Less glib, this past year has taught me that a lot of companies are led by genuinely unintelligent people. The number of short sighted, self destructive, and downright childish behavior coming from the C suite of even some big companies has been nearly endless. The idea that Blizzard is led by someone so impulsive that he basically goaded the state into suing him is unsurprising.

> We also found that leaders with psychopathic tendencies were slightly less effective at their jobs in terms of fostering productivity.

Usually the argument is that sociopaths rise to this level of power and eventually flame out. I’ve never seen any argument that sociopathy tends to make you a good CEO, but rather than it makes you more likely to rise to that level.

Even if they are found guilty on all charges, it wouldn't affect their bottom line too much.

But there may be other factors. Companies that sacrificed employees for the public mob did get into problems with their employees.

If they are found guilty, which I think is very likely, their statement is indeed not too smart though.

There's a reason that "meritocracy" was invented as a term to mock the state of things. It's a myth. It was always a myth. A joke.

The people selling the notion that the way things are is the result of a meritocracy is the secular Western equivalent of people using caste as a justification for shabby treatment of have-nots.

They've also seemed to have forgotten that they're located in California. This is the type of thing you might say if you were in Texas and wanted to politicize the issue in the hopes of getting Greg Abbott to take your side. But here, it's just digging a deeper hole. I'm dumbfounded that any PR department would sign off on this.

That’s not how this stuff works at all. This is a dispute over the facts, and how much money the facts are worth, and to whom. Someone in California DOJ had a 15 minute meeting with their people and ATVI people and already decided that ATVI is going to face a fine to be paid to its female complainant former employees, the next three years of lawsuit is a ceremony enacting that.

Does Activision have backup studios in "developing countries" or other clever plans?

Edit: snipped the bit about Hero's of the Storm since that was post acquisition

With the cartoonish push that World of Warcraft presaged I saw the wider ambitions to appeal to everyone which washed out the magic for me. Blizzard wasn't alone in this but it broke my heart as a kid who grew up on Sabriel and The Book of the New Sun and Baldur's Gate and EverQuest to watch all those game companies lurch forward to a blank-eyed glossed future.

Meh. It is an undeniable direct Warhammer 40K plagiarism: before coming up with their own StarCraft universe, Blizzard tried and failed to secure rights for Warhammer 40K setting. So it is easy to see the source of their 'inspiration'.

They had many bright moments, but this one is not one they came up with themselves.

Games Workshop does not own the copyright on nearly-dead-warriors-entombed-in-exoskeletons. Nor did they invent the idea of the nearly dead being sustained by cybernetics, or of using robotics to assist those of limited physical ability. We all are inspired by things.

It's especially odd to talk about about "Warhammer" or "Starcraft" as if they are managed by a single human, when in fact all of these worlds are written and envisioned by a multi-generational army of creative people who are all drawing on sources to come up with ideas. Are all of the employees of GW who write about dreadnoughts plagiarizing the employee who came up with the idea?

Tyranids giant biological hive mind that rapidly adapts to new environments consuming or infecting existing species to plunder their genetic advantages. Also have plenty of units that looks rather similar to their Zerg equivalents.

The basic look of space marines and Starcraft marines are completely different why they toned down the skulls and well that’s about it.

That’s fine at least they didn’t copy the ancient psionic technology using Eldar who, wait never mind.

"It’s all in here, the neolithic bones of our current game system. Borrowing heavily from Tolkein, you get all the standard Fantasy races, standard beasties (heck even the Balrog is in there by name), and so many others...There is no Old World, no Warhammer world, no history, just some little crazed and revolutionary rules for using units of fantasy lead miniatures to fight out epic battles."[1]

[1] https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2012/01/lore-unboxing-warham...

Draw evenly from M*A*S*H + Dresden Files + Mass Effect + Dexter and your going to end up in some strange and interesting places. Play through Starcraft 1+2 on the other hand and the story is fine if a bit bland.

The thing I disagree with is that Blizzard's problem is that they 'copied.' Everyone copies! The bits that Blizzard copied are the most compelling part of Starcraft. The reason it is weak is that they were not better at drawing on the ideas of others. They did not understand what was compelling about 40k, so they create this unsatisfying narrative mishmash.

Warhammer FB -> Warhammer 40k is a great example of this being done better. You could type out the same kind of demeaning summary of Warhammer 40k as you did for Starcraft: "Tyranids are gross, chitinous just like Geiger's xenomorph; the Eldar are just space-high-elves; The squats are just space dwarves." It's all true, as far as it goes. But - because GW is better than Blizzard - they went further and added other ideas (many of which also came from other works). The problem is never that they drew on other sources. In fact, looking at other worlds and using the core of what 'works' about that world before transforming it is at the center of basically all good works.

Tyranids barely existed when Starcraft got released, most of the things you talked about was created by games workshop afterwards, so likely they copied Starcraft instead.

1993, featured the Tyranids in the supplemental books Wargear and Codex Imperialis, and then later in their own devoted army Codex.

By comparison Starcraft 1 is from 1998 at which point Tyranids had gone through multiple revisions and had fairly close to their modern lore.

Sounds like GW copied that from Heinlein's Starship Troopers, or maybe Enders Game.

Ditto the Space Marines.

Culture is just copying/remixing, all the way down.

Remixing at least involves using multiple sources, my only real issue is SC both only copied from 40k and changed so little. It’s like the figured after just crossing just past the line of copyright infringement was enough and they would go no further. But hey they did the same with the original Warhammer game to make Warcraft and that worked out just fine for them.

I could go on. The ghosts exhaling poison vapor with spider eyes or hydralisks vomiting buckets of saliva. Sunken colonies with their long knife-tongues; the Creep. As a whole I think Blizzard really made something special.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/pJ0entX_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&...

