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#Activision Blizzard
prokopetz · 8 months
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So, let me get this straight. Blizzard's plan for regaining audience goodwill with the 1.0 release of Overwatch 2 is to open with a heavily promoted PvE mission pack (i.e., thereby reminding everyone of the vapourware PvE campaign they built Overwatch 2's entire marketing strategy around, then quietly axed once they had everybody's money), and the premise of this PvE mission pack is basically doubling down on the broadly disliked "our heroes put down a slave rebellion" PvE storyline from the first game? Have I got all that right?
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jasper-crow · 7 months
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A short list of unity games owned by notoriously lawsuit happy companies:
Hearthstone, Activision Blizzard
Pokemon Go, Niantic and more specifically the Pokemon Company
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, see above
Like 17 different mobile and console Disney games
Genshin Impact, miHoYo
Magic Arena, WotC and their big daddy Hasbro
Mario Kart Tour, Nintendo
The Elder Scrolls: Legends, Bethesda
Super Mario Run, Nintendo
Call of Duty Mobile, Activision Blizzard
Unity was used to render backgrounds for a number of the modern "Live Action" Disney remakes. Notably The Lion King remake in 2019 has been confirmed to have used unity.
In short. They. Are. FUCKED
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civildisorderstream · 7 months
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2023, The Year of Self-Sabotage
Has anyone noticed the trend businesses have been on in 2023? There's a LOT of self-sabotage going on in the business world. Throughout my life, and everyone else has their own observations too, once in a while you see a company make a boneheaded decision about their product or service. And once in a while you'll see a decision get made that is bad, but maybe it at least has some justification (even to an anti-capitalist goober like myself). But this year has been nonsensical moves of greed or product/service sabotage that make no sense for longevity or harm what's in the best interest of the consumer.
Activision-Blizzard: The Overwatch debacle, and Diablo Immortal's scummy practices.
Netflix: The account sharing debacle.
Twitter: Maximum divorced loser Elon Musk destroying its functionality and branding and we still call it Twitter.
Reddit: Inspired by Musk's stupidity, the API tools debacle. Shame on the Reddit communities for not knowing how to strike btw (you don't put a time limit on it).
Hollywood: Pulling shows and films from streaming services to declare them as failed products and somehow get a tax write-off for it.
Also Hollywood: Willing to take quarterly losses greater than the annual cost to meet the demands of two striking unions put together.
Unity: Announced in the past day that it will charge developers a fee for installations because greed.
Titan Submersible: "Safety is for losers" says billionaire who proceeds to use his shoddy tech to do a murder-suicide.
Starbucks: Breaking ALL of the labor laws to try and stop unionization. Admittedly a reach to be on this list but the situation (like all the others) is ongoing and can compound.
Embracer: A massive corporate company that bought a bunch of smaller companies. Thought a 2 billion dollar deal with the Saudi government was a sure thing, so they spent 2 billion dollars on stuff. Deal falls through, so they start closing companies they acquired.
That's just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. These aren't business decisions done for the sake of consumers. These are all decisions done to spite consumers or the workers who produce the products and services.
People try to remember years as being the "year of" something. And it's a thing I do too. For me, 2023 is the year of corporate self-sabotage.
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gayest-of-spuds · 1 year
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Hey, so, Overwatch 2 requires you to link a phone number to your BattleNet account. If you don’t do that you can’t play. And since OW2 replaces the original Overwatch, you’re not allowed to play at all anymore unless you do this. Even if you payed for the original game. Or the paid edition of OW2.
Aside from general reasons why giving your private phone number to a corporation is a bad idea, some people’s numbers just plain don’t work.
See, Activision Blizzard wants a post-paid phone number specifically. Pre-paid and certain other plans aren’t supported. That’s exactly what they say on BattleNet: not supported. If you paid for our game but you have a pre-paid phone plan, something that has nothing to do with us or our game, you don’t get to play.
That state of things is bad enough. But consider: Even if this doesn’t concern you right now, ActBliz could just decide, at any point, that they don’t want to support your service provider anymore. Or to demand more personal information, threatening to withhold access to the game unless you do.
This is not acceptable.
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cryptvokeeper · 2 years
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seriously i am begging an employee at Blizzard HQ to leak the hamster’s diversity stats
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mast3r-rainb0w · 2 months
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Spyro Year of the Dragon - Happy 24th Anniversary! by Mast3r-Rainb0w
Happy 24th Anniversary to Spyro: Year of the Dragon (a.k.a. Spyro 3), which released back in 2000, and ever so fittingly on the Chinese Lunar New Year of the Dragon! Here's some fanart of gaming's greatest purple dragon riding his radical skateboard with a traditional Chinese-theme for the background! Enjoy!
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ohnoitstbskyen · 5 months
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Why do you think Diablo has disenged on it's core themes? (I mean I agree) I've always considered it to be a franchise with some insane wasted potential, but my perspective comes more from Diablo 3 and 4. Id be nice if you could expand on that.
I mean, my argument is that Diablo 1 was a dungeon crawler with a randomized loot mechanic that existed mostly to enable the roguelike random level generation that ensured replayability for the adventure. Players shouldn't be able to simply beeline it to the most powerful items in the game once they figure out exactly where they are, so randomization made each journey into the Tristram Cathedral a new process of discovery.
