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Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

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Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#91

Post by johnchristopher »

happytoexplain wrote: post #51
seany wrote: post #8

I've never understood why people are confused or upset by these kinds of things. It's almost literally not in the companies best interest to just "let it happen" so why wouldn't they fight it?

Not trying to be smart by using your words: I legitimately have never understood why this comment is so common, considering how apparently obvious the fallacy of it is. You didn't imply "the company must do X", you implied "people shouldn't be upset that the company did X". The former is a totally reasonable argument to be made. The latter makes absolutely no sense (without extenuating context). You're not really con…

It's just rhetoric clichés. I used to reply "I am surprised some people are surprised that company did X" but why bother.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#92

Post by filmgirlcw »

a1pulley wrote: post #38

> "At WilmerHale 1st year counsel makes $350,000. The 24 year old 1st year summer associate still in law school walks into the office in a $1,500 Burberry suit and makes $202,500 that year. Those Amazon workers they swindled out of higher wages make less than $30,000 a year." The 200k figure is for a first-year associate who has graduated and passed the bar exam [1]. It's interesting to me that you can only hope to c…

The majority of SWEs at FAANG companies do not make that. Depending on company and location, they might get a sign-on stock grant that could theoretically get them approaching that, but that doesn’t take into account vesting schedules and cliffs. It’s assuming a best-case scenario and certainly not “the majority.” And even then, a new hire low level SWE straight out of college isn’t often going to get a $500k stock grant on-hire, no matter what levels says. And certainly no matter what Blind says.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#93

Post by totony »

krastanov wrote: post #73
noptd wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a decently sized cohort that hasn't forgiven ActiBlizzard for what they did to Warcraft III as well. Nothing like ruining a 20 year old game by forceably replacing it with a broken, partial reimplementation.

I am out of the loop, could you elaborate?

Blizzard has been under a lot of bad press because they have screwed game releases lately (mostly because of shitty management?). They've also had bad press on political issues like the hong kong esports things and others iirc.

for warcraft3: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/blizzard-botched-warcraft-iii-re...

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#94

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

pm90 wrote: post #3

Is there any way to break the stranglehold of large studios and enable smaller studios to build high quality games? I loved Blizzard back when they made their OG triad (Diablo, Warcraft, Starcraft) now it just seems indistinguishable from…EA. How can we enable more scrappy Blizzards?

> "Is there any way to break the stranglehold of large studios and enable smaller studios to build high quality games?"

Game engines are now cheap/free but what deep pockets buy are more and better artwork, level design, story writing, voice acting, sound design, background music, motion capture, etc. that are the hallmarks of AAA games. While small studios can (and do!) build great games, they can't replicate that because of the cost and I don't see a way to work around that. There's no way to automate artistry.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#95

Post by celdon25 »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #61
aeoleonn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out Path of Exile 2 -- it's the spiritual successor to Diablo 2. And it's freemium

It's a great game, but if you are concerned about Freedom in Hong Kong, Grinding Gear Games is owned by Tencent, so you are still sending money to support an authoritarian regime that is still finishing up their latest installment of ethnic cleansing and re-education camps.

This is anecdotal but I have memories of people freely bashing the USA in POE chat rooms, while I got a warning for making comments about China.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#96

Post by brainfish »

adkadskhj wrote: post #64
brainfish wrote: post #26

I cut my teeth on Diablo, and played Diablo II for probably fifteen years after its release off and on as a way to stay connected with a friend who loved it similarly. More recently, I have consistently played Starcraft II since its release and enjoy a sense of mastery over that game unparalleled by my experience in any other. I haven't purchased new Blizzard products since the Hong Kong censorship debacle[1] and qui…

`

My hope is that I can contribute in my small way to making moral behavior more profitable than immoral. IE voting with my wallet.

I'll also vote for policies and representatives to enact sensible (opinions will differ, obviously) legislation to enforce better morality and better safeguarding of the commons, especially with respect to externalities -- as I see those as a major source of the failings of capitalism.

Beyond that, I don't really know. And I'll readily admit that looking around at where we as a society are and where we seem to be headed, especially with respect to things like climate change, those seem like very small measures. I just don't know what else to do.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#98

Post by Symbiote »

rareform wrote: post #44
nyanpasu64 wrote: post #5

I've never heard of this news group before, all they offer for contact is a Gmail address with no names, and this domain doesn't even show up when I search Promethean News. I have my doubts about this website.

I can't even access this site at my University due to it being a newly registered domain. From WHOIS: `Creation Date: 2021-06-29T18:05:15`

Why would a month-old domain cause a problem for access?

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#99

Post by brainfish »

brainfish wrote: post #96
adkadskhj wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`

My hope is that I can contribute in my small way to making moral behavior more profitable than immoral. IE voting with my wallet. I'll also vote for policies and representatives to enact sensible (opinions will differ, obviously) legislation to enforce better morality and better safeguarding of the commons, especially with respect to externalities -- as I see those as a major source of the failings of capitalism. Bey…

Edit: parent deleted their comment, but it was a question about isn't union busting the logical capitalist move and what can we do about it.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#100

Post by RangerScience »

adkadskhj wrote: post #64
brainfish wrote: post #26

I cut my teeth on Diablo, and played Diablo II for probably fifteen years after its release off and on as a way to stay connected with a friend who loved it similarly. More recently, I have consistently played Starcraft II since its release and enjoy a sense of mastery over that game unparalleled by my experience in any other. I haven't purchased new Blizzard products since the Hong Kong censorship debacle[1] and qui…

`

AFAICT, this is one of those counter-intuitive cases. Mission-driven companies tend to (AFAIK) do better than pure profit-driven companies; similarly, AFAIK, companies that take morality seriously tend to do better. A significant aspect of this (IMHO) is employee empowerment, which relates to the common theories as to why Silicon Valley happened rather than the Boston corridor (legal situation advantageous to employees).

Other things that come to mind: "Ask for money, get advice. Ask for advice, get money twice." https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/ags - "If the stock market made any sense, you'd be able to exploit that sense and capitalize on it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

So it makes "logical sense" IFF short-term improvements/non-losses of control, power, and position lead to profit, and that's not something that's logically provable. Rather, that's something that's got to be observed experimentally, and AFAIK it ...isn't.

If your goal-metric is money, you run into both what SMBC is pointing out, and Goodhart's law. If your goal-metric is something else, money is an "easy" by-product.

> how can we work to promote moral behavior?

IMHO sociological studies examining this. "Seek money, make nothing. Seek to make, get money twice", or something.

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