Think we are about to see another wave.

[Theodric]

It's a fairly common tactic, unfortunately. There's a relationship between a customer and a business as well as between a business and an investor where the expectation is for a service to be provided in exchange for financial transactions. If that obligation is being obstructed, especially by avoidable drama, then the criticism is entirely valid.

In other words, money is being exchanged with the expectation of results. Many businesses operating in the present day have forgotten that and actively sabotage the goodwill that exists between those willing to give them the time of day. I strongly suspect that the company in question has become a little too confident in being able to hide behind a rabid fanbase willing to defend their every move. However, that in itself is not a finite resource and such an attitude will risk backfiring with increasing frequency.

[TeraRamis]

It's a fairly common tactic, unfortunately. There's a relationship between a customer and a business as well as between a business and an investor where the expectation is for a service to be provided in exchange for financial transactions. If that obligation is being obstructed, especially by avoidable drama, then the criticism is entirely valid.

In other words, money is being exchanged with the expectation of results. Many businesses operating in the present day have forgotten that and actively sabotage the goodwill that exists between those willing to give them the time of day. I strongly suspect that the company in question has become a little too confident in being able to hide behind a rabid fanbase willing to defend their every move. However, that in itself is not a finite resource and such an attitude will risk backfiring with increasing frequency.

At a normal company, were I to make a tweet like that - even in the midst of some kind of crisis like this - I would expect to be fired. Not given a talking to by HR - fired. Like terminated the next day. The very fact that he feels comfortable blame-shifting like this tells me that the situation at Blizzard is complete pants-on-head-on-fire-hey-a-donut crazy right now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcKWGJlhtxY

[Snorky]

This statement by that Blizz employees completely unacceptable. This is why many of these western gaming company's need a come to Jesus moment. The disrespect shown to it's player base is unacceptable. How is any of this BS that has gone on at Blizzard the fault of it's customers? They ( meaning upper management at Blizzard) all knew and if they didn't they suspected. Anyone I mean anyone who works in Corp. America has seen what goes on in many company's across different businesses. But the feint ignorance and blame shifting needs to stop a woman killed herself and many left because of this fostered environment. It's disgusting.

[TeraRamis]

This statement by that Blizz employees completely unacceptable. This is why many of these western gaming company's need a come to Jesus moment. The disrespect shown to it's player base is unacceptable. How is any of this BS that has gone on at Blizzard the fault of it's customers? They ( meaning upper management at Blizzard) all knew and if they didn't they suspected. Anyone I mean anyone who works in Corp. America has seen what goes on in many company's across different businesses. But the feint ignorance and blame shifting needs to stop a woman killed herself and many left because of this fostered environment. It's disgusting.

Blizzard seems to be a particularly special case. For some reason, even dating back to the time when they were still 'Blizzard' (IE, before the Activision buyout), they believed that they were above the vast majority of interactions with normal players. It got worse after the merger, of course - when they started dropping the class leads and such, and went completely dark except for scripted interviews - but they were never a company that was particularly open or engaging when it came to the playerbase. Most people were fine with that, so long as staffers were making good decisions on the whole. The problem is, nowadays, almost every design they roll out is bungled, and nobody ever takes their lumps and answers for it. In fact, higher-ups act like their bad ideas were a complete success, and most of the subscribers didn't like what they put out there because people are just stupid.

Honestly, this reckoning has been a long time coming. Clearly, there were demons in their closet that none of us knew about. But I have certainly been aware for years that Blizzard was run by assholes... and, frankly, karma being what it is, they're paying for it now.

[HeyMcFly]

Yay

I spent 24 minutes in a q with a full pre-formed party, trying to get into E4S (sepulture savage) because a streamer was on, and tons of players were too.
I'm not against the new players at all, I just look forward to the server sizes getting increased to lessen the Queue's

[Pirana1]

This statement by that Blizz employees completely unacceptable. This is why many of these western gaming company's need a come to Jesus moment. The disrespect shown to it's player base is unacceptable. How is any of this BS that has gone on at Blizzard the fault of it's customers? They ( meaning upper management at Blizzard) all knew and if they didn't they suspected. Anyone I mean anyone who works in Corp. America has seen what goes on in many company's across different businesses. But the feint ignorance and blame shifting needs to stop a woman killed herself and many left because of this fostered environment. It's disgusting.

I can all but guarantee you they knew. I was in the corporate world roughly ten years ago for an extensive amount of time. Anything that went on in our offices, most of us knew about. We were on the Forbes 500 list, we were a big corporation, but we still monitored our employees. During my tenure there, we probably went through ten different personnel changes in the office, for varying reasons. We dealt with obstacles and nefarious activities swiftly. Whatever is going on with Activision/Blizz is a leadership issue, or lack thereof.

If all the allegations come to fruition, this won't end well for this company. Although, they could probably lose seventy five percent of their customer base and still net a sizeable profit. The knucklehead who tweeted that message out though, if he's not terminated after his message, speaks volumes regarding this company.

[Vipes]

Oh my God, this is getting so pathetic. This is from one of the developers:

https://twitter.com/azgaz/status/1419398240105996288

Geesh. GEEEEEESH. I mean, yes, I get that they need to get their house in order. But people are paying you for a product, and you're now using your own internal turmoil - stemming from an issue that no responsible corporation EVER sees at this level - to makes excuses on delays, and then turning around and calling players who had absolutely nothing to do with this disaster 'part of the problem' because they have the audacity to suggest that you need to do your job?

Bro, you accidentally got some face on that ugly.

I can’t even read that because apparently they blocked me?

[Liam_Harper]

I don't think the "nothing will change" comments apply in the same way anymore, the company won't die but it's certainly going to be impacted badly.

FF14 is actually a good example in this case. We've heard MMO's are a dying genre, games have a limited lifespan and that people will always take abuse from big developers. But this game is an MMO, that's getting on in years, with developers who have a passion for their game ...and we're having a massive spike in subscribers while the larger game with arrogant developers is crashing.

There are limits. People nowadays are more and more aware of cash grabs, monetization and how that functions. It's a key thing we look for when considering new games now. More and more have had enough.

[Ronduwil]

I can’t even read that because apparently they blocked me?

They blocked everyone. I'll bet the backlash was worse than they expected. Then again, I don't know what else they were expecting. Seriously, if my company was being sued for something like this, I would know to keep my opinions about it off of social media if I wanted to keep my job. It's common sense for anyone who has been working in the corporate world for longer than a couple of years.

[Awha]

Blizzard were the rock stars of gaming world for years. Their behavior was normalized and or tolerated cause blizzard was a cool place in the eyes of normies and within the industry it opened up many doors. So people in the past tolerated to advance their own social status or personal/ career status.

In the end I do agree with Jim Sterling every company within the industry needs to be investigated to such a degree it will never happen but yeah.