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    Was bei Blizzard Entertainment schief gelaufen ist | Eine milliardenschwere Erfolgsgeschichte wurde schnell zum Fluch


    Was bei Blizzard Entertainment schief gelaufen ist | Eine milliardenschwere Erfolgsgeschichte wurde schnell zum Fluch

    https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/10/blizzard-entertainment-play-nice/680178/

    View 36 Comments

    36 Comments

    4. f0rkster on

      This is what happens when ivy-league thieves who aren’t gamers, or even have a vested interest in gaming, are put into C-level roles, and their goal is to rob the organization of it’s wealth through ridiculous pay and bonuses and sold-golden parachutes when they leave. They then bring in their ivy-league buddies to distribute the wealth. They only care for themselves, and give zero fucks to the employees who are passionate about the company they work for and love gaming.

      Missing their bonus targets? Lay off 500 staff – fuck the development schedules. Oh look! I’m meeting my numbers!

      Same is currently happening at Ubisoft and EA Games. FFS, hire people who give a shit about gaming and let them run the companies.

    6. SentientLight on

      Pretty sure it was all the rape, sexual slavery, and worker exploitation.

    13. MagnusTheCooker on

      You guys mentioning the CEO being non-gamer, but XBox head Phil is a “gamer”, and look at Xbox studio… Halo for example

    14. Azozel on

      * The company got complacent and lost interest in making good games. Instead, they relied on the continued income of existing games.

      * The company was sold to a company with no interest in making good games and only an interested in making money.

      * Everyone working there got rich and left, putting the final nail in the coffin that changed the environment from one where people made good games so they could play good games to one where people maintained old dead games so they could milk every last cent out of brainless morons.

    16. Emperor_Zar on

      The same thing that’s happened to EA, SquareEnix, etc…

      Corporate Greed and enshitification.

    18. Va1crist on

      Loot boxes and got to greedy with how successful WoW got , as soon as digital items made more money then full fledged games then why brother and that still is destroying blizzard and gaming general

    19. towelheadass on

      nerds made something cool, marketing took over & made it hyper monetized shit. Same thing that happens to every beloved franchise of gaming.

    21. unlock0 on

      They stopped making games and started making casinos for kids. Absolute evil.

    24. old_and_boring_guy on

      They went from focusing on making games to focusing on making money.

      The first is a labor of love, where stuff is done because there are people legitimately excited about playing the final product, and they think it’ll be cooler if they add x, y, z.

      The second is a bunch of managers and focus groups and think tanks trying to figure out how to squeeze the most money out of “their ip.”

      It’s no accident that the product turns to shit. You see these high profile flops, and the company is just gobsmacked. “We checked all the boxes! Why aren’t they buying our over-monetized generic shit that’s designed almost entirely to make you play *longer* but not enjoy it!?”

    25. Zemini7 on

      They abandoned RTS. The genre that made them great and help build goodwill.

    26. ppuspfc on

      On my humble opinion, what causes this is the human problem on projecting the future. Capitalists think too much on quick gain and destroy all business by doing this

    27. DrPoopyPants on

      Was a contract worker for about a year with one of their major games. While there, I watched 3 lead engineers leave. Each had about a decade of experience with one of them being the first engineer on a major franchise (they prototype with small teams first).

      The brain drain from those 3 losses alone would kill most projects, but it’s still going (and I still play it). I’m amazed that Blizzard is still around – a true testament to the talent there, but it can’t last forever.

    28. GraveyardJones on

      I’m gonna guess shareholders who only think of games as a money sucking product instead of art and entertainment

    29. borghive on

      Most of the old devs that left Blizzard, the ones that were responsible for making all those great games, all say Blizzard has been dead for years.

      It was a good run for me, I loved Warcraft RTS games, Diablo 2 and the older versions of WoW.

    31. DarkIllusionsFX on

      Prioritizing money over the product and customer. It’s what happened to every major company in every major industry.

    33. urbanek2525 on

      Wow, Blizzard. There’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. I think I dumped that subscription at least 10 years ago.

    34. Expensive_Finger_973 on

      MBAs and their shareholder bosses is what happened. Same thing that happens to any company once the MBAs start to out weigh the people that actually know how to do the thing the company does.

    35. rdececco29 on

      Here’s the full article for those who don’t want to start a free trial – “Over the past three years, as I worked on a book about the history of the video-game company Blizzard Entertainment, a disconcerting question kept popping into my head: *Why does success seem so awful?*Even typing that out feels almost anti-American, anathema to the ethos of hard work and ambition that has propelled so many of the great minds and ideas that have changed the world.

      But Blizzard makes a good case for the modest achievement over the astronomical. Founded in Irvine, California, by two UCLA students named Allen Adham and Mike Morhaime, the company quickly became well respected and popular thanks to a series of breakout franchises such as *StarCraft* and *Diablo*. But everything changed in 2004 with the launch of *World of Warcraft* (or *WoW*), which became an online-gaming juggernaut that made billions of dollars. I started writing [*Play Nice*](https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9781538725429) because I wanted to examine the challenging relationship between Blizzard and the parent corporation that would eventually call the shots. After conducting interviews with more than 300 current and former Blizzard staff members, I found a tragic story—a cautionary tale about how the pursuit of endless growth and iteration can devastate a company, no matter how legendary its status.”

    36. bedbathandbebored on

      I mean, the cover ups of sexual assault/harrassment. The firing of whistleblowers, the micro transactions and gender pay gaps etc. it’s hardly a mystery.

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