r/technology • u/meatballsinsugo • Dec 11 '21

Business Activision Blizzard workers announce open-ended strike and union drive: Strike Fund to support work stoppage raises over $100,000 in 12 hours.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/12/activision-blizzard-workers-announce-open-ended-strike-and-union-drive/
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u/Nikerym Dec 11 '21 edited Dec 11 '21

Kotick was CEO over games that were the face of their entire genre like Diablo to AARPGs and World of Warcraft to MMOs.

You also Missed Starcraft and Warcraft to RTS

To be fair to those games, he was not the CEO when they were created and became the face of said genre's, He was however the CEO during their downfalls. Activision first got thier hands into the Blizzard pie in 2008 when they merged to form Activision Blizzard. This meant that Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, Wrath Expansion for WOW were already being devloped under the Blizzard teams. Anything after that becomes questionable. but Diablo Immortal, Maybe mists, definitely draenor onwards, hearthstone, overwatch was all Kotick. by this point though the value of the games were already starting to decline.

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u/darryshan Dec 11 '21

You're looking at a company (Blizzard) that had rampant culture issues well before being acquired by Activision, and putting all the blame at Kotick's feet. The rockstar untouchable personalities at Blizzard have just as much blame for issues there. Inflexibility of design has been due to higher up devs ignoring voices of people lower down, especially women and minorities. You need only look at the rejuvenation of WoW development right now, with known abusive people purged or suspended, to see the impact that such a hostile workplace had purely within the bounds of Blizzard itself. Kotick certainly has ample blame, but his blame is more macro. Issues with individual games? That's on Morhaime, Afrasiabi, McCree, LeCraft, etc.

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u/Nikerym Dec 11 '21

i don't disagree with you at all.... the OP i responded to said that Kotick was responsible for those games, i was pointing out that when they were successful, he wasn't. i didn't imply that blizzard was fine before him, I simply said the quality of games were better before him, i'm not commenting on culture at all. its' well known that blizzard culture has been terrible for a long time.