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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

#141

Post by failuser »

cmorgan31 wrote: post #111
failuser wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would like to see why Overwatch is so expensive. They don’t have some cutting-edge tech, it could have been a Quake or Half-Life mod and have the same exact gameplay and marginally worse graphics. Ok, there is the networking and matchmaking. Ok, they need anti-cheat and perfected loot box drop probabilities. Still, free to play South Korean shooters achieve that for way less.

You have too narrow a view which seems pigeonholed on technology. The majority of expense is rarely the technical line item or budget unless it’s a pure SaaS or PaaS in the cloud play. The expense is often from headcount, marketing, sales, creative, support, legal, esport, and operational costs. You can make an AAA clone but that won’t make it Overwatch or WoW. Their brand carried them and even back in the day their…

Right, I’ve concentrated on actually making the game instead of the whole business cycle. I would expect that a small developer would spend less on GR, PR and so on.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#142

Post by kelnos »

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…

I don't really understand this attitude, or line of reasoning, or whatever you want to call it.

Sure, if a company does something that you find reprehensible, not giving them further money (or attention) is certainly a reasonable -- and honorable! -- thing to do.

But if you've already purchased a standalone[0], non-subscription product from that company, and that company doesn't gain any benefit from your further use of that product (or lose anything from you stopping use), I feel like you're only hurting yourself if you stop using it.

I will concede that if the act of playing one of these standalone games makes you think of the bad thing the company did and makes you angry/upset, I guess it makes sense to stop playing them. But unless the bad thing they did is something personally/viscerally important to you, it feels like that's a bit of an odd trigger.

[0] If the game is multiplayer, and connects to a company-run server, I guess you could make the argument that they benefit in some way from their active-users numbers being higher. I personally don't find that argument all that compelling, but everyone can of course decide where the cutoff of benefit is for them.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#143

Post by slownews45 »

xbar wrote: post #78
juped wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah they're just biglaw, any biglaw firm does everything

This seems accurate. Contextually, ActiBlizz is responding to the DFEH situation with a new biglaw firm. Will ActiBlizz use WH's union-response services? I would be surprised if they don't. WH will likely sell guidance about what can be legally done to chill early unionization pressures. If unionization efforts really get rolling at ActiBlizz, no doubt they will spend more at WH. What is good: WH's tactics at Amazon,…

We need to be crystal clear here that the unionization drive at Amazon, AL FAILED - and it wasn't close.

This was a BLOWOUT loss by the unions. I mean, the vote wasn't even close even though they protested something like 500 votes?

I didn't know WH was involved on company side - but if so it was a mighty effective campaign.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#144

Post by 1f60c »

tinus_hn wrote: post #52
tapoxi wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, what is this news source? Who are its writers? I am by no means taking Activision's side here, but this website is sketchy.

The website ‘Wikipedia’ is sketchy? Or who is? edit I guess you mean the news site this article is on, that is pretty sketchy indeed.

Additionally, the site wouldn't load for me. Turns out NextDNS blocked it because it's less than 30 days old, and indeed, it is[0]:

  Dates 30 days old  
  Created on 2021-06-29  
  Expires on 2022-06-29  
  Updated on 2021-07-04
[0]: https://whois.domaintools.com/promethean.news

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#145

Post by gotostatement »

cs702 wrote: post #81

Clickbait title for a highly opinonated piece that would never see the light of day in a respectable publication like the Washington Post, WSJ, NYT, Economist, etc. WilmerHale is a well-known top-100 law firm with a long history -- it's definitely not a "notorious union-busting firm." I'm flagging this story because it doesn't belong on the front page of HN, IMHO.

Their own website lists one of their areas of expertise as "advising on union awareness and avoidance"

https://www.wilmerhale.com/en/solutions/labor-and-employment Under "Executive and Workforce Training" tab

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#146

Post by beebmam »

cs702 wrote: post #81

Clickbait title for a highly opinonated piece that would never see the light of day in a respectable publication like the Washington Post, WSJ, NYT, Economist, etc. WilmerHale is a well-known top-100 law firm with a long history -- it's definitely not a "notorious union-busting firm." I'm flagging this story because it doesn't belong on the front page of HN, IMHO.

A quote from the article: '"Wilmerhale’s own site advertises its expertise as "union awareness and avoidance."'