An elf, rather (elven archer).

After WoW's success they seemed to try to pigeonhole all of their properties in the same direction, SC2 and D3 were quite clearly online/multiplayer first with single player as an afterthought, and the world depth felt lacking. Hearthstone's alright but feels like it has too much focus on PvP games and loot box mechanics.

You're looking at it through rose tinted glasses. Blizzard has always been about a cartoonish look. That's why I like their games. Realism always falls into the "uncanny valley" territory for me.

wasn't the cartoonish style already present in Warcraft 3?

and SL is hardly loved (it's now being compared to WoD)

WoD deserves a special place in game design hell for choosing to implement garrisons over another tier of raid content.

My only real criticism is related to the majority of all game content being kind of irrelevant, because there isn't a long road to max level and no scarcity of exp. However, I did level through BfA content, and it was really well done.

BfA and Shadowlands are incredibly bad, for casual players there's really nothing interesting to do, and raiders and stuck behind meaningless time gates. It's quite sad to see my friends list now, no one is playing - and a new patch has just been released.

I'm a huge fan, but I've also stopped playing. Blizzard feel like they've been ahead for so long they forget what made their games great. Saying that though, it only takes on incredible expansion for everyone to jump back.

I think I agree with your commentary about SL, but I just said the same thing in a different way. BfA had a bit more interesting content though in that respect. They were not 'incredibly bad' by my estimation, just have their various flaws.

With regard to friends list, I stopped playing shortly before new patch drop, but mostly because it's summer and WoW in general just makes it way too easy to spend time indoors. I was following the world first race though, and would love to raid SoD and do BGs. But, before letting my sub expire I went and farmed out all the Mechagon mounts and most interesting rare drop mounts, had my fill of Nathria, and a bit of Mythic+ as miserable as that is. Could have been more fun with a proper gaming setup and guild, but I knew summer was coming up and I'd want to dial my playtime back to zero.

This is all after a decade long hiatus.

Have you played the last 2 World of Warcraft extensions? Or Warcraft 3: Reforged, the only "new game" they released since 2016, which is also commonly known as Warcraft 3: Refunded? [1][2]

[1] https://www.warcraft3refunded.com

[2] https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/blizzard-botched-warcraft-iii-re... (published 7 hours ago)

Perhaps that makes him the "right guy as CEO". You know, culture fit.

(It's not all Bobby's fault though: pre-Activision Blizzard folks are named too.)

That's mostly bad, because they won't bring cases that are worthy but risky to their career.

When they do ultimately bring a case, though, it means it's strong.

Anyways, I think you're correct and I personally look forward to Blizzard losing.

How many hands did that pass through and nobody was brave enough to strike that line? It adds nothing positive.

Yikes.

AKA the guy that single-handedly turned Google's culture from transparency-first to siloing-first by making looking at "need-to-know" information a fireable offense[1].

The Catch-22 here being, of course, that you don't know that you didn't need to know until you know.

That's to say, the only way to know if you have violated this policy is by violating it.

The result was, unsurprisingly, that where sharing permissions for documentation were default company-wide earlier, it quickly became "you need to know the right people to ask to get access to it".

Google, with its mission to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful", thus made its own technical documents unsearchable in internal engines (and thus, disorganized), inaccessible, and therefore, useless.

Everything that drops from that person's mouth is toxic.

[1]https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/carolineodonovan/google...

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ma/pr/six-former-ebay-employees...

Perhaps I'm a cynic but I assumed that was the "compromise" version of the language and the original draft was worse.

In this case they're kinda pulling in different directions and ... I dunno probably best to just stick to one topic as far as a press release goes.

I don't think the public reads press releases otherwise.

It's about ethics in game journalism! Er, ethics in government?

The sad part is that I suspect many of the individuals involved actually believe that sentiment.

I see it more as them either waking up to the relative supremacy of and latent unaccountability afforded to the modern Big Corporation, or finally being bold enough to drop the pretense of being an "equal" member of society. There is no need to be polite when your company's position is secure and permanent.

That is, the government and society being mad at them does not matter, for their profits are still guaranteed. The only question is whether the stock will go up right after losing the lawsuit, or a few days later.

additonally, a phone number of "Kotick (Activision)" was photographed on Epstein's rolodex

I personally would never want him as a leader, yet alone a CEO. Ethically, I wouldn't be okay.

Now the standard is just a flat out lie.

Used to be either no comment or getting the shit out yourself with apologies appeal to emotion and move on.

There are so many Trump-style statements I read in news every day. An article from ProPublica today on China's extra judicial kidnappings abroad had quotes from CCP that could have been Trump but flipped.

It's scary that the truth doesn't matter anymore to a significant %, and another significant % are just so flustered and overwhelmed they move on.

Maybe they think their customers are more Gamer-gatey types, and will side with them over a bunch of underpaid, sexually-harassed female employees.

So far the markets haven’t reflected that. How long does it normally take for serious allegations to start affecting the stock price?

Some said they didn't care about sexual harassment from certain political parties and just used it as a political cudgel. Those that genuinely fought for reproductive rights got completely shafted and I think they are even worse than before.

I know that women still feel frequently disempowered in the workplace but I hope the movement helped them feel like they've got more widespread support than they did before. Once upon a time sexual harassment claims were seen as direct attacks on the success and health of a company "Gosh Susan, if you just told us in private we'd deal with it - instead you've cost all these people their jobs" - I think that impression has very much shifted. If you're being harassed then the company is failing at it's mission, any ill effect that comes to the company as a result of the report is a consequence the company should've (and failed to) protect themselves from by having a more robust and responsive HR department.