Blizzard Entertainment Crumbling Due to Poor Esports Performance and Executive Meddling?
Earlier this year, Blizzard Entertainment, a company that I personally hold in high regard due to the amazing experiences they have provided millions of people across the world for years but earlier this year they did a massive layoff of employees, letting go of over 200 people suddenly and without warning, this made a lot of people mad and a lot of rumors have been going around lately. It seems that everything started crumbling inside the company in November 2018 after their hilariously bad Blizzcon 2018, where everything they announced received a poor reception by the audiences, that felt mocked by the company, especially on the Diablo stage with the Diablo Immortal announcement which is still nowhere to be seen and the forever infamous line spoken by Wyatt Cheng "Do you guys not have smartphones?" cringe worthy indeed.
This past week has probably been the worse for them this year, at least since the train wreck in November, there are strong rumors of executive pressure forcing blizzard into projects they don't want to, causing the sudden cancellation of 4 other blizzard projects and the defunding of the Heroes of the Storm Esports league and slow down of development for the game.
Not only that but it seems several high profile and experienced staff are set to leave Activision Blizzard in the near future. Among them will be Kim Phan, the Global Product Director of Blizzard Esports - someone who has been with the company over thirteen years and has been the lead in every Esports breakthrough the company had and to make it worse, there are possible rumors and leaks being spread out by disgruntled employees that where laid off all over the internet revealing the awful working conditions and stress the whole staff is under due to the pressure of the executives that just want to milk the company and the IPs. There's even rumors of a covered up suicide attempt inside the company grounds due to self-harm of an employee and people just breaking down and crying under their desks due to pressure and stress.
With Activision-Blizzard stock on an all year low and pressure growing from the executives to perform and the creativity and brain power of the company being drained, will this be the perfect storm that breaks the camel's back or will Blizzard manage to survive this mess they have been cornered into by the higher ups in Activision? Personally I hope the company survives, to many friends, to many memories would be lost if they dissapear, hopefully they'll be able to weather this storm and come out stronger on the other end.
The clips about the Diablo announcement are tough to watch. I hope they can pull it back together since they are the creators of some of the best games ever. I never played WOW but I know a lot of people that do / did!
That Blizzcon was really tought to watch and everyone is crossing fingers for them to get out of this financial and creative hole they have dug themselves into! :-D
Their event went south real fast, it seems like they lost all focus of what their customers want. For example announcing Diablo Immortal on mobile and got booed lol They pretty much took their money flagship games and crapped them all up to try and make some more bucks instead they shot themselves in the foot.
Some "employees" that got laid off claim that Mike Morhaime left the president seat of the company because he was tired of all the meddeling by Activision and their executives focusing only on the money instead of the quality of the games.
Explains why lead figures like Josh Mosquiera(Director of Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls) and Ben Brode(director of Heartstone) left the company as well. Wouldn't be impressed if other big players leave as well.
ye to much $$ and greed a feel from diablo 3 and the gold system they had there selected to give up the super loyal costumers and just have more fast money a guess the owners want a secoene cabin. sad..:(
The Diablo mess in general and their massive cash grabbing these pass few years have been terrible.
ye its a dam shame a was a super fan back in the day payed Diablo 1 and 2 a ton but lost my interest on the cash grab on 3. btw am running a smal mini game here on steemit called the up vote minder a see you have good up votes but more dont hurt and mine are free so, if you like just enter it one comment. super easy.
I'll check it out :-D
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The nonsense they been pulling I'm not quite sure how they are worth more then two nickels to rub together.
The day after I posted this, they released another mount behind a paywall :^)
Lol I'm sure that will fix everything.
Don't worry they just need to make World of Warcraft II, World of Warcraft III. . . World of Warcraft X. Oh crap the horse died a long time ago.
Uck I loved Blizzard but than all that shit happened.
SJW also came to many other games ruining the appeal. In a way it a free market and hopefull new/better dev team come and make it :/
The situation they have put themselves into is really sad and apparently the development and community brain drain is massive.
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