Concorde would have loved to get 115,000 reviews…
That game flopped so hard.
The beta was boring and it was free
They lost me before this line, but I will never forgive and never forget:
“What you guys don’t own phones?”
“You think you do, but you don’t!”
unpopular opinion: this phrase is right, sometimes. In that context, at that conference, bad call. But sometimes… people think they want something until they get it, and then they realize they don’t want it.
How you phrase things is also important. Never having played WoW, but they came across as arrogant and out of touch. Something that’s only been reinforced by their further actions. The “Do you guys not have phones?” comment is just the sequel. The issues only be more and more serious since then.
Makes me think of that Reddit post where the guy thought he was into shitting and ordered an escort to shit on him, only to realise he was in fact not into shitting
It was evident that they had completely lost touch with their player base at that point
They made me sad with Diablo 3. But they lost me at StarCraft 2.
D3 got better after years of updates. StarCraft 2’s story was hot garbage and they turned a single full game into three smaller games.
Seeing Blizzard fuck over Overwatch fans was not a surprise to me.
SC2’s esport and competitive scene was incredibly successful. We got 14 years of incredible tournaments, content, personalities, streamers, etc… Seems like you are just a casual player that just missed the boat.
Blizz was salty about not being able to sue their way into a cut of all of the professional Brood War revenue in Korea, which is why SC2 didn’t launch with LAN support (except when played at an Official Blizzard Event).
It’s a shame 'cause SC2 had some genuinely awesome ideas, like the Allied Commander mode. Probably the best casual online gameplay of any RTS, which frankly every other RTS ever made should copy.
It’s a shame 'cause SC2 had some genuinely awesome ideas, like the Allied Commander mode. Probably the best casual online gameplay of any RTS, which frankly every other RTS ever made should copy.
Unfortunately every other RTS only tries to copy the sweaty multiplayer 1v1 experience. Like playing guitar hero on expert mode on your mouse and keyboard while also doing strategy at the same time.
Even more unfortunately no one seems to be able to execute even that part half as well as Blizzard did.
Since we’re talking RTS, do you have time to talk about my shameless plug for http://beyondallreason.info?
This style of RTS appeals much more to me in recent years. Feels less like you need to perform like a speedrunner.
So much QOL compared to the APM spamfests other RTS can become.
The story was absolute crap, but the campaign levels were still really fun.
Also, each campaign did feel like a full fledged game from a content perspective. I can give blizzard shit for a lot, but how they handled sc2 (beyond dropping it completely) is low on the list.
Yeah but they’ll never learn because tons off people keep shoveling money at them.
I think Activision might be on the way out, they’ve had playercounts decline pretty much every quarter and even though their SEC filings show an increase in revenue thats only because they get filed alongside the rest of Activision, now.
I’m pretty sure is right there with them
Blizzard died quite a while ago. Even if the same dudes are still making decisions at the head of the studio after the Activision buyout, clearly they have dementia or some other cognitive defects.
Firing Nethaera was a bullet in their brain.
I think the execs were always somewhat shit, even when they were making good games. It’s just their creative team miraculously managed to make good games despite the shitty execs.
Yeah, they used to have a Caste System in Blizzard HQ where badge color decided your importance. And get this, their tech guys, security guys, and hardware guys (not firmware) were all the lower caste lmao.
Ever since they banned that StarCraft II pro for protesting china in Hong Kong, I’ve uninstalled battle.net and didn’t look back.
I rather buy a game from EA.
Sometimes Blizzard says things but it just sounds like Winnie the Pooh’s jizz gurgling out their mouth.
Same, down with the CCP
Same dude. They had been on the downhill for a bit but I sold my stock and was done
CDPR? admittedly they’re really good at gaining it back again, kinda homer simpsons vibes where they repeatedly fuck up but then make an honest attempt to make things right only to repeat the cycle all over again.
Hopefully their transition to unreal engine 5 gets away with a lot of their launch issues I genuinely love all of their games but their release dates being “game launch +1-2 years” hurts me.
