I just saw a Steam ad about Diablo IV.
Got intrigued by it.
I have Diablo II and III. III was fun and I even played through it.
Then I started to think about the bad press I’ve heard about Blizzard.
I don’t know/remember specifics as I haven’t much followed the news. I do recall something about Overwatch though.
.
How’s the situation nowadays?
Should I keep playing with Blizzard or boycott it?
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I absolutely fucking hate Blizzard, but even more than Blizzard, I hate how successful their games are.
Yeah that’s me. The last couple of years have really revealed how much abuse consumers are willing tolerate, and it’s infuriating because we all suffer for it.
I struggle with boycotting a business for moral reasons, because they’re all fucking garbage. The ones we know about are just stupid enough to get caught.
That said, unless Diablo 4 is half off, or the game gets significantly better, then skip it. It’s very mid. It was good on launch, nerfed to shit about a month later, and barely decent, now. Though the main campaign and gameplay on launch were good, I regret buying it.
The general opinion of Diablo 4 I hear making rounds is that it’s too short and overly-monetized
High-level overviews of a couple big scandals:
Sexual harassment/assault cases:
- One of California’s government’s departments brought forward a case in 2021 detailing that women had unequal pay, were sexually harassed, were subject to retaliation for reporting issues, and were also subject to discrimination if pregnant. Wikipedia article here.
- Lawsuit also detailed that “frat boy culture” was prevalent and there was no meaningful penalty for sexual discrimination.
- One woman had nude photos of herself shared, and as a result committed suicide during a company retreat.
- Multiple other agencies have pursued Blizzard over this. The SEC has had Blizzard pay out $35 million for not having a proper reporting structure, and made a $18 million settlement pool. The pool has been criticized for being far too small.
- Original lawsuit appears to still be continuing.
Hong Kong
- A player in a Hearthstone tournament said “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our age!” He was immediately removed from the tournament, given a 1-year ban, and forfeited all winnings.
- Two stream casters also had their contact cancelled.
- Blizzard later stated that they would return the player’s winnings, reduce the ban to six months, change the streamers’ ban to six months, and would ban a team that supported the player’s action for six months, stating his actions violated a contract term that “offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages [Blizzard’s] image.”
- Blizzard has denied this has anything to do with their financial ties to Tencent.
- Wikipedia article about this
Diablo 4 expansion
- Bringing this up because of the question about Diablo 4 specifically: Blizzard apparently sent out a survey asking if $90 was an appropriate price point for the expansion, though that price point might have extra perks attached. For reference, the base game is $70.
The first two were lifted from the controversies section of Blizzard’s Wikipedia page, and they have more information in the linked pages and articles in those pages. For more information, I’d suggest reading there.
Personally, the way the sexual harassment has been handled has stopped me from touching their games. They’ve shown no remorse aside from being caught, they’ve been accused of shredding evidence during the investigation, and instead of addressing the issues, were instead upset that they weren’t approached privately before the public lawsuit. Instead of showing a willingness to reform, they appear to be entirely concerned with preventing financial damage.
Don’t forget they shut down Overwatch1 servers so people would be forced to play the second one.
You left out the part where folks that PAID for OW1 were completely cut off from their purchase.
Yeah, but they can totally use the skins from OW1 in the ad infested atrocity that is OW2!
Yes, I gave OW2 a couple hours after confirming the skins carried over if you linked accounts. That was enough to hate the intrusive monetization and the gameplay changes.
My personal opinion is stay away until they show positive change. I stepped away from WoW in 2018 when it became increasingly apparent that they are designing to keep players grinding, rather than actually having fun, then the infamous Blizzcon that year (Blitzchung debacle and “Do you guys not have phones?”) cemented my stance on not playing anything Blizzard. They have shown that they only see their players as wallets to extract money from and their employees as cheap labor to exploit and discard.
So has there been positive change? Not that I’ve seen. It’s still too early to tell if the MS acquisition will do anything on that front. From what I’ve heard of Diablo 4, it’s pretty boring once you get pas the initial “ooh, ahh” factor, and Overwatch 2 has been more or less a dumpster fire since it released.
Pretty much the entire game industry is fucked, unless you stick to indie smalltime publishers.
Or I guess Fromsoft is okay?
Don’t hold your breath, these companies are not going to realize the errors of their ways until people stop tolerating the horseshit, which isn’t going to happen either.
The industry we grew up loving as kids is gone.
Triple-A games are worse every day but indies today are amazing so it’s not a complete loss.