It's a game that, yes, wants to provide engaging gameplay, but just as much as the discovery of loot, it is driven by discovery of its world and story - multiple NPCs in the game exist that have no function or benefit to the player except as characters to interact with. You find lore tomes in the labyrinth which give you exposition about the world, but offer no tangible benefits. Shrines will randomize your stats, transform your potions, curse your items, randomly teleport you into a horde of monsters. The world is populated by objects, people and events that entice a player with curiosity to see what happens as much as they entice the player with the power fantasy of Making Number Go Up, and plenty of interactions have no hard gameplay benefit. "Sub dungeons" in the labyrinth, like the Halls of the Blind or Chamber of Bone, exist in part to give the player lootable rewards and monsters to fight, but also each of them have their own exposition, lore and worldbuilding (however limited by budget and technical limitations).
Diablo 2 realized that the skinner box thrill of randomized loot drops and number-go-up optimization was by far the most primally emotionally engaging part of Diablo 1's gameplay, and began the process of reorienting the franchise ENTIRELY to enable that specific pleasure. The loot system expands exponentially, crafting, gem slotting, etc all get introduced, and loot mechanics are given pride of place in terms of how the game engages the players. Shrines all provide knowable, specific benefits, every NPC is either a quest-giver or a merchant, there are HUNDREDS of randomized sub-dungeons on every map, and the vast majority of them have absolutely no narrative content whatsoever, they are merely slot machine arms for the player to pull, hoping for a chance of a jackpot loot drop.
Diablo 3 is the apotheosis of this process - a game which drops all pretense that the nature of your loot matters in favor of orienting every part of it around chasing the high of Getting A Bigger Number. You're a sorcerer running around with a greatsword? No problem! You cast all your spells as normal. So long as the greatsword has Bigger Numbers, anything works. Templar with a Wand? Equally viable! Damage numbers inflate into the millions, hordes of monsters swell with ever greater numbers, your spells and abilities clear entire screens in seconds, and everything in the game revolves around enabling the player's power fantasy.
In Diablo 1 you are an unimportant adventurer, the latest in a long line of unremarkable hopefuls, stepping alone into the bowels of a middle-of-nowhere village church, creeping slowly through its doors and hallways, fighting its monsters primarily one by one. Any group of ranged monsters can kill you in seconds, even in the late-game, and if you get surrounded, likely as not you are quite simply dead. It's tense, lonely, unglamorous and often desperate. Unwieldy inventory management puts constraints on your ability to heal and restore mana. You can only carry so many potions while leaving room for loot, and remember to leave room for your Town Portals and Identify scrolls, and for your all-important gold, which will clog your inventory almost totally by the end. Slay a unique monster and hope to god that the item it dropped wasn't cursed. Touch a shrine and you might lose 2 Strength points and suddenly be unable to equip your armor. When you kill Diablo, you find he is nothing but the possessed body of a young boy who was abducted and abused by a corrupt priest, an ugly and mundane tragedy leading to extraordinary suffering.
In Diablo 3 you are the most specialest most important incredible super-hero that has ever existed. You are a half-angel half-demon unstoppable killing machine, mowing down hordes of demons and corrupted angels like nothing, absolutely BATHING in infinite showers of ultra-powerful legendary loot, each more ultra-powerful and legendary than the last. You deal ten million damage with a single ability. You fight Ultra Diablo, the special super-powered SUPER SAIYING MEGA ULTRA super-powered extra special Prime Evil who is the most powerful evil bad guy who has ever existed and YOU are the only one in the whole universe who can beat him because you're SO special, yes you are! Identify shit by clicking on it! Cast town portal whenever you want! Enemies drop infinite health potions whenever you need them! Fuck it, you even KILL DEATH by the end because you are invincible and immortal and unstoppable and perfect. Fear has no hold on you, never in your life will you know uncertainty or doubt. AND it's your birthday! Buy a sword that is 3.2% better than your magic wand with real money in the auction house as a treat!
tl;dr Diablo 1 is an adventure game, Diablo 3 is Cookie Clicker.
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iww-gnv · 2 months
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Microsoft reneged on promises it made in court during its Federal Trade Commission (FTC) antitrust trial in 2023 by laying off 1,900 employees in late January, according to the FTC. FTC lawyer Imad Abyad filed a letter with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit on Wednesday, effectively telling on Microsoft. “This newly-revealed information contradicts Microsoft’s representations in this proceeding,” the FTC lawyer wrote. Microsoft announced on Jan. 15 that it was laying off 1,900 workers from its gaming division — around 8% of that part of the company. A large portion of those layoffs were at the newly acquired Activision Blizzard. The percentage of Activision Blizzard layoffs has not been made public, but at least 899 of that 1,900 worked out of Activision Blizzard’s California offices, according to public records.
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odessastone · 3 months
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New national holiday
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animentality · 10 months
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kinmeki · 5 months
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I am not that person anymore...
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destielmemenews · 6 months
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source 1
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jtgunner · 5 months
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I can't believe they turned my 19-year-old self into an Overwatch character.
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folly-of-alexandria · 10 months
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It really says something that the announcement that Pharah from Overwatch is a lesbian and the only reaction to that news that I had was “What news story is Activision Blizzard trying to suppress?”
Like I have no more emotional connection to something that used to be something I really cared about and now anytime I hear a big announcement from it my assumption is that they are attempting to distract from some negative PR.
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devsgames · 2 months
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Microsoft just laid off 1900 employees including tons of folks from Activision-Blizzard. That's 8% of their whole gaming division.
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shinigami-striker · 7 months
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Spyro's 25th Anniversary | Saturday, 09.09.2023
Happy 25th anniversary to Spyro the Dragon!
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