CDPR mistakes can be corrected, but blizzard games are designed from the ground up, with purpose, to be fuckup games in order to milk as much money as possible from it players. There is no correcting the boat for blizzard because for the managers of blizzard the boat IS correct
CDPR is still on my “probably pass” list after cyber punk. I read the launch news, stayed faraway. I picked it up this year, after all the patches and work and… yeah it’s still fundamentally broken.
Not in terms of balance or bugs, but it didn’t have the magic. To start, I really don’t like fantasy games. They’re just not my thing. Witcher 3 had bad combat mechanics, could be terribly grindy and YET is one of my top five games. The story telling, from the plot itself the tiny immersive details in the world, hooked you. They nailed the big things, but it was the little things like sometimes you’d free someone, and realize they murdered a bunch of dudes who were minding their own business, and none of this was mentioned in or affected any other plot line, it was just a random detail in the universe.
Cyberpunk has a semblance of the big stuff, but exactly none of the soul. I cared about some of the main characters (emphasis on “some”) but exactly none about the world. It never felt like more than a backdrop.
A loss and misstep is ok, particularly given a growing studio, the problem with CDPR is they think they fixed cyberpunk. With that mentality I’m giving their next game a huge berth.
And if you liked cyberpunk, enjoy. There are parts to be enjoyed. There are some neat plot threads, some nifty side quests, if you enjoy it don’t let people ruin it for you.
They lied about Cyberpunk. They knew it was bad on release and maliciously made decisions so that people would still buy it. That’s not some minor thing, that’s a crime. “We leave greed to others”, yeah, right. And this problem was never addressed by CDPR, like it’s a normal thing to do, they think it’s okay.
It’s a shame, I liked OW1, even with the tired meta and 6v6 more than I liked OW2.
The loot boxes weren’t predatory, allowing unlocking of skins and content without spending anything extra was a nice balance in my opinion that I wish more games did.
They took OW1 and bastardized it, it deserves the rating it has. It used to be that new versions of games were better.
It used to be that new versions of games were better.
I for one am very interested to see the quality differences between worker owned game studios and corporate studios. But last I heard they had only just started unionizing.
And a programmer friend I talked to couldn’t comprehend why he would want to be in a union.
And a programmer friend I talked to couldn’t comprehend why he would want to be in a union.
I also had a programmer friend that was anti-union. He was like “If the place I’m working at sucks, I’ll just find another place.” Very short sighted and optimistic.
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Tech workers in general have been finally making baby steps with unions trying to form at goog and maybe a couple others. I think kickstarter got a union a couple years ago as well… There are some other examples too which is a big change from just a few years ago
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World of warcrafts team and Bethesda recently unionized.
unions are a harder sell in an industry like tech where it’s common to have a diverse skill set spanning work that could arguable each be it’s own union. does a full stack dev have to join the database admin union before they can write sql queries?
those diverse skill sets also make the individual value of workers fluctuate a lot more as well.
I still like the idea of unions but I just don’t know how you can make them work for tech;if anyone has any good resources on the subject I’d love to read more about it
It really is a shame. I played so much OW1, and then suddenly it changed to be like all the other modern games with sleazy monetization that I avoid.
The loot boxes weren’t predatory
Ehhh, they were basically the same thing as a slot machine. The battlepass is certainly worse, as it just encourages rampant (not so) microtransactions, but just because the current battlepass system is really predatory, doesn’t mean the old loot box system wasn’t predatory at all. It was just less predatory.
Well I guess what I mean by that is that loot boxes were free to obtain AND open through leveling and weren’t exclusive to forking over money.
No lootboxes at all is the ultimate goal, but I’d take OW1 lootbox style over nearly any others.
It was easy to predict a downward slide as soon as they merged with Activision.
Rather than merged I think they were simply bought by Activision. An Acquisition is when one business entity becomes a child to another, a merger is when the two become one different entity.
“Mergers” end up being acquisitions in the majority of cases. One company culture will prevail, one companies middle management will take over the administrative sides and depending on the structure also the technical side.
