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I cut my teeth on Diablo, and played Diablo II for probably fifteen years after its release off and on as a way to stay connected with a friend who loved it sim

I cut my teeth on Diablo, and played Diablo II for probably fifteen years after its release off and on as a way to stay connected with a friend who loved it similarly. More recently, I have consistently played Starcraft II since its release and enjoy a sense of mastery over that game unparalleled by my experience in any other. I haven't purchased new Blizzard products since the Hong Kong censorship debacle[1] and quit playing Hearthstone at that time. However I had still played some of my other old favorites, reasoning that I was not providing them further financial support. The recent announcements about their terrible, sexist culture had challenged that notion for me, and I was not sure what to do. This news is the straw that breaks my back. That Activision/Blizzard would double down on their despicable behavior and stance in this way is completely beyond the pale, and I for one will never again fire up those games that I loved so much. Thanks for ruining that for me, Blizzard. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitzchung_controversy

runawaybottle 5y ago
They don’t really care that much about the American market anymore really. Something like 90% of League of Legends players are in China. The mobile gaming market is massive over there, hence Diablo Immortal. China does not care about the West’s uproar over most things. Blizzard does not care if you buy Diablo 4, they care if the East buys Diablo 4 and Diablo Immortal.
- biryani_chicken 5y ago
  It's dystopian to see Chinese people consume American products at the expense of American workers.
  - runawaybottle 5y ago
    The irony of what you are saying here is too much friend. Americans consumed Chinese goods at the expense of Chinese workers. I’m no CCP apologist by any measure.
    - aksss 5y ago
      > Americans consumed Still a voracious consumer of Chinese goods, as is the world.
      - Ericson2314 5y ago
        I would like a tarrif that goes down as wages of the exporter goes up. Screw nationalism. Help all the workers.
  - zeusk 5y ago
    And not dystopian to see American people consume American products made in China at the expense of Chinese workers? The manufacturing industry in Asia isn't very pretty.
    - beebmam 5y ago
      Of course it is. My god, there have been like 100+ documentaries and an uncountable number of news articles and literature written about this exact topic for like the last 30 years.
  - azornathogron 5y ago
    Turn-about is fair play, right? Less tongue-in-cheek, I'm really not sure it's China's responsibility to ensure good working conditions in the foreign companies that produce the goods they want to buy, and I'm not sure it's the west's responsibility to ensure good working conditions for the Chinese workers who produce the goods we buy either. I feel I may be in the minority with that view though.
    - ehnto 5y ago
      I don't entirely disagree, pointing out that their workers are at least the producing country's responsibility is fair, since some seem to forget. But the consuming country is still participating in the exploitation knowingly. It's not like we're unaware, so it's definitely a conscious choice being made to ignore it. It's worth considering the weight of that, since being loud about it has been cause for quite a lot of positive change over the decades. It's not like I think someone who buys something made with exploitation is a monster, or even shares much of the blame at all, but it is a choice you can make to support less exploitation here and there and I think that's worth doing.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - dillondoyle 5y ago
      I don't totally agree but it's a good point. I think it's important to add that with China t's not simply poor working conditions (happens in other countries too, but CCP on a vast scale and what we're talking about). It's forced labor and genocide, which I think we have a fundamental human obligation to do the smallest bare minimum of trying to avoid those goods (like cotton). That should rise above states and politics. Though tougher action that could make a difference of course has big consequences and a big ethical dilemma for sure. But a boycot seems like the most basic bare minimum.
  - csydas 5y ago
    Can you explain why you chose «dystopian» here? Did you maybe mean to indicate a sick irony? I want to lead off with saying I don't want __anyone__ exploited, but this more or less is what US consumers have and continue to do world wide, and I'm not sure that dystopian is the most accurate word for it. I'm not fully convinced that the original comment that Blizzard wants to sell in China is entirely accurate (there is truth of course, but somehow I think they'd really feel if the American market lost confidence), but dystopian is a pretty specific word for me, and just curious what you are meaning to communicate.
    - runawaybottle 5y ago
      I can lend some color to that. Blizzard created a modestly successful MOBA to compete with League of Legends and it just couldn’t make a dent in LoL’s Asia numbers, so they slowly put the game into maintenance mode (effectively given up on it). Diablo Immortal is them outsourcing development of a flagship franchise to a Chinese company Netease to develop a mobile version. Netease mobile games are really big overseas. That to me is similar to Facebook outsourcing to Bytedance to make a social network with China in mind first. There’s a world of difference between having an office China and literally handing over your IP to a Chinese company. It’s a big deal. It’s not they don’t want American’s money, everything adds to the bottom line, but China is showing itself to be bigger markets for video games (just as Hollywood is seeing that they are becoming a bigger market for movies). It’s a very real thing, and forward decisions are being heavily influenced with that market in mind first and foremost. Edit: To put a final stamp on my main point, if the Chinese people were to be offended by these allegations, I can promise you Blizzard would turn the world over and rectify it over night. The same way they got John Cena to apologize in Mandarin to not fuck with the Fast and Furious release in China. We matter very little at this point to these industries.
