Editing Blizzard (section)

==Scandals==

From the late 2010's onwards, the company has experienced a steadily worsening fall from grace. In its first decade Blizzard was usually the universally beloved grand-daddy of the gaming world, albeit with one skubby exception in the form of Diablo 3 (Its PC version infamously requires an internet connection to play. It doesn't matter how you or your company tries to sell it, an online-only singleplayer game is '''never''' a good idea, despite D3 being one of the VERY few cases of this succeeding. They also had an auction house that just led to all kinds of fucky shit like scams, droprates rarer than winning a lotto and people just going P2W to get the best stuff. Fortunately, they wised up and removed the hell out of it less than 2 years later.). But a number of PR-fuckups, shallow cashgrabs, [[Communism|grievances from the developers that actually make the games]] and - worst of all - the revelation of years of pervasive sexual harassment of staff by higher-ups have left a very sour taste in many people's mouths and all but crushed Blizzard's reputation.

In a funny twist of fate, when it comes to their products, Blizzard is currently making a lot of the mistakes Geedubs made before [[Kevin Rountree]] took over. Another notable development is that a lot of the original developers that made games like Starcraft and Warcraft into the nearly universally beloved gems everyone knows have started building their own games studios to compete with Blizzard. 

Here are some of the biggest failures and crimes; 

'''November 3, 2018:''' The main-event announcement at BlizzCon 2018 was revealed to be ''Diablo Immortal'', a mobile game, and not the hoped-for ''Diablo IV''. Attendees were livid, and one guy who asked if it was an out-of-season April Fools' joke got more applause than the announcement trailer did. The presenters, displaying an astounding inability to read the room, asked the audibly disappointed crowd "Do you guys not have phones?" The gamer rage made an notable impact on Blizzard's stock price, which took months to recover afterwards.

'''Feburary 12, 2019:''' Blizzard fired 800 employees despite reporting record earnings. 

'''October 6, 2019:''' During a tournament, Chinese [[Hearthstone]] pro-player Blitzchung appeared wearing a gas mask and goggles in a livestream and showed support for the then-recent Hong Kong protests. Near the end of the livestream he said “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our age”, a recognized slogan in the Hong Kong protest. After the interview Blizzard disqualified Blitzchung, stripped him of his prize money, and banned him for a year. Backlash was immediate and intense, with many users deleting their WoW and Battle.net accounts or destroying their physical games while #BoycottBlizzard trended with thousands of retweets. 

'''October 28, 2019:''' Blizzard announced a $660,000 prize pool for their annual arena/mythic dungeon world tournaments, after previously releasing a set of promotional in-game toys, promising 1/4 of the sales would go towards said prize pool. Most fans believed the money made from the sales would be added to the $500,000 minimum that Blizzard had promised. However, after competing players confronted Blizzard officials, it was revealed that Blizzard had instead chosen to rely entirely on the sales profit for the prize pool, making off with ~$2 million themselves from the other 3/4 of the sales and contributing nothing out of their own pockets. Yet more nerd rage ensued.

'''January 28th, 2020:''' Blizzard released the remastered version of Warcraft 3. The game came out in a notoriously unfinished, buggy and featureless state and used advertisements that bordered on being fraudulent (Australian and EU authorities actually filed a lawsuit against Blizzard for misleading advertisements), was missing features the original game had ''13 years ago'', [[RAGE|'''claimed ownership of any custom content created for the game in the ToS in a really, really stupid move that is also illegal under US and EU law''' - especially since Blizzard is a US company]] (It's believed they're still butthurt that DOTA (Defense of the Ancients, originally a custom map for W3) joined up with Valve and they couln't obtain a single penny from the sequel) and even refused to offer refunds, which prompted another lawsuit by EU authorities against them. The game also completely replaced the original Warcraft 3 on the launcher, locking players out of the original unless they have the physical discs plus disc ports and instead prompting them to download the "improved" version. Effectively, they somehow managed to ruin what is considered to be one of the best RTS games ever made, [[FAIL|18 years after it came out]].

'''August 4, 2020:''' Employees shared a spreadsheet of salaries and recent pay increases showing that few of them were given raises after crunch, and overtime. Many employees, despite working at one of the biggest video game companies in America, were struggling to pay rent and using the company's free coffee as an appetite suppressant as they cut meals. Apparently that 5-year service sword does not also pay rent.

'''October 16th, 2020:''' Blizzard announced that they would put Starcraft 2 into maintenance mode, ceasing any content updates in the future. This has left a lot of players angry and sad, especially since Starcraft 2 is one of the very last remaining RTSes with a decently sized playerbase and competitive scene.

