91–100 of 194 posts
The fact that Blizzard is in a position to throw a 'Con' each year shows that their games and lore are way more highly valued then most games companies. Could you imagine fans paying $230 to visit to an EA exclusive convention each year? Not gonna happen with their reputation. Blizzard is at real risk of losing this community they've fostered for the last 20+ years
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Perhaps people will now realize corporations only act woke to the extent it is to their benefit, and not a millimeter further. Profit consumes all. Corporations will never choose morality.
And, unfortunately, it has been deemed more profitable historically to subscribe cynically to the bigoted aspects of conservatism. Whether it's truly more profitable or not is up for discussion, but fear of Middle American backlash has stayed the hands of a good many companies who would have like to have been able to market to marginalized groups. I think it's good that they've shed that fear, even if only in the int…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps people will now realize corporations only act woke to the extent it is to their benefit, and not a millimeter further. Profit consumes all. Corporations will never choose morality.
There's a large contingent of people who don't want corporations at Pride. But there's also the reasonable view that 'woke for the money' corporations are still better than not woke corporations. It's challenging to work through what's best, especially when the employees of a business might hold stronger views than their employer.
If you're having a hard time finding international software developers to work for you because you're sponsoring US border militias (to use a ridiculous example), then you're materially hurting your bottom line via political speech.
And while that's an example of active speech, there are similar examples of lack-of-speech. E.g. employees at cloud companies disagreeing with neutrality regarding ICE contracts.
It's sad that only a relatively small subset of labor has this much bargaining ability, but it does seem healthy in making companies responsive to popular (for some definition) demands.
My son-in-law has lived in China and confronted me about my boycott. His position is that the content in Blizz games is kinda subversive to the authoritarianism practiced by the CCP. No other gaming company has the breadth of socially reformative messaging contained in WoW, Overwatch et.al. Should Blizz perform corporate harakiri by appeasing the angry SJW (not spoken derisively) in the West, the CCP would have no pr…
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Honestly, I think this is going to be the end of Brack’s short tenure as top executive at Blizzard. I am reminded of the parable of the three letters. I think the company has backed itself into a corner, and the only way out is to let leadership fall on the sword.
Can you link to said parable? I have not heard it and Google doesn't turn up useful results for "parable of the three letters".
About three months goes by and things start to get rough. The manager opens his drawer where he keeps the three envelopes and opens #1. It reads: "Blame your predecessor." So he does and it works like a charm.
Another three months passes and things are growing difficult again so the manger figures to try #2. It reads, "reorganize." Again, his predecessor's advice works like magic.
Finally, about nine months into the new job, things are getting really sticky. The manager figures it worked before, why not try again. So he opens the envelope drawer one last time and opens #3. It reads..."prepare three envelopes."
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No. The Chinese government is using this entire crisis as a way of testing the limits of its power. They wanted to test it in a 0-10 scale but found the needle zoomed up to the right stop, so they adjusted the scale to 0-100 by dialing up their actions to even more extreme. That’s why they’re forcing these companies to bend the knee in public rather than quietly. They didn’t want to just disable the HKLive app, they…
>retreats for the next 30 years to build strategic power while the rest of the world gets distracted by the next Thing. You could argue that China may have worked like that in the past, but they don't under Xi. Dictators are never very patient. They are too concerned with personal power to put long term interests ahead of personal gain. Just look at the HK situation for evidence. All they had to do was keep going slo…
If the Chinese economy crashes... well, look at history for the sum of dictatorship + economic malaise.
Blizzard president Brack’s statement that their policy limiting player speech is to “ keep the focus on the game and on the tournament." This is curious in such an ad supported game and tournament coverage. Do twitch ads take focus away from the tournament? A five second statement by a player is nothing compared to all the non-game material within and around broadcasts. This seems to me to be some damage reduction st…
> “ keep the focus on the game and on the tournament." I just can't help myself but draw the parallels to the NBA and their current situation as well with China and the utter hypocrisy shown by everyone from GMs to Coaches all the way down to players and media staff. When it came to social issues and black incarceration and inequality in America they spoke up bravely, and stated they wouldn't just "shut up and dribbl…
The fact that Blizzard is in a position to throw a 'Con' each year shows that their games and lore are way more highly valued then most games companies. Could you imagine fans paying $230 to visit to an EA exclusive convention each year? Not gonna happen with their reputation. Blizzard is at real risk of losing this community they've fostered for the last 20+ years
Fans are paying much, much, more than $230 to attend NBA, NFL, FIFA, etc. games.
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Unless Activision Blizzard plans to move their HQ to China, having the US government talking about you in a very negative light is likely worse for them.
The playerbase for some of their games is apparently as high as 70% China-based [1]. We can't verify this, because Blizzard doesn't release that information publicly, but if even remotely true, losing access to the Chinese market would be financially devastating. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSAlh9l-c7Q
Per Activision Blizzard's investor calls, approximately 10% of their total revenue is from China. So, with a profit margin of 25% and profits in the billions, Activision Blizzard is not going to go bankrupt even should they lose all their Chinese income.
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I think it still would have been met with backlash because Blizzard previously hopped on the sociopolitical issue bandwagon when they thought it would win them public points [1]. A lot of people see the current situation as transparent bullshit because Blizzard obviously wants to have its cake and eat it, too. [1] https://www.gameskinny.com/as926/blizzard-entertainment-says...
Perhaps people will now realize corporations only act woke to the extent it is to their benefit, and not a millimeter further. Profit consumes all. Corporations will never choose morality.