      - vlunkr 5y ago
        Still though, dystopian is not the right word for video game drama/economics.
      - itsoktocry 5y ago
  - nemo44x 5y ago
    It's amazing that they're actually paying for them.
  - Aunche 5y ago
    How are Chinese people benefiting from Blizzard hiding sexual harassment allegations? From a pure workload perspective, most Chinese people would probably consider Blizzard to be relatively lax.
aeoleonn 5y ago
Check out Path of Exile 2 -- it's the spiritual successor to Diablo 2. And it's freemium
- dimitrios1 5y ago
  It's a great game, but if you are concerned about Freedom in Hong Kong, Grinding Gear Games is owned by Tencent, so you are still sending money to support an authoritarian regime that is still finishing up their latest installment of ethnic cleansing and re-education camps.
  - philliphaydon 5y ago
    I had no idea. Looks like I won’t be playing PoE 2. Thanks.
  - Nuzzerino 5y ago
    This is anecdotal but I have memories of people freely bashing the USA in POE chat rooms, while I got a warning for making comments about China.
  - pteraspidomorph 5y ago
    So is Funcom, Riot, Epic, Miniclip... They're harder to avoid than Nestle...
    - LegitShady 5y ago
      No they’re very easy to avoid. Just don’t play games by ten cent owned companies. There are a lot of companies out there and a lot of games - more than you or I could conceivably have time to play.
      - sidlls 5y ago
        And almost none of them is any good. I like story heavy games and can tolerate some pretty bad art and graphics for a good story. Unfortunately most games these days seem to be terrible on both counts.
adkadskhj 5y ago
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- jchrisa 5y ago
  The myth of shareholder value is roundly rejected by the people who's job it is to think about these things: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-value-myth/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- whatshisface 5y ago
  >Ie why would Blizzard be okay with workers unionizing for better work conditions? It seems unlikely that would favor Blizzard in the short term[1]. Well, if everyone reading about Blizzard's malfeasance decides to not do business with them, as some commenters in this thread are doing, then they will suffer a problem in the short term as well.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- autokad 5y ago
  the problem you have is that you think fighting the unionization is amoral, when in fact doing what is right bye shareholders is the moral thing to do. shareholders is small private investors like me (although I don't invest in Blizzard), your 401ks, etc, to whom they are managing our money for us. unions sounds nice, but we are just giving up money and freedoms for another layer of corrupt bureaucracy. I don't know much about this particular story, but more often than not I find these union pushes are done by people looking to increase their own power. its a very lucrative career move.
- brainfish 5y ago
  My hope is that I can contribute in my small way to making moral behavior more profitable than immoral. IE voting with my wallet. I'll also vote for policies and representatives to enact sensible (opinions will differ, obviously) legislation to enforce better morality and better safeguarding of the commons, especially with respect to externalities -- as I see those as a major source of the failings of capitalism. Beyond that, I don't really know. And I'll readily admit that looking around at where we as a society are and where we seem to be headed, especially with respect to things like climate change, those seem like very small measures. I just don't know what else to do.
Icathian 5y ago
My experience has been almost identical. What a crying shame that they've fallen this far.
fidesomnes 5y ago
I bet you applauded when Twitter censored people they didn't like.
x3iv130f 5y ago
A company is only just a shell. It is the creative people that work for a company that make the actual products. If you like a game, keep bookmarks on the people who made it and follow them around the industry.
- my_usernam3 5y ago
  Dreamhaven & frostgiant are the ones I'm following (and super hyped for), is there anything else I should be aware of?
  - bobiny 5y ago
    Bonfire studios
  - bitsoda 5y ago
    Keep an eye on Ben Brode's scrappy new studio, Second Dinner.
- MikeTheGreat 5y ago
  This is a really awesome point, and one that I hadn't considered before. This is how I normally find new books to read (by following authors) for some reason it just hadn't occurred to me to follow individuals in the gaming space. (Except for the Mode 7 Games, which put out Frozen Synapse, the awesome turn-based RTS [0] ) I'm curious how you follow people when so many games are made by teams of people - how do you find them, how do you decide which ones to follow, etc. I'd love to hear more [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_Synapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_Synapse
  - keerthiko 5y ago
    Western gamedevs are almost universally on twitter. Pick the ones whose contributions to the games you enjoy you think mattered most (narrative designer of a story you liked, or combat designer of a gameplay loop you liked, or lead programmer of a technically robust complex game, 3D artist of a game with beautiful environments, etc). Follow them and their recommendations! Ditch them when they turn out to be predatory/abusive assholes.
acituan 5y ago
> I for one will never again fire up those games that I loved so much That is a very confusing argument to me. Not only you’ve already given your money to them and received your end of the transaction, whether you make use of it or not, is this the most robust way to conceptualize the identity of a corporation? No temporal limitations, no account for the actual people that make up the corporation at a given time? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying keep buying their games or give support to what they do but if the people who made your beloved Diablo aren’t the same people responsible for today’s shitshow, what’s the point of your gesture? The inverse concern applies too, VW, IBM, Hugo Boss among many other had affiliations with Nazi Germany. Should they be condemned today, if so for how long more? What determines the cutoff? This is a classic Theseus’s ship problem, if you change every board of a ship one board at a time, is it still the same ship, how do you define the identity functions. Sounds like this is less about the identity of the corporation you affiliated with and more about identity of you through what you choose to/not to affiliate with.
- brainfish 5y ago
  > Sounds like this is less about the identity of the corporation you affiliated with and more about identity of you through what you choose to/not to affiliate with. There is certainly an element of this, I am sure. But frankly it is that I don't want to give them even the millionth-of-a-cent of value that they could derive from my +1 to their active player numbers. I don't want to contribute anything to their advantage.
  - acituan 5y ago
    You can play Diablo I and II offline. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with demonstrations of purity in protest, for the record, as long as we’re honest about what they are.
dharmaturtle 5y ago
I've slowly stopped playing video games after college... but I deleted my Blizzard account after Blizzard doubled down on Blitzchung. Banning the casters for six months... that still gets me riled up. It makes zero sense to ban the casters for the player's conduct.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  I deleted my blizzard account at the time as well and I had most of the products they had ever offered. Aside from missing playing starcraft2 occasionally, I’m not sorry. These companies are organizations who can change rapidly as management and staff turn over. Blizzard from last year isn’t the same as blizzard from 5 years ago isn’t the same as blizzard from 20 years ago. The veneration of brands based on their inheritance from what the brand used to be distorts people’s view of reality, and leads to brands that feel they don’t have to continue in terms of excellence. Personally I think the start of WoW was the end of an age for Blizzard. Similarly the release of Fallout Shelter was the end of an age for Bethesda. Beyond those points the organizations were distorted by the success and profit they encountered there, and basically shifted to new companies with different priorities yet still holding the brand name.
jorgesborges 5y ago
I'm leaning the same direction although I can't bring myself to leave Starcraft. But who knows. For those unaware there's a new company Frost Giant Studios founded by some of the best game developers from Blizzard and they're devoted to creating the next big RTS [0]. One can speculate about their choice to depart from Blizzard and their reasons are probably myriad but it can't be unrelated to the horrible culture there. Here's an interview with some of them on The Pylon Show hosted by Artosis [1]. [0]https://www.frostgiant.com/ https://www.frostgiant.com/ [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As2tPggQaZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As2tPggQaZc
ScoobleDoodle 5y ago
I also haven't purchased any new Blizzard products since Blitzchung. I uninstalled the Activision Blizzard game launcher last night, hopefully others are doing the same and adding to the dent in their KPI scores and financial bottom line.
kelnos 5y ago
I don't really understand this attitude, or line of reasoning, or whatever you want to call it. Sure, if a company does something that you find reprehensible, not giving them further money (or attention) is certainly a reasonable -- and honorable! -- thing to do. But if you've already purchased a standalone[0], non-subscription product from that company, and that company doesn't gain any benefit from your further use of that product (or lose anything from you stopping use), I feel like you're only hurting yourself if you stop using it. I will concede that if the act of playing one of these standalone games makes you think of the bad thing the company did and makes you angry/upset, I guess it makes sense to stop playing them. But unless the bad thing they did is something personally/viscerally important to you, it feels like that's a bit of an odd trigger. [0] If the game is multiplayer, and connects to a company-run server, I guess you could make the argument that they benefit in some way from their active-users numbers being higher. I personally don't find that argument all that compelling, but everyone can of course decide where the cutoff of benefit is for them.
- XMPPwocky 5y ago
  I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to feel weird about watching old DVDs of the Cosby Show, for example. With the "benefit" of context, the vibes are sort of irrevocably off.
  - Phenomenit 5y ago
    Yet Michael Jacksons music is still played on the radio and in other media contexts.
    - afavour 5y ago
      The allegations against Jackson surfaced while he was still very famous so you could argue it’s already been “priced in”, for want of a better phrase.
    - anoonmoose 5y ago
      Better comparison would be R. Kelly who, like Cosby, was actually convicted of what he was accused of, and did end up having a lot of radio stations (and other media contexts) stop using his music. Not all, but a good number.
beebmam 5y ago
I was sexually abused as a child, and having learned in the last week that Blizzard management has actively protected and covered up the sexual abuse and harassment that some of their high level employees have enacted on others, I have felt extremely sick to my stomach and it has been highly triggering for me. Seeing that they're making literally no changes at all to management or executive leadership, I'm having a hard time describing the rage that I feel inside. These people who knew and covered up the harm deserve prison, not just being fired. I've been a huge fan of Blizzard games since I was a child. When I see Blizzard pushing back by aiming to crush internal protest, these feelings I have about this corrupt anything good I ever felt for these games. These people in leadership positions and the HR department that covered this up are criminals and should be seen as such.
- mrits 5y ago
  I hear you. We need a better way of society to punish the individuals. The company is made up of mostly innocent people. Interns new to the industry, people that just got promoted and had dinner with their family last night to celebrate, and the actual victims of this behavior. I never feel good about boycotting a company. I certainly understand the people that do though.
megablast 5y ago
Wow. What a stance you’ve taken. You will no longer play some old games. Not every hero wears a cape.
meristohm 5y ago
I got hooked on Diablo, and the memory of anticipating Diablo II (for which I built a computer) is almost tangible. WoW was the next drug/escape, and Hearthstone my last Blizzard slot-machine until I became a parent. I never thought I’d move away from games, and now I don’t miss them, turning instead to gardening and exploring with my kid. I still have a lot of emotion bound up in that game time, and perhaps they were useful in the absence of a counselor (in person or through books) who could help me cultivate a sense of purpose. I still play a couple games (Hell Let Loose as a 3-person tank crew is great) but only as a way to spend time with distant friends.
- sdwr 5y ago
  Don't know where the downvotes are coming from. People don't want to acknowledge life without gaming?
- bpiche 5y ago
  One thing about the non-rts Blizzard games, is they're basically all loot piñatas. Diablo 1/2/3, WoW, even Hearthstone to some extent are basically loot piñatas that prey on addictive behaviors in very much the same way that loot boxes and freemium mobile games do. Personally, I prefer a well crafted single player story over that sort of 'game'. And if you have your ear to the ground it's clear that they're going to make Diablo 4 a real Genshin Impact loot box nightmare as well. I don't know what demographic they think they're selling to anymore but it's sad.
  - foobarian 5y ago
    I just discovered Genshin Impact and enjoying the story line and combat system quite a bit. The artwork and voice acting is some of the prettiest I've ever seen in a game. What makes it a loot box nightmare? TBH Diablo 2 was a lot worse, the rarest boss drops had the ability to give a player orders of magnitude more power. GI loot scattered around the world is completely unremarkable kind of like the coins dropped by regular mobs. I know about the wishing system but that seems to be a completely optional mechanic that allows people to gamble with money, which seems fair for a F2P game. But can be skipped and is not essential to the gameplay.
alex_c 5y ago
"I haven't purchased new Blizzard products since the Hong Kong censorship debacle" I don't think Blizzard has released any new products (other than game updates) since then anyway, so I expect most people can say the same :) By the way, check out Grim Dawn with the Reign of Terror mod if you want a "Blizzard-free" Diablo 2 experience.
- breakfastduck 5y ago
  I think that's a purposeful misinterpretation of the post at best. They clearly mean they have purchased no further Blizz products since the news.
jmcgough 5y ago
Same - I was a heavy Hearthstone player since beta, and was ranked within the top 500 for about six months towards the end when I was pushing to compete. But the Blitzchung incident left such a bad taste in my mouth that I quit the game and haven't returned to it. They didn't just penalize him for what he did, they BURIED him and effectively ended his career. If he'd held up a sign for ending apartheid in another country he probably would have gotten some small penalty, it was clearly motivated by Blizzard's relationship with China. And it was so over the top and unprecedented that a ton of casters and pro players spoke out against it.
dmead 5y ago
what the hell am i supposed to replace starcraft with?
- wayeq 5y ago
  i hear Hula Hoops are making a comeback
mcdevilkiller 5y ago
It was the developers that made those games, not "the company".
tarsinge 5y ago
The Blizzard that made Diablo and Diablo 2 is not the same as the Blizzard of the today, the key people have moved, so I don’t see the issue with playing their older offline games.
- falcolas 5y ago
  Ironic, the mention of those two. They've both been (or are about to be) re-released (and - as I've heard - have replaced the originals in the launchers). As such, they are both still revenue generating products for ACTI.
raxxorrax 5y ago
I think at the time when Starcraft 2 was released the company changed significantly. I remember Bobby Kotick TD in SC 2. If he hits you, you lose money, if you hit him, you lose money too. It was banned after a short time. I enjoyed SC2 very much, but I left their platform shortly after. Most of my friends stopped playing too.

runawaybottle 5y ago

They don’t really care that much about the American market anymore really. Something like 90% of League of Legends players are in China. The mobile gaming market is massive over there, hence Diablo Immortal. China does not care about the West’s uproar over most things. Blizzard does not care if you buy Diablo 4, they care if the East buys Diablo 4 and Diablo Immortal.

biryani_chicken 5y ago
It's dystopian to see Chinese people consume American products at the expense of American workers.
- runawaybottle 5y ago
  The irony of what you are saying here is too much friend. Americans consumed Chinese goods at the expense of Chinese workers. I’m no CCP apologist by any measure.
  - aksss 5y ago
    > Americans consumed Still a voracious consumer of Chinese goods, as is the world.
    - Ericson2314 5y ago
      I would like a tarrif that goes down as wages of the exporter goes up. Screw nationalism. Help all the workers.
- zeusk 5y ago
  And not dystopian to see American people consume American products made in China at the expense of Chinese workers? The manufacturing industry in Asia isn't very pretty.
  - beebmam 5y ago
    Of course it is. My god, there have been like 100+ documentaries and an uncountable number of news articles and literature written about this exact topic for like the last 30 years.
- azornathogron 5y ago
  Turn-about is fair play, right? Less tongue-in-cheek, I'm really not sure it's China's responsibility to ensure good working conditions in the foreign companies that produce the goods they want to buy, and I'm not sure it's the west's responsibility to ensure good working conditions for the Chinese workers who produce the goods we buy either. I feel I may be in the minority with that view though.
  - ehnto 5y ago
    I don't entirely disagree, pointing out that their workers are at least the producing country's responsibility is fair, since some seem to forget. But the consuming country is still participating in the exploitation knowingly. It's not like we're unaware, so it's definitely a conscious choice being made to ignore it. It's worth considering the weight of that, since being loud about it has been cause for quite a lot of positive change over the decades. It's not like I think someone who buys something made with exploitation is a monster, or even shares much of the blame at all, but it is a choice you can make to support less exploitation here and there and I think that's worth doing.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - dillondoyle 5y ago
    I don't totally agree but it's a good point. I think it's important to add that with China t's not simply poor working conditions (happens in other countries too, but CCP on a vast scale and what we're talking about). It's forced labor and genocide, which I think we have a fundamental human obligation to do the smallest bare minimum of trying to avoid those goods (like cotton). That should rise above states and politics. Though tougher action that could make a difference of course has big consequences and a big ethical dilemma for sure. But a boycot seems like the most basic bare minimum.
- csydas 5y ago
  Can you explain why you chose «dystopian» here? Did you maybe mean to indicate a sick irony? I want to lead off with saying I don't want __anyone__ exploited, but this more or less is what US consumers have and continue to do world wide, and I'm not sure that dystopian is the most accurate word for it. I'm not fully convinced that the original comment that Blizzard wants to sell in China is entirely accurate (there is truth of course, but somehow I think they'd really feel if the American market lost confidence), but dystopian is a pretty specific word for me, and just curious what you are meaning to communicate.
  - runawaybottle 5y ago
    I can lend some color to that. Blizzard created a modestly successful MOBA to compete with League of Legends and it just couldn’t make a dent in LoL’s Asia numbers, so they slowly put the game into maintenance mode (effectively given up on it). Diablo Immortal is them outsourcing development of a flagship franchise to a Chinese company Netease to develop a mobile version. Netease mobile games are really big overseas. That to me is similar to Facebook outsourcing to Bytedance to make a social network with China in mind first. There’s a world of difference between having an office China and literally handing over your IP to a Chinese company. It’s a big deal. It’s not they don’t want American’s money, everything adds to the bottom line, but China is showing itself to be bigger markets for video games (just as Hollywood is seeing that they are becoming a bigger market for movies). It’s a very real thing, and forward decisions are being heavily influenced with that market in mind first and foremost. Edit: To put a final stamp on my main point, if the Chinese people were to be offended by these allegations, I can promise you Blizzard would turn the world over and rectify it over night. The same way they got John Cena to apologize in Mandarin to not fuck with the Fast and Furious release in China. We matter very little at this point to these industries.
    - vlunkr 5y ago
      Still though, dystopian is not the right word for video game drama/economics.
    - itsoktocry 5y ago
- nemo44x 5y ago
  It's amazing that they're actually paying for them.
- Aunche 5y ago
  How are Chinese people benefiting from Blizzard hiding sexual harassment allegations? From a pure workload perspective, most Chinese people would probably consider Blizzard to be relatively lax.

aeoleonn 5y ago

Check out Path of Exile 2 -- it's the spiritual successor to Diablo 2. And it's freemium

dimitrios1 5y ago
It's a great game, but if you are concerned about Freedom in Hong Kong, Grinding Gear Games is owned by Tencent, so you are still sending money to support an authoritarian regime that is still finishing up their latest installment of ethnic cleansing and re-education camps.
- philliphaydon 5y ago
  I had no idea. Looks like I won’t be playing PoE 2. Thanks.
- Nuzzerino 5y ago
  This is anecdotal but I have memories of people freely bashing the USA in POE chat rooms, while I got a warning for making comments about China.
- pteraspidomorph 5y ago
  So is Funcom, Riot, Epic, Miniclip... They're harder to avoid than Nestle...
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    No they’re very easy to avoid. Just don’t play games by ten cent owned companies. There are a lot of companies out there and a lot of games - more than you or I could conceivably have time to play.
    - sidlls 5y ago
      And almost none of them is any good. I like story heavy games and can tolerate some pretty bad art and graphics for a good story. Unfortunately most games these days seem to be terrible on both counts.

adkadskhj 5y ago

jchrisa 5y ago
The myth of shareholder value is roundly rejected by the people who's job it is to think about these things: https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-value-myth/ https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2012/06/26/the-shareholder-v...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
whatshisface 5y ago
>Ie why would Blizzard be okay with workers unionizing for better work conditions? It seems unlikely that would favor Blizzard in the short term[1]. Well, if everyone reading about Blizzard's malfeasance decides to not do business with them, as some commenters in this thread are doing, then they will suffer a problem in the short term as well.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
autokad 5y ago
the problem you have is that you think fighting the unionization is amoral, when in fact doing what is right bye shareholders is the moral thing to do. shareholders is small private investors like me (although I don't invest in Blizzard), your 401ks, etc, to whom they are managing our money for us. unions sounds nice, but we are just giving up money and freedoms for another layer of corrupt bureaucracy. I don't know much about this particular story, but more often than not I find these union pushes are done by people looking to increase their own power. its a very lucrative career move.
brainfish 5y ago
My hope is that I can contribute in my small way to making moral behavior more profitable than immoral. IE voting with my wallet. I'll also vote for policies and representatives to enact sensible (opinions will differ, obviously) legislation to enforce better morality and better safeguarding of the commons, especially with respect to externalities -- as I see those as a major source of the failings of capitalism. Beyond that, I don't really know. And I'll readily admit that looking around at where we as a society are and where we seem to be headed, especially with respect to things like climate change, those seem like very small measures. I just don't know what else to do.

Icathian 5y ago

My experience has been almost identical. What a crying shame that they've fallen this far.

fidesomnes 5y ago

I bet you applauded when Twitter censored people they didn't like.

x3iv130f 5y ago

A company is only just a shell. It is the creative people that work for a company that make the actual products. If you like a game, keep bookmarks on the people who made it and follow them around the industry.

my_usernam3 5y ago
Dreamhaven & frostgiant are the ones I'm following (and super hyped for), is there anything else I should be aware of?
- bobiny 5y ago
  Bonfire studios
- bitsoda 5y ago
  Keep an eye on Ben Brode's scrappy new studio, Second Dinner.
MikeTheGreat 5y ago
This is a really awesome point, and one that I hadn't considered before. This is how I normally find new books to read (by following authors) for some reason it just hadn't occurred to me to follow individuals in the gaming space. (Except for the Mode 7 Games, which put out Frozen Synapse, the awesome turn-based RTS [0] ) I'm curious how you follow people when so many games are made by teams of people - how do you find them, how do you decide which ones to follow, etc. I'd love to hear more [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_Synapse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_Synapse
- keerthiko 5y ago
  Western gamedevs are almost universally on twitter. Pick the ones whose contributions to the games you enjoy you think mattered most (narrative designer of a story you liked, or combat designer of a gameplay loop you liked, or lead programmer of a technically robust complex game, 3D artist of a game with beautiful environments, etc). Follow them and their recommendations! Ditch them when they turn out to be predatory/abusive assholes.

acituan 5y ago

> I for one will never again fire up those games that I loved so much That is a very confusing argument to me. Not only you’ve already given your money to them and received your end of the transaction, whether you make use of it or not, is this the most robust way to conceptualize the identity of a corporation? No temporal limitations, no account for the actual people that make up the corporation at a given time? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying keep buying their games or give support to what they do but if the people who made your beloved Diablo aren’t the same people responsible for today’s shitshow, what’s the point of your gesture? The inverse concern applies too, VW, IBM, Hugo Boss among many other had affiliations with Nazi Germany. Should they be condemned today, if so for how long more? What determines the cutoff? This is a classic Theseus’s ship problem, if you change every board of a ship one board at a time, is it still the same ship, how do you define the identity functions. Sounds like this is less about the identity of the corporation you affiliated with and more about identity of you through what you choose to/not to affiliate with.

brainfish 5y ago
> Sounds like this is less about the identity of the corporation you affiliated with and more about identity of you through what you choose to/not to affiliate with. There is certainly an element of this, I am sure. But frankly it is that I don't want to give them even the millionth-of-a-cent of value that they could derive from my +1 to their active player numbers. I don't want to contribute anything to their advantage.
- acituan 5y ago
  You can play Diablo I and II offline. I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with demonstrations of purity in protest, for the record, as long as we’re honest about what they are.

dharmaturtle 5y ago

I've slowly stopped playing video games after college... but I deleted my Blizzard account after Blizzard doubled down on Blitzchung. Banning the casters for six months... that still gets me riled up. It makes zero sense to ban the casters for the player's conduct.

LegitShady 5y ago
I deleted my blizzard account at the time as well and I had most of the products they had ever offered. Aside from missing playing starcraft2 occasionally, I’m not sorry. These companies are organizations who can change rapidly as management and staff turn over. Blizzard from last year isn’t the same as blizzard from 5 years ago isn’t the same as blizzard from 20 years ago. The veneration of brands based on their inheritance from what the brand used to be distorts people’s view of reality, and leads to brands that feel they don’t have to continue in terms of excellence. Personally I think the start of WoW was the end of an age for Blizzard. Similarly the release of Fallout Shelter was the end of an age for Bethesda. Beyond those points the organizations were distorted by the success and profit they encountered there, and basically shifted to new companies with different priorities yet still holding the brand name.

jorgesborges 5y ago

I'm leaning the same direction although I can't bring myself to leave Starcraft. But who knows. For those unaware there's a new company Frost Giant Studios founded by some of the best game developers from Blizzard and they're devoted to creating the next big RTS [0]. One can speculate about their choice to depart from Blizzard and their reasons are probably myriad but it can't be unrelated to the horrible culture there. Here's an interview with some of them on The Pylon Show hosted by Artosis [1]. [0]https://www.frostgiant.com/ https://www.frostgiant.com/ [1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As2tPggQaZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As2tPggQaZc

ScoobleDoodle 5y ago

I also haven't purchased any new Blizzard products since Blitzchung. I uninstalled the Activision Blizzard game launcher last night, hopefully others are doing the same and adding to the dent in their KPI scores and financial bottom line.

kelnos 5y ago

I don't really understand this attitude, or line of reasoning, or whatever you want to call it. Sure, if a company does something that you find reprehensible, not giving them further money (or attention) is certainly a reasonable -- and honorable! -- thing to do. But if you've already purchased a standalone[0], non-subscription product from that company, and that company doesn't gain any benefit from your further use of that product (or lose anything from you stopping use), I feel like you're only hurting yourself if you stop using it. I will concede that if the act of playing one of these standalone games makes you think of the bad thing the company did and makes you angry/upset, I guess it makes sense to stop playing them. But unless the bad thing they did is something personally/viscerally important to you, it feels like that's a bit of an odd trigger. [0] If the game is multiplayer, and connects to a company-run server, I guess you could make the argument that they benefit in some way from their active-users numbers being higher. I personally don't find that argument all that compelling, but everyone can of course decide where the cutoff of benefit is for them.

XMPPwocky 5y ago
I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to feel weird about watching old DVDs of the Cosby Show, for example. With the "benefit" of context, the vibes are sort of irrevocably off.
- Phenomenit 5y ago
  Yet Michael Jacksons music is still played on the radio and in other media contexts.
  - afavour 5y ago
    The allegations against Jackson surfaced while he was still very famous so you could argue it’s already been “priced in”, for want of a better phrase.
  - anoonmoose 5y ago
    Better comparison would be R. Kelly who, like Cosby, was actually convicted of what he was accused of, and did end up having a lot of radio stations (and other media contexts) stop using his music. Not all, but a good number.

beebmam 5y ago

I was sexually abused as a child, and having learned in the last week that Blizzard management has actively protected and covered up the sexual abuse and harassment that some of their high level employees have enacted on others, I have felt extremely sick to my stomach and it has been highly triggering for me. Seeing that they're making literally no changes at all to management or executive leadership, I'm having a hard time describing the rage that I feel inside. These people who knew and covered up the harm deserve prison, not just being fired. I've been a huge fan of Blizzard games since I was a child. When I see Blizzard pushing back by aiming to crush internal protest, these feelings I have about this corrupt anything good I ever felt for these games. These people in leadership positions and the HR department that covered this up are criminals and should be seen as such.

mrits 5y ago
I hear you. We need a better way of society to punish the individuals. The company is made up of mostly innocent people. Interns new to the industry, people that just got promoted and had dinner with their family last night to celebrate, and the actual victims of this behavior. I never feel good about boycotting a company. I certainly understand the people that do though.

megablast 5y ago

Wow. What a stance you’ve taken. You will no longer play some old games. Not every hero wears a cape.

meristohm 5y ago

I got hooked on Diablo, and the memory of anticipating Diablo II (for which I built a computer) is almost tangible. WoW was the next drug/escape, and Hearthstone my last Blizzard slot-machine until I became a parent. I never thought I’d move away from games, and now I don’t miss them, turning instead to gardening and exploring with my kid. I still have a lot of emotion bound up in that game time, and perhaps they were useful in the absence of a counselor (in person or through books) who could help me cultivate a sense of purpose. I still play a couple games (Hell Let Loose as a 3-person tank crew is great) but only as a way to spend time with distant friends.

sdwr 5y ago
Don't know where the downvotes are coming from. People don't want to acknowledge life without gaming?
bpiche 5y ago
One thing about the non-rts Blizzard games, is they're basically all loot piñatas. Diablo 1/2/3, WoW, even Hearthstone to some extent are basically loot piñatas that prey on addictive behaviors in very much the same way that loot boxes and freemium mobile games do. Personally, I prefer a well crafted single player story over that sort of 'game'. And if you have your ear to the ground it's clear that they're going to make Diablo 4 a real Genshin Impact loot box nightmare as well. I don't know what demographic they think they're selling to anymore but it's sad.
- foobarian 5y ago
  I just discovered Genshin Impact and enjoying the story line and combat system quite a bit. The artwork and voice acting is some of the prettiest I've ever seen in a game. What makes it a loot box nightmare? TBH Diablo 2 was a lot worse, the rarest boss drops had the ability to give a player orders of magnitude more power. GI loot scattered around the world is completely unremarkable kind of like the coins dropped by regular mobs. I know about the wishing system but that seems to be a completely optional mechanic that allows people to gamble with money, which seems fair for a F2P game. But can be skipped and is not essential to the gameplay.

alex_c 5y ago

"I haven't purchased new Blizzard products since the Hong Kong censorship debacle" I don't think Blizzard has released any new products (other than game updates) since then anyway, so I expect most people can say the same :) By the way, check out Grim Dawn with the Reign of Terror mod if you want a "Blizzard-free" Diablo 2 experience.

breakfastduck 5y ago
I think that's a purposeful misinterpretation of the post at best. They clearly mean they have purchased no further Blizz products since the news.

jmcgough 5y ago

Same - I was a heavy Hearthstone player since beta, and was ranked within the top 500 for about six months towards the end when I was pushing to compete. But the Blitzchung incident left such a bad taste in my mouth that I quit the game and haven't returned to it. They didn't just penalize him for what he did, they BURIED him and effectively ended his career. If he'd held up a sign for ending apartheid in another country he probably would have gotten some small penalty, it was clearly motivated by Blizzard's relationship with China. And it was so over the top and unprecedented that a ton of casters and pro players spoke out against it.

dmead 5y ago

what the hell am i supposed to replace starcraft with?

wayeq 5y ago
i hear Hula Hoops are making a comeback

mcdevilkiller 5y ago

It was the developers that made those games, not "the company".

tarsinge 5y ago

The Blizzard that made Diablo and Diablo 2 is not the same as the Blizzard of the today, the key people have moved, so I don’t see the issue with playing their older offline games.

falcolas 5y ago
Ironic, the mention of those two. They've both been (or are about to be) re-released (and - as I've heard - have replaced the originals in the launchers). As such, they are both still revenue generating products for ACTI.

raxxorrax 5y ago

I think at the time when Starcraft 2 was released the company changed significantly. I remember Bobby Kotick TD in SC 2. If he hits you, you lose money, if you hit him, you lose money too. It was banned after a short time. I enjoyed SC2 very much, but I left their platform shortly after. Most of my friends stopped playing too.