Okay but the merger was Vivendi Games who merged with Activision. Blizzard Studios was never at any point Activision’s equal, they’re a bought and paid for property of Activision.
I didn’t even know they merged with Activision. And I didn’t even know that the latter has also gone worse than I expected. Which is a shame because I have fond memories of pre-2010s Call of Duty games.
If you think that’s bad, wait 'till you hear about the working conditions.
In their defense their just keeping up with the standard in other publicity owned companies. Don’t wanna rock the boat you know.
(This is a joke, please join a union in your field. Union strong motherfuckers!)
It’s hard to make a good game when you’re too busy trying to rape your coworkers.
Blizzard is dead. At the time they were Activision. Now they are Microsoft. The blizzard that existed to make StarCraft, warcraft and diablo only exists in name.
I don’t know, the World of Warcraft dev team recently unionized and got Chris Metzen to return as creative director. And, personally, as a current WoW player (War Within is great so far btw) the whole feel of the studio is so much better than during Shadowlands when things were bad and I quit the game. I think that Warcraft at least is having a bit of a comeback now.
Overwatch 2 is awful tho
Chris Metzen
I don’t really know details about who does what at Blizzard, but isn’t he the guy responsible for the utter train wreck of Diablo3’s writing? Whoever wrote and approved “How tastes your fear, Nephalem?” did a bad job.
One game was all it took for Big Red to turn from an epic “Not even death can save you from me” into a cartoon villain. Fucker wouldn’t shut up throughout Act 4…
Right?? “Not even death can save you from me” is a little corny but on the whole solid. All the shit he says in the 3 is just bad.
He wrote the setting for Diablo, Warcraft and Starcraft. He developed the story for Diablo 1 - 3 as well as most of the lore for the first 3 Warcraft games I believe.
There was no story for Diablo 1. At exile con the creators of Diablo talk about how there was no story and the execs at Blizzard tacked one on. Chris Metzen had nothing to do with it.
What? I played Diablo 1, it literally had a story? Chris Metzen co-created the setting for the franchise with David Brevik and Bill Roper in 1996. The changes Blizzard wanted made from the original concept of Diablo was to make it real-time rather than turn based and to add multiplayer as part of the publishing agreement. I don’t see anything about a storyline being “forced” on the developers.
Basically David brevik said that there was no story and the cut scene on the end was added by blizzard south. They had no intent to add that.
I stand corrected though. Metzen is credited as a writer on Diablo. But not Diablo 2.
I suspect Metzen wrote the ending that was tacked on according to Brevik, since at that time blizzard north was a completely different team at the time.
https://youtu.be/0coFsOfLcPg?si=1JRdDva77SivwKN6
This is the interview. I don’t have a timestamp but the whole thing is compelling.
Just wait until GabeN retires and the inheritors of Valve start to enshittify it. Unless GabeN had a good succession plan in place, or GoG can swoop in and become the new standard, things might get rough. I might stick to retro games from then on.
Luckily BG3 is on GOG. I don’t think I’ve bought a new game on steam for years, granted I don’t play a lot of games nowadays.
I bought BG3 on GOG simply because it was on GOG, otherwise I would have waited a few years. I want to support AAA games being release on GOG at release because it doesn’t happen mouse. GOG isn’t gonna take over Steam, because largely the industry isn’t going to support DRM free AAA games.
it’s a very closely held private company, gaben absolutely has someone to take his place with ideals similar to his.
You hope. It wouldn’t be the first time.
example? /genq
Oh geez there’s so many people tend to write articles about the general phenomenon rather than specific examples.
One of the biggest recent examples though has got to be Boeing. While they’re a publicly traded company, they resisted the call of greed above all until they merged with McDonnell Douglas and the MD executives won the battle for control of the merged company. Things went on a decades long slide after that which resulted in hundreds of deaths and a chain of high profile mechanical failures we’re still not sure is over.
