Blizzard dies and Bobby rides

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Daidraco

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As someone else mentioned, I doubt he will stay on past the deal approval and finalization next year.
Isnt it saying that someone will take over as soon as the deal completes regulatory audit?
It's going to be amazing if they clean house.
Reading over the number of studios and employees - its almost guaranteed that they are going to shed a ton of companies and employees. Consolidating after the purchase is just par for the course because a lot of the companies will be capable of doing the same work. I seriously doubt that the bottom rung of employees will be offered a position elsewhere within an already established line up of companies.
This will make WOW worse. MS starts all their presentations with race/gender acknowledgements.
The doom clock just got closer to midnight for Blizzard. The next year or two is going to be even worse quality than what the Blizzard team is already putting out.
People can hate on the man all they want but at the end of the day Bobby gets Paid. He is going to walk off with a sizable part of that $70 bil.

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Kotick is laughing all the way to the bank. At his net worth and with his connections to all kinds of companies, he could give two fucks about this company. I dont think people realize how much sway he has versus how little sway millions of poors have. If anything, he's probably relieved that he will eventually stop having some rainbow faggot dressed up in a WoW cosplay hounding him while he tries to enjoy dinner at a restaurant.
 
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Malkav

French Madman
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I heard you morons make the same arguement about EQ. In today's world IPs are worth about jack and shit.

Are you seriously comparing EQ's worth as an IP to things like Warcraft / Diablo / Call of Duty?
 
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Masakari

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"Hello adventurer! My name is EloquentThem, my pronouns are It/They/We. We need you to go down to the local brewery and lecture some locals on the dangers masculinity. By force if necessary. Good luck!"
 
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GuardianX

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This will make WOW worse. MS starts all their presentations with race/gender acknowledgements.

Ehh you assume that the "Wahmen" stuff that outed at blizzard wasn't intentional and VERY timely for this deal.

I assume that MS likely was a big player in that whistleblower coming out in order to make the situation better for themselves in their push to grow.
 
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Aaron

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My predictions, in no particular order:

  • You'll need a Microsoft Office account to be able to login to WoW.
  • WoW will be renamed Microsoft Fantasy Combat Simulator.
  • The "!" quest icon will be replaced with a paperclip symbol.
  • WoWhead and Bing will merge resulting in nothing but Rule 34 pictures popping up when searching for tactics for various female bosses.
 
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Arbitrary

Tranny Chaser
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Whatever gets me Void Elf Demon Hunters.

I will also accept Lightforged Draenai Demon Hunters.
 
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Secrets

ResetEra Staff Member
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I heard you morons make the same arguement about EQ. In today's world IPs are worth about jack and shit.
EQ/DCUO/PlanetSide 2 is passive income for any acquisition firm.

EG7 acquired Daybreak at 300 million.

The IP is worth what it's generating long-term.
 

Secrets

ResetEra Staff Member
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This is probably over-generalizing but honestly don't think this is the best thing for WoW. MMO's have shown that not just anyone can make or understand them. Suits and big money people focus on the wrong aspects of the game. Typically the best MMO's have been driven by folks working on passion projects. Everquest was made by a group of Table-top gamers. WoW was guided by the people who played EQ. Valheim (though not a MMO but feels like one more than modern MMOs) was made by 5 guys. Business guys can crank out big name titles but not necessarily good MMOs. While I'm curious where this goes, I'm not very excited about with the exception of hoping that if the environment was truly that horrid that it improves under new leadership. I've always thought Phil Spencer seemed like a decent enough guy but we'll see.
The best thing for WoW is to get Ion out of design alongside anyone else who pushes elongated solo time sinks.

Riot will crush them if they continue their current direction. They understand you play MMOs to play with other people. Blizzard's creative leadership wants you to spend 22 days playing a game by yourself to unlock flying.
 
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Secrets

ResetEra Staff Member
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Why do employees in 2022 need a union? Are there workers being forced to work or dying on the job?

