I didn’t realise how many of the flirts and jokes were that dirty.
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This is what I thought until I saw the thread on r/wow compiling all the dev tweets about how they actually want this changed on their own volition.
It then made sense, especially with the story direction in Shadowlands, that they want to design a family friendly game in the likes of a marvel movie. Only they don’t have the brain of Kevin Feige working behind the scenes to build a coherent narrative, and they’re dealing with a playerbase that feels protective of the way things used to be.
Most judges would laugh at that lame excuse. Most of what they are changing has absolutely NOTHING to do with why they are in trouble.
well the humor is a large part of the game, and as for the painting, its a painting of a woman, i’m sorry all you see is cleavage, but i see a person.
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It’s only a painting.
It’s only some emotes.
It’s only some NPCs.
It’s only some quests.
It’s only some items.
It’s only some jokes and flirts.
-You are here now.-
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Itt is/was a GAME we now live in a society where we have no more escapes from real life/world bs. Can no longer just play a fantasy game without censorship… Well done activblizz 
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This isn’t limited to Acti-Blizz. Pretty much all modern MMOs have heavy moderation. Acti-Blizz is just adapting the the market standards at this point.
Yea that’s a nice theory…but if it were true, you’d be seeing these changes in Overwatch, D3, SC2, CoD and every other IP held by Activision-Blizzard.
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There’s a lot of stuff I’m sure the judge and others would find laughable to remove as well. Regardless of the motivation, it doesn’t stop being incredibly stupid.
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See this argument come up again and again.
Virtue signaling after the fact has no bearing on the facts of a case.
In a jury trial I highly doubt any of this would even be admissible. It’s just not relevant.
`https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Admissible_evidence
This is it exactly. If people in their employ can’t avoid inappropriately using jokes from a game between characters towards real people they work with then those people are the problem and need to be re-trained or fired.
Somehow people in a variety of industries that deal with mature themes, sex, dark humor, etc from the movie to the film to the publishing industry manage to do this.
You silo it off. It’s simple.
Use this test: Are you actually developing the content at that moment and are you in a meeting or messaging someone about it as part of your job to develop, change, improve, implement that stuff?
If yes: so do so from a detached, unemotional, business perspective. Be clinical. Do not invoke real people, comparisons to the person you’re talking to or other co-workers above all else. Use third person, use comparisons to fictional characters only when needed for illustration.
If no: then bringing up something unrelated and potentially inappropriate is 100% inappropriate for the workplace, get sent immediately to HR, if it repeats get immediately terminated from employment.
I mean look at creative industries like TV and Film that depict shall we say “love acts”. While working on cutting or inserting effects on such scenes which include sensitive content involving two humans it is appropriate to discuss the content to the extent required for the job. It is not appropriate to save a clip of that and randomly bring it up when the female producer walks into the room 3 weeks later and smirk lasciviously at her.
Let’s be clear. Separating these things and acting appropriate and in a businesslike manner is part of the job. Those who cannot do so are failing to do their job and need to be retrained or replaced with someone who can DO THEIR JOB.
Yep.
All games break down to same cut and dry mechanics and game play tropes.
YOu will go kill some number of npc type X for Y times.
You will get item X.
YOu will…do the same exact crap you do in any game on the market.
Its the writing that makes this vary. why do I like harebrains schemes shadow run series? Its the writing. It is ye old version X of Unity based RPG 3rd person iso. Dead common design. New game makers earn their fame on cheaper starts with unity. Its not graphics selling the game. Its the writing to the game.
Includes the humor. And yeah some like the less than clean jokes.
See things like Master Baiter add some more base humor to add a chuckle. A chuckle to offset the why the hell am I here of crap quest design.
So I need 10 animal feet. I have to kill 30 of them. 4 legged animal yet my skilled highly trained weapon of war…needs 30 dead animals for 10 feet. Sigh…
At least give me a joke once in a while to make this better. As yeah pretty sure my skilled hunter can get a bow shot to chest/head and there I am getting 10 feet in 3 kills. If my hunter has ruined all 4 feet of a 4 legged animal aiming for the head…at level 60…that is a very poor hunter really lol. Give me a joke to make this better really.
And I ain’t talking boy scout campfire joke about 3 suckers on string joke. For non boy scout type this little joke involves 3 people going into a candy store asking for a candy the store does’t ahve. and the punchline is…I got 3 suckers on string.
This joke wasn’t really funny the first time to me. It hasn’t gotten better at campout 10+ times either tbh.
Yea I don’t think thats why. The response from the players, especially in the long term, could potentially be far worse than anything a judge would do to them in this case. These changes have not been received well from the players from what I have seen. A lot of people are ticked off and rightfully so. They see what is happening now and then think about how its going to change the game going forward. A lot of people are worried and don’t want to be part of it.
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lol
“Your honor…we let this all go on for YEARS and didnt do anything to stop it…silenced and intimidated victims…really just abused our authority on the job like no ones business…but we got busted so now we want to try to pretend that we’ve always stood for fairness and equality in the workplace” signed Lying Lunatic
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But blizz devs said that they care about this and asked for the changes … hmmm honestly at some point I think they might considering they are 30, 40 somethings putting pronouns in their twitter bio so I can buy that but I think the core thing is driven by legal bodies.
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You’re probably right, for the most part.
Still, I wish Blizz would move out of CA and be on their own if Acti won’t come with them.
Since they don’t seem interested in doing that, and since this pc woke stuff seems to be a thing, I’ll be moving on soon.
I don’t find that fun nor interesting and I do see that it is a way to strangle creativity so the game will stagnate anyway if it continues.
A very minor part, in light of the six main arguments in the pending suits. This sort of thing is like butchering peasants in a Medieval battle (they only count in case of a tie).
I never saw why some tech HAS to be in cali.
I mean I see why areas around DC like rockville maryland are “have to be there” for biotech firms. When your people will be spending half their time in DC playing red tape games with the FDA for pharmaceutical submissions it makes sense.
Okay Todd…tomorrow you drive to DC and make a day of it at the FDa and not at the office. Saves tons of travel cost there really.
Tech firms like application developers…you can make that anywhere. NIce area with better living expenses and well there you go. you may be making 80K. But that 80k is getting alot more for its money really.
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that excuse doesn’t hold muster. the adult entertainment industry still has to follow equal opportunity laws. if two adults who are literally about to copulate on camera for your entertainment still have to act professionally, then a judge is not going to buy cleaning up paintings with fruit and removing innuendo’s showing they are a clean workplace.
I think a significant amount of the changes made to the games are coming from people who want those changes to be made for their own reasons.
I also agree with the OP that Blizzard, as a company, decided to let the devs make these changes as a show of improving their working environment.
They went from actively abusing their employees, to giving their employees a voice in their own work.
And it’s not just for show in the lawsuit, it’s to show consumers those changes as well. Since most of us were completely unaware of the sexual assault culture behind the scenes (I 100% refuse to call it “frat boy culture” as was termed in the media to make it seem less offensive).
I know more than one person who is no longer planning on purchasing another Blizzard game ever again because of what has come out about blizzard, and I doubt they’re the only people in the world.