For privately held corporations it’s all about that new leadership. In fact around 70 percent of family run ones fail in the second generation. But any generation can run the business into the ground or change it up. Bancroft and Barings are great examples of that. Barings was 232 years old when it went bankrupt under mismanagement.
Why should they enshitify a service that is printing money with minimal effort? Right guys 🥲.
Because most of these MBA fucks don’t understand the concept of piracy being a service problem. They have run perfectly fine systems into the ground because they insist on making it infinitely harder to use legit services than to just rip shit off.
Yeah, the thing about Steam is that buying your game at Steam feels better than downloading it for free somehow.
Like the 28. Streaming service, so that I can’t find what I want anymore.
because they don’t understand why it’s printing money
Not only do they not understand, they actively don’t care: they have a product-agnostic business process that can convert any type of stable business into a pile of extracted equity and spare parts. They are literally bleeding their own society to death
At least actual vampires would probably have the good sense not to destroy the breeding stock that keeps them alive.
Because they could make it print even more money, and make the line go more up for a very short time!
That looks good on the CV you know.
Because it could be printing even MOAR money. Line must go up at all cost.
Supposedly the answer is inflation. The same profit next year is worth less, so it needs to go up to be the same.
Of course thats not where most companies stop, is it.
The thing that pisses me off if that my comp only goes up by 3% but that is failure to a corp.
I’m seriously concerned about this, yet I keep using steam because of the convenience.
Steam is currently a good company so I am happy to support it. If it enshittifies then I will stop using it and sail the high seas if need be.
Steam is privately held, so there’s plenty of reason to be hopeful. The recent rapid enshittification of what feels like every company is mostly due to US laws that require publicly traded companies to squeeze every last dollar out or face severe penalties. Privately held companies are not subject to those laws, and so they can stay actually decent and care about their customers without threat of legal repercussions. An example is Lego Group - there’s some valid criticism, but legos have stayed a top quality product for nearing a hundred years - and show no signs of suddenly degrading in quality. So, I wouldn’t worry unduly about this until Valve announces an IPO. Then you should start worrying.
Just to be clear, there’s no actual law requiring that. It’s just an excuse they use to be greedy.
If you breach fiduciary duty the best thing you can hope for is to be fired. Executives have been criminally charged for it as well though. And while it has to be an intentional act of malfeasance, that gets pretty blurry when the shareholders hire thousand dollar an hour lawyers to come after you.
So while yes, the root cause is greed, the system itself is setup to feed that.
It’s more complicated than just one law that says “you must be a bastard” I admit, but fiduciary responsibility is a core requirement of any publicly traded company and very much is legally enforceable (this parenthetical aside stands in for about three pages of niche caveats and overly wordy exceptions that I’m just going to shamelessly handwave away). At best a CEO might be found to be civilly liable, but
peasantsnon-C-suite employees are criminally charged for neglecting their fiduciary duty every day in the US.Absolutely, but fiduciary responsibility, has never and was never intended to mean absolutely maximizing profits and especially at the long term expense.
That was a twisted idea that was put forward in the late 70s early 80s as a means to justify destroying companies for short term gain.
Oh, then yes I agree completely!
…
So anyways you coming to Steve’s “eat the rich” party? I hear he’s got a new barbecue.
Ugh, the thought of some generic investment company swooping in and running Valve hurts my heart.
Need someone to track videogame piracy rates and if steam gets enshittified make a graph and mark each of their bad decisions against it
My hope is that Gabe actually gets direct brain connection technology off the ground and he uploads his consciousness into an everlasting machine so he never has to retire.
Perhaps one encased in a giant stone bust of himself. With lasers.
Let me introduce you to Wizards of the Coast
IMO the issue isn’t WotC, it’s Hasbro. WotC is their golden goose and they’re squeezing it for everything. I haven’t checked their recent earnings calls but I wouldn’t be surprised if WotC is still their only subsidiary where the revenue isn’t declining.
“We could address the frat boy culture at our company and give reparations to the women who had their boob juice stolen… But will you settle for us changing McCree’s name to.something the fanbase still won’t acknowledge three years later?”