Yes. They're being forced to work overtime on salaried positions - and not being compensated for OT is standard in the industry.

Dying on the job? No. Why do people think death is the worst thing in the world? It's not.
For example, you could be forced to play Shadowlands 9.2 content.

It would deliberately strengthen all the useless people in game dev who don't actually contribute in the hard technical aspects of creating or designing the product.

So nothing would change, then.

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OU Ariakas

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Yes. They're being forced to work overtime on salaried positions - and not being compensated for OT is standard in the industry.

Dying on the job? No. Why do people think death is the worst thing in the world? It's not.
For example, you could be forced to play Shadowlands 9.2 content.
First, Lol at the SL comment.

Second my guy, it is common in most industries for salaried employees to not get paid OT; and there has been mandatory OT at companies that I have worked for as large as Dell Inc. These are issues that could be solved by employees going and getting other jobs to protest the terrible conditions. It says more about the employee that it is either the best job they can get or they are so scared of change that they won't save some money and look for a better job if they find the workplace issues so terrible.
 
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Secrets

ResetEra Staff Member
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First, Lol at the SL comment.

Second my guy, it is common in most industries for salaried employees to not get paid OT; and there has been mandatory OT at companies that I have worked for as large as Dell Inc. These are issues that could be solved by employees going and getting other jobs to protest the terrible conditions. It says more about the employee that it is either the best job they can get or they are so scared of change that they won't save some money and look for a better job if they find the workplace issues so terrible.
Completely agree. I'm already on my way out of the industry after this current project. I figure once I have money stockpiled I can just... y'know, actually make a game I want to make and have it succeed/fail on its own merits.

Biggest barrier has been financial stability while making my own game while also making someone else's.

There's a lot of folks in industry afraid they won't get jobs elsewhere. Depending on the position, that may be true - but for me, that's not true at all.

A lot of folks in industry I've talked to still have that mindset that you'll be 'blacklisted' if you sue the company for unpaid OT.
I don't know if that's true, but given how competitive the industry is for the same positions, you'd probably be first to go if you complain.

I still recall a story from a contractor that I worked with before - he said that artists were missing 6 months of pay. Company went under, and artists didn't ever see pay.
For business critical positions, like mine was at the time, that wasn't the case. They didn't have money for a lawyer that could reliably beat the company, and even if they did, it might've hurt their rep long-term.

I recall hearing during an IP sale that one of the conditions were that all artists were paid that were still awaiting paychecks, but that wasn't the IP in question.

I can imagine some people being whipped because of those fears.
 

Mr Creed

Too old for this shit
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Yeah. For WoW and Blizzard, Tencent might have been better. They’ve been mostly hands off on GGG and PoE. (Mostly…)

How would hands off be better for Blizzard? Blizzard needs serious hands on. They've taken advantage of the previous hands off by pissing away all their value from the 2000-2010 era, have lost all their talent, and are reduced to laughing stock.

It would be better for talentless hacks that makes up their current work force I guess, but hands off is bad for the company revenue and bad for the players themselves.
 
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Secrets

ResetEra Staff Member
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How would hands off be better for Blizzard? Blizzard needs serious hands on. They've taken advantage of the previous hands off by pissing away all their value from the 2000-2010 era, have lost all their talent, and are reduced to laughing stock.

It would be better for talentless hacks that makes up their current work force I guess, but hands off is bad for the company revenue and bad for the players themselves.
Riot's also Tencent owned. They have complete freedom from what it seems. Agree that leadership needs changed and Tencent likely would've let Kotick/Ion stay.
 

xmod2

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I figured there would be a mass exodus once the breast milk tap was turned off, but this just hastens that fate.
 
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xmod2

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I don't know why people think of game studios as entities that can persist without their key developers/designers. Blizzard without Tigole and the old guard is like Journey without Steve Perry. Who gives a shit?
 
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