Well this company is DONE.
Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
201–210 of 379 posts
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it something they need to be worried about? I mean Activision Blizzard has been shit all over the years, and kids still buy their games. On the other hand hiring a firm is not a proof of wrongdoing for the ongoing trial.
> kids still buy their games Any source on that? I always imagined the current Blizzard customer demographics in the 20-40 years old range. Kids definitely don't play WoW, Diablo or StarCraft/Warcraft. Not sure about Overwatch but I'd guess kids prefer Fortnite. So perhaps Hearthstone? You kinda need a credit card to enjoy the game tho. But you have a point, people still buy their games, expansions, loot boxes, skins…
Blizzard might not be targeted at the younger demographic, but teenagers still play CoD, which is made by Activision. ActiBlizz also owns King, which makes games like Candy Crush, which kids also play.
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to feel weird about watching old DVDs of the Cosby Show, for example. With the "benefit" of context, the vibes are sort of irrevocably off.
Yet Michael Jacksons music is still played on the radio and in other media contexts.
Aside, but there seems to be a much higher level of collective cognitive dissonance with Michael Jackson, perhaps because of his stature in popular culture. I'm guilty of this myself - my brain sets a higher bar for evidence, perhaps unreasonably.
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That paragraph calls it "one of the worst oil spills in American history," and links to an entire article about it. What underhanded editing do you think has happened here?
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's called virtue signalling. See how virtuous this guy is, giving up the precious entertainment he already paid for a decade ago for no reason other than internet points - it's not like these girls are going to be ungroped by this guy's actions, if the allegations are to be believed.
The thing that gets me about “virtue signalling” is this built-in assumption that no one does anything earnestly, and that every action is performed according to how it’ll be received. I just don’t believe that’s how the vast majority of people live their lives. OP did what they did because the status quo made them uncomfortable. People don’t have to be soldiers in a mythical cultural war, sometimes they’re just peop…
> The thing that gets me about “virtue signalling” is this built-in assumption that no one does anything earnestly, and that every action is performed according to how it’ll be received.
This is because the people who use the term 'virtue signalling' consider morality to be transactional and cannot comprehend the idea that someone might actually be virtuous or have moral standards beyond which they will not tread. The term itself has now become its own 'virtue signal' to people who hold a particular viewpoint.
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you are "notorious" for something in this day and age, it should at least show up in ten paragraphs of Wikipedia. That is placing way too much trust in Wiki pages not being manipulated to portray their subjects in an unfairly positive light
Especially when it's on a page which is super-niche and obscure to most people but vitally important to a single company's HR department.
Anybody can edit the page to add citations and info. I checked the last year of edits and nobody has done it except for someone, probably based on this news cycle, simply adding the word “anti-union” with no citations, which was of course rightfully reverted.
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#207I am usually against unions in tech because the free market tends to allow a proper balance of supply and demand. However, gaming might just be the perfect sub-domain of tech to benefit from unionization. The supply is massively saturated, with dreamy eyed programmers ready to give their lives to work in gaming. On the other hand, a very small group actually gets to make any of the creative decisions that every gamer…
The supply being massively saturated is also what makes a union impossible to form. The over-saturation of supply means there's plenty of people willing to work a non-union game dev job because the alternative is no job. Also the EA-Blizzard-Activision-Ubisoft studios do consistently deliver quality games: COD, Battlefield, Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, etc. Formulaic, perhaps, but it's tough to claim that these aren't…
Dota 2 has been in continuous development since 2011. The players have been kept quite happy.
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#208I 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 got hooked on Diablo, and the memory of anticipating Diablo II (for which I built a computer) is almost tangible. WoW was the next drug/escape, and Hearthstone my last Blizzard slot-machine until I became a parent. I never thought I’d move away from games, and now I don’t miss them, turning instead to gardening and exploