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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Steve Jobs quote on why Xerox failed [1] strikes again. The finance people have taken over Acti-Blizzard and they've been coasting for 10+ years on their original franchises. All we have is annual CoD releases and Blizzrad coasting on their old properties where Blizzrd hasn't had a significant original release in 10+ years.
This effort seems like it's part of the ruthless approach to controlling costs that slowly strangle a company from within.
I believe WoW is the #2 property (after CoD) at Acti-Blizzard and it's clearly changed from one of delivering a game to simply extracting as much money as possible from each customer much like how almost all mobile games do.
The state of California's complaint is bad. I mean really bad. The fact that 3-4 different people from AB all released different statements in the last week should tell you exactly how bad it is. That's classic panic mode. There should only be one.
This latest move tells you the company believes it will blow over and they're looking to do the minimal required to appease the detractors and get back to business as usual without having to pay people more or pay out a bunch of lawsuits.
Honestly, the heads of J Allen Brack and Bobby Kotick in particular should roll over this lawsuit.
EDIT: commenters have noted (correctly) that I overlooked Overwatch. This was a significant release but it seems to also have waned in popularity and Overwatch 2 is inextricably going in some weird PVE direction.
Other than that you have a poor received Diablo sequel, a series of lackluster to bad WoW expansions, a disastrous Warcraft 3 remaster and complete abandonment of the RTS genre that propelled them to success in the first place.
WC3 Reforged ("Refunded") was significant in that it was not only underwhelming and plagued with problems it made the original game worse with a forced download and loss of functionality.
The most significant change however was Blizzard not wanting a repeat of missing the MOBA boat with Dota 2 by adding a condition that all the IP for third-party maps belong to Blizzard, completely killing that ecosystem.
Clickbait title for a highly opinonated piece that would never see the light of day in a respectable publication like the Washington Post, WSJ, NYT, Economist, etc. WilmerHale is a well-known top-100 law firm with a long history -- it's definitely not a "notorious union-busting firm." I'm flagging this story because it doesn't belong on the front page of HN, IMHO.
A quote from the article: '"Wilmerhale’s own site advertises its expertise as "union awareness and avoidance."'
Therefore, yes, it is accurate to define them as a "union-busting firm". They fulfill other roles than just that, but they do act as union-busters, and they even describe themselves as such.
WilmerHale is not a notorious union-busting firm. The older set might know their work from A Civil Action, and their grandparents might remember the phrase that turned the red scare, "At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"[1]
The marketing material is unfortunate, though, and the connection with Amazon labor work is notable.
The problem I see with them is the brain drain if the influential people leave. They have options at other companies, and if enough people leave Blizzard they may be stuck. But this is just me looking from the outside in. This also signals they are scared of them unionizing.
I know we don't want to say this but there might be a possibility some of the talent secretly are indeed sexist (wouldn't surprise me in the gaming world) and thus actually prefer to stay at a place that preserves the male dominated culture. That might be part of the strategy behind activisions anti walkout move here. Just a thought (I don't know).
I'm really interested to see what happens here. Amazon busted the efforts of people with few options, people who could be threatened with bullshit/propaganda. I wonder if big law is sufficiently aware of the substantial impact that the recent years of ethical discussion have had on the gamer and game dev psyche. No matter the individual ethical stance of an employee, this sub-culture has had practice critiquing words and ideas.
It looks like the employees are almost universally on the equality end of the ethical spectrum (given how widespread the walkout was), which is even worse news for union busting.
I've never heard of this news group before, all they offer for contact is a Gmail address with no names, and this domain doesn't even show up when I search Promethean News. I have my doubts about this website.
I am usually against unions in tech because the free market tends to allow a proper balance of supply and demand. However, gaming might just be the perfect sub-domain of tech to benefit from unionization.
The supply is massively saturated, with dreamy eyed programmers ready to give their lives to work in gaming. On the other hand, a very small group actually gets to make any of the creative decisions that every gamer has dreamt of making. The wages are below what the market pays, hours are exploitative and the companies are making massive profits. It is really difficult to compete with the AAA studios, because Indie games take years to make and working without a wage for a decade isn't possible for many. On the other hand, medium sized and successful indie studios get acquired before they can grow to a decent enough size to serve as any real competition. There is also a lot of shady practices with monetization, where the employees do not get a say if the company should or shouldn't indulge in said practices.
We've already seen soft-unionization of this type in a similar industry : media production. It works.
AAA game development in the US has been quite stale for the last decade. The big EA-Blizzard-Activision-Ubisoft have not come up with a single quality game in this time. Even Bethesda, Bioware seems to be on a decline. Rockstar,Valve and Id software seem to be doing fine, but no where close to the hit-after-hit that certain japanese studios are producing. Naughty Dog and Super giant would be the only 2 American studios creating 10/10s consistently, but both have an order of magnitude fewer employees than standard AAA studios.
The industry is in dire need of shake up. I hope this goes the employee's way this time around. It's about time.
Collective bargaining is not at all incompatible with a "free market." It's just a smarter way to negotiate (more power collectively) and the end result is a contract between a company and a group of workers. It's not like, say, a minimum wage where government sets a price.
Unions are a part of the free market, unless you'd like to remove people's freedom to associate just because they all happen to work at the same place.
The supply being massively saturated is also what makes a union impossible to form. The over-saturation of supply means there's plenty of people willing to work a non-union game dev job because the alternative is no job.
Also the EA-Blizzard-Activision-Ubisoft studios do consistently deliver quality games: COD, Battlefield, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, etc. Formulaic, perhaps, but it's tough to claim that these aren't quality and popular games. Valve, on the other hand, have only produced Half Life: Alyx in the last decade (you could include Artifact, but it flopped).
Funny that WilmerHale has diversity and inclusion as a "principle" while they actively undermine others and are paid to do so.
>"Our commitment to diversity and inclusion starts at the top and cascades throughout the firm. WilmerHale is one of very few AmLaw 100 firms with a woman co-managing partner, and part of an even smaller number of such firms that have had both a woman and a person of color as a co-managing partner. Our diversity and inclusion journey is one of continuous assessment, progress, and partnership with others committed to advancing these principles in the legal profession."
I've spent a lot of time hiring software developers and I usually receive about 25 male applicants for every 1 female applicant.
Achieving equal representation across the entire industry is going to be literally impossible without a huge influx of woman into the industry.
Further, because the big tech companies are pretending this is not the reality and strive to have equal representation in their workforce it means even sub par female developers are able to get jobs at the likes of google and facebook, further depleting the remainder of the workforce and causing wage inflation disincentivizing smaller or less well funded companies from hiring them because they can find better and cheaper male counterparts.
Not defending "bro culture" but I think the industry needs to come to terms with the realities of the situations. Legal action will do nothing to change this.
Huge companies like Blizzard benefit from a tremendous inertia, so it can be difficult to see them declining, but I think they started doing so more than a decade ago...
At some point Blizzard was my dream video game studio, but the people did the hard work and built it are long gone.
I've never understood why people are confused or upset by these kinds of things. It's almost literally not in the companies best interest to just "let it happen" so why wouldn't they fight it?
What world is this where companies hire union-busting mercenaries? Is this the Pinkertons in 2021? What kind of lawless place is the US where you can hire services to stop unionisation?
To folks intimate with the situation: what's the likelihood that they weather this storm like recent, similar industry kerfuffles in companies like Coinbase or Basecamp, that they implode under bad PR, or fundamentally change culture?
[+] [-] brainfish|4 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] kelnos|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] beebmam|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] x3iv130f|4 years ago|reply
If you like a game, keep bookmarks on the people who made it and follow them around the industry.
[+] [-] jorgesborges|4 years ago|reply
[0]https://www.frostgiant.com/
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As2tPggQaZc
[+] [-] dharmaturtle|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aeoleonn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meristohm|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] tarsinge|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runawaybottle|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] alex_c|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Icathian|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmcgough|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] raxxorrax|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] ScoobleDoodle|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cletus|4 years ago|reply
This effort seems like it's part of the ruthless approach to controlling costs that slowly strangle a company from within.
I believe WoW is the #2 property (after CoD) at Acti-Blizzard and it's clearly changed from one of delivering a game to simply extracting as much money as possible from each customer much like how almost all mobile games do.
The state of California's complaint is bad. I mean really bad. The fact that 3-4 different people from AB all released different statements in the last week should tell you exactly how bad it is. That's classic panic mode. There should only be one.
This latest move tells you the company believes it will blow over and they're looking to do the minimal required to appease the detractors and get back to business as usual without having to pay people more or pay out a bunch of lawsuits.
Honestly, the heads of J Allen Brack and Bobby Kotick in particular should roll over this lawsuit.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlBjNmXvqIM
EDIT: commenters have noted (correctly) that I overlooked Overwatch. This was a significant release but it seems to also have waned in popularity and Overwatch 2 is inextricably going in some weird PVE direction.
Other than that you have a poor received Diablo sequel, a series of lackluster to bad WoW expansions, a disastrous Warcraft 3 remaster and complete abandonment of the RTS genre that propelled them to success in the first place.
WC3 Reforged ("Refunded") was significant in that it was not only underwhelming and plagued with problems it made the original game worse with a forced download and loss of functionality.
The most significant change however was Blizzard not wanting a repeat of missing the MOBA boat with Dota 2 by adding a condition that all the IP for third-party maps belong to Blizzard, completely killing that ecosystem.
[+] [-] cs702|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beebmam|4 years ago|reply
Therefore, yes, it is accurate to define them as a "union-busting firm". They fulfill other roles than just that, but they do act as union-busters, and they even describe themselves as such.
[+] [-] gotostatement|4 years ago|reply
https://www.wilmerhale.com/en/solutions/labor-and-employment Under "Executive and Workforce Training" tab
[+] [-] _gd3l|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Overton-Window|4 years ago|reply
Your assessment is a decade out of date.
[+] [-] djanogo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unyttigfjelltol|4 years ago|reply
The marketing material is unfortunate, though, and the connection with Amazon labor work is notable.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmer_Cutler_Pickering_Hale...
[+] [-] post_break|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tvirosi|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] babyblueblanket|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zamalek|4 years ago|reply
It looks like the employees are almost universally on the equality end of the ethical spectrum (given how widespread the walkout was), which is even worse news for union busting.
[+] [-] haha1234__|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] failuser|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nyanpasu64|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] screye|4 years ago|reply
The supply is massively saturated, with dreamy eyed programmers ready to give their lives to work in gaming. On the other hand, a very small group actually gets to make any of the creative decisions that every gamer has dreamt of making. The wages are below what the market pays, hours are exploitative and the companies are making massive profits. It is really difficult to compete with the AAA studios, because Indie games take years to make and working without a wage for a decade isn't possible for many. On the other hand, medium sized and successful indie studios get acquired before they can grow to a decent enough size to serve as any real competition. There is also a lot of shady practices with monetization, where the employees do not get a say if the company should or shouldn't indulge in said practices.
We've already seen soft-unionization of this type in a similar industry : media production. It works.
AAA game development in the US has been quite stale for the last decade. The big EA-Blizzard-Activision-Ubisoft have not come up with a single quality game in this time. Even Bethesda, Bioware seems to be on a decline. Rockstar,Valve and Id software seem to be doing fine, but no where close to the hit-after-hit that certain japanese studios are producing. Naughty Dog and Super giant would be the only 2 American studios creating 10/10s consistently, but both have an order of magnitude fewer employees than standard AAA studios.
The industry is in dire need of shake up. I hope this goes the employee's way this time around. It's about time.
[+] [-] elicash|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Frondo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Manuel_D|4 years ago|reply
Also the EA-Blizzard-Activision-Ubisoft studios do consistently deliver quality games: COD, Battlefield, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, etc. Formulaic, perhaps, but it's tough to claim that these aren't quality and popular games. Valve, on the other hand, have only produced Half Life: Alyx in the last decade (you could include Artifact, but it flopped).
[+] [-] nynx|4 years ago|reply
> The wages are below what the market pays, hours are exploitative and the companies are making massive profits
[+] [-] okhuman|4 years ago|reply
Does it work? Wasn't it medium (or someone) who when faced with unionization pivoted the company (left severance packages) to a substack like model?
[+] [-] filereaper|4 years ago|reply
>"Our commitment to diversity and inclusion starts at the top and cascades throughout the firm. WilmerHale is one of very few AmLaw 100 firms with a woman co-managing partner, and part of an even smaller number of such firms that have had both a woman and a person of color as a co-managing partner. Our diversity and inclusion journey is one of continuous assessment, progress, and partnership with others committed to advancing these principles in the legal profession."
https://www.wilmerhale.com/en/about/diversity-and-inclusion
[+] [-] lmilcin|4 years ago|reply
Complaining you are being bullied? Let's hire a company to bully you some more, this time professionally.
[+] [-] cbanek|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loourr|4 years ago|reply
Achieving equal representation across the entire industry is going to be literally impossible without a huge influx of woman into the industry.
Further, because the big tech companies are pretending this is not the reality and strive to have equal representation in their workforce it means even sub par female developers are able to get jobs at the likes of google and facebook, further depleting the remainder of the workforce and causing wage inflation disincentivizing smaller or less well funded companies from hiring them because they can find better and cheaper male counterparts.
Not defending "bro culture" but I think the industry needs to come to terms with the realities of the situations. Legal action will do nothing to change this.
[+] [-] ashtonkem|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stephc_int13|4 years ago|reply
At some point Blizzard was my dream video game studio, but the people did the hard work and built it are long gone.
[+] [-] brendoelfrendo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seany|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lizwr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdmoreira|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrew_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aejnsn|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Justsignedup|4 years ago|reply
Well. Time for employees to make WilmerHale have another fail on its list.