Therefore, yes, it is accurate to define them as a "union-busting firm". They fulfill other roles than just that, but they do act as union-busters, and they even describe themselves as such.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#147

Post by cratermoon »

leereeves wrote: post #106
BeefWellington wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Bloomberg sufficient?[1] Perhaps straight from the horse's mouth?[2] Or is the issue more with the claim they're a union-busting law firm? Because they even basically claim that on their website.[3] That said they otherwise look like not a terrible choice though as with all things like this the optics to something like this are incredibly sensitive. [1]: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/business-and-practice/activisi…

"Identifying and dealing with sexual and other unlawful harassment" seems more relevant considering the lawsuit.

Sure, but that doesn't mean they are on the side of the victims. As we've seen many times in the past 4+ years, "dealing with" can mean throwing money at the victim in exchange for signing an NDA and leaving quietly. That's sort of the default corporate response, and doesn't seem to really ever lead to a change in the behavior of the abusers. Sometimes the person at fault doesn't even lose their job.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#148

Post by cletus »

The Steve Jobs quote on why Xerox failed [1] strikes again. The finance people have taken over Acti-Blizzard and they've been coasting for 10+ years on their original franchises. All we have is annual CoD releases and Blizzrad coasting on their old properties where Blizzrd hasn't had a significant original release in 10+ years.

This effort seems like it's part of the ruthless approach to controlling costs that slowly strangle a company from within.

I believe WoW is the #2 property (after CoD) at Acti-Blizzard and it's clearly changed from one of delivering a game to simply extracting as much money as possible from each customer much like how almost all mobile games do.

The state of California's complaint is bad. I mean really bad. The fact that 3-4 different people from AB all released different statements in the last week should tell you exactly how bad it is. That's classic panic mode. There should only be one.

This latest move tells you the company believes it will blow over and they're looking to do the minimal required to appease the detractors and get back to business as usual without having to pay people more or pay out a bunch of lawsuits.

Honestly, the heads of J Allen Brack and Bobby Kotick in particular should roll over this lawsuit.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlBjNmXvqIM

EDIT: commenters have noted (correctly) that I overlooked Overwatch. This was a significant release but it seems to also have waned in popularity and Overwatch 2 is inextricably going in some weird PVE direction.

Other than that you have a poor received Diablo sequel, a series of lackluster to bad WoW expansions, a disastrous Warcraft 3 remaster and complete abandonment of the RTS genre that propelled them to success in the first place.

WC3 Reforged ("Refunded") was significant in that it was not only underwhelming and plagued with problems it made the original game worse with a forced download and loss of functionality.

The most significant change however was Blizzard not wanting a repeat of missing the MOBA boat with Dota 2 by adding a condition that all the IP for third-party maps belong to Blizzard, completely killing that ecosystem.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#149

Post by dogorman »

lacker wrote: post #87
cratermoon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does any of that have to do with whether or not the firm is notorious for union-busting? Representing a polluting corporation against citizens suing it for making them sick is 100% compatible with busting unions. [Originally I had gotten this backwards and stated that WilmerHale represented the citizens]

Their Wikipedia page doesn't mention anything about union-busting. If you are "notorious" for something in this day and age, it should at least show up in ten paragraphs of Wikipedia. The main controversy mentioned there is them representing people who are held in Guantanamo under suspicion of terrorism. It seems more like Wilmer Hale is a huge bunch of lawyers doing all sorts of things, than some union-busting hacks…

10 paragraphs? That's your standard? What a joke! The Exxon Valdez only gets three sentences on Exxon's wikipedia page. It costs peanuts to bribe a wikipedian editor to manage your corporation's reputation and suppress controversies on wikipedia. This is standard practice. How anybody thinks a corporation's wikipedia page is neutral territory is beyond me.

Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale

#150

Post by hn_go_brrrrr »

failuser wrote: post #4
post_break wrote: post #2

The problem I see with them is the brain drain if the influential people leave. They have options at other companies, and if enough people leave Blizzard they may be stuck. But this is just me looking from the outside in. This also signals they are scared of them unionizing.

Are there any influential people that might be on the receiving end of the frat boy culture?

Yes. I'm extremely influential at setting technical direction where I work (not Blizzard) but I'm not a manager so I can't discipline people. I can only attempt to advocate for the culture I want to see, or vote with my feet.
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