'''November 20th, 2021:''' Blizzard releases two transmog sets for World of Warcraft: Shadowlands with the Celestial Observer's Ensemble and the Baby Murloc Satch-Shells.  While both were praised for their design, this release caused rancor among the community for being hidden behind a paywall. The former has also been considered better made, or at least more detailed, than the raid tier sets in Patch 9.2, causing further complaints.  

'''June 2, 2022:''' The release of ''Diablo Immortal'' is met with overwhelming outcry, as it proves to be a thinly-veiled pay to win game. The micropayment system for loot boxes is not very evident or necessary in the early stages but, as the end of the game approaches, paying becomes a requirement... almost essential to keep moving forward.

'''October 3rd, 2022:''' Servers of Overwatch are shut down to push all players towards playing the sequel releasing the next day.

'''May 16th, 2023:''' Overwatch 2 has its single-player PvE mode cancelled, the one thing that was established as the central feature of the up to this point tepidly received sequel to the team shooter. Fan reception has been overwhelmingly negative as not only was the original Overwatch allegedly killed for this single-player mode, the sequel is now just a barely disguised shopfront for exceedingly expensive skins for the hero characters and nothing else. 

'''June 13th, 2023:''' Turns out, they ''did'' some work on Overwatch 2's PvE mode. But here's the catch; they only made the first few missions, or "levels". So, to access them, [[What|you gotta pay an extra $15. Even at the face of backlash]], Activision just can't stop being the shittiest company on earth it seems.

===The sexual harassment lawsuits===

This refers to a series of 2021 sex crime lawsuits against Activision Blizzard regarding offences that go back several years. Due to the severity of the crimes/charges and their effects along with the related investigation being ongoing, they've been given their own section on this page. 

'''July 22nd, 2021:''' California's Department of Fair Employment filed a civil lawsuit against Activision Blizzard for sexual harassment of numerous employees - especially female employees, some of the incidents going back years. The final catalyst was the suicide of female employee, Kerri Moynihan, identified as one of the victims of said harassment and even speculation that the harassment contributed to her fatal decision. According to the lawsuit, the culprits are from several levels in the company (former Senior Creative Director Alex Afrasiabi and former CTO Ben Kilgore are among them). The charges include unwanted groping, posting intimate pictures without the subject's consent, hidden cameras in toilets and more. Worse, other execs knew of the abuses but did nothing. The situation wasn't helped when several Blizzard employees lashed out at several high-profile WoW commentators and streamers such as Asmongold for criticizing these atrocities, trying to shift blame onto them despite those streamers having nothing to do with the company or the abuse. With morale at an all-time low and widespread stress, the development of new projects was put on a roughly-two-month hiatus. 

'''July 28th, 2021:''' After delivering an open letter to upper management, a portion of Blizzard staff staged a walkout protest that gained considerable news coverage. There was increasing support for staff to unionize, with Blizzard's Board of Directors responding by consulting the same legal firm whose lawyers prevented Amazon's staff from unionizing.

'''August 3rd, 2021''' Sponsors started to turn against Blizzard and executive-level employees, such as J. Allen Brack and Jesse Meschuk, left the company (unclear whether it was voluntary resignations or the standard sugar-coated "golden parachute" dismissals for top level business execs).  Brack and Meschuk are both among those named in the lawsuit, and Brack was succeeded by "co-leaders" Jen Oneal and Mike Ybarra following his departure (with further accusations leveled that Brack left to deliberately avoid being confronted over knowing about the abuses but not stopping them).

'''August 25th, 2021''' The California Department of Fair Employment leveled charges of obstruction via witness tampering - requiring employees to speak with Activision Blizzard execs ahead of contacting the DFEH, amending the complaint and even destroying evidence by shredding records from the HR archives. This was added to the lawsuit and could take the case from a civil lawsuit to a criminal lawsuit.  

'''August 26th-27th, 2021''': Characters and places named after developers from the lawsuit are renamed or removed from Overwatch and World of Warcraft. Examples include the Overwatch character Jesse McCree and World of Warcraft's Draenei city Mac'aree - both named for former WoW lead level designer Jesse McCree, being renamed to Cole Cassidy (in a clever move, "Jesse McCree" was retconned to be Cole's criminal alias) and Ere'dath respectively.

'''September 14th, 2021''': A lawsuit is filed against Activision Blizzard accusing them of union-busting and worker intimidation. The latter in particular based on the company executives' response to the sexual harassment lawsuit.

'''September 20th, 2021''':  Activision Blizzard is subjected to a federal investigation as the Securities and Exchange Commission gets involved over how the company has handled employee allegations of workplace discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual misconduct. Bobby Kotick and several other senior executives were given subpoenas, with the court date pending.