you don’t understand the lie of trickle down economics.
Something like the top 1% own 90%+ of the US’s wealth.
Accurate to your opinion, not really accurate to reality.
You won’t see any sympathy from me because the support they have today is complete garbage compared to what they had 15 years ago. Back then, you could actually get people on the phone, chat with them in game, or email them. All of that is gone now. No phone number. No email address. No chats. Emails they send you are 1 way where a response will reject. All you can do now is submit tickets where they ignore or don’t read most of what’s contained, copy/paste irrelevant text, then close the ticket. It’s literally impossible to have a conversation with a human being from their company in today’s world. You have to wait up to 24h for each answer back and keep making new tickets, each one going to a new agent (presumably because the dumb RPG name changes). They probably did this so they can use people from India that don’t know English or robots to handle most of the cases.
When they censor you off the forum, you’re not told what post triggered them or why it was done. You’re just expected to dig through your own history, which could be thousands of posts, and figure it out yourself. Back in the day they’d show you up front what post triggered them. Even if you submit tickets asking them to show you the post and asking why it was done; they’ll just ignore ya. It’s pathetic. One time I asked 3 different times why I was censored. I was never at any point told what post was deleted or why they did it. They just kept pasting irrelevant text and closing the tickets.
So ya, if we were talking about the Blizzard from 15 years ago when they had good support; I’d side with the staff, praise them, say they deserve better wages. I can remember times I talked to them on the phone when my account was hacked or in the game when my character was stuck; good times. But today? Hell no. I don’t care if they’re replaced by robots at this point. The robots would probably be more helpful. All I feel when I think about my experiences with their support today is disappointment and disgust. I had to wait for a 30d censor to expire just to be able to post this.
They make more now days on micro transactions than they did when they had 12 million active subscribers.
Yes even when you account for inflation.
Activision Blizzard is just bad at paying reasonable wage. Prior to Mike leaving the company the Blizzard Entertainment employees had lower than industry salaries but this was offset with a bonus structure that rewarded the employees for doing great work.
After mike left the Blizzard side was restructured to more closely mirror Activision and it’s been down hill from there out.
With a great many things you do get what you pay for, and quality of a product is often very much tied to the quality of the paid labor that’s balanced on the salary of that position.
Company releases massively successful game - spawning endless expansion of its lore, art style etc - people will do anything to work at their “dream job”
Corporate heads - hey your working at your dream job so we don’t have to pay you adequately.
End of story - same in every industry unless of course your dream is to be a doctor or a lawyer
By the way, I don’t really think that’s why the game is “bad” but it is also a truth
Not always. Sometimes no post or comment is linked in the suspension notification on the forums themselves either. There is no rhyme or reason to when it occurs.
Maybe once in a blue moon, but in nearly every case where my account was hit; I’ve never get an email, never be told what post was hit or why. Several times I’d send in a ticket asking for an explanation and no one would do so. They just ignore ya and close the tickets. I mentioned the time I sent in 3 different tickets, all in vain, to get them to show the post or explain. But that wasn’t the only time I did so. You see I’m been enduring their crap for over a year on these forums. I’m glad it’s coming to an end when I expire.
Regarding the phone, I don’t know why you quoted that unless it was to just explain why they removed it. If other people misused it, that wasn’t my fault.
Same experience here- either they overturn it because I was banned in error and thus they don’t have a post to show since, well, it was done in error.
Or they don’t respond and I wait out the ban.
Yet to get the guilty post sent my way, which makes sense- their forum automatic banning system only know how many reports you get, not if you’ve done something wrong. They’d be giving a lot of emails to people with clearly wrongful bans for players to mock on reddit if the automated banning system was sending stuff like ‘you were banned for the following post, “I agree with the OP, sounds like a good plan”. This is against our ToU, this ban is final and cannot be overturned’ or however the bot’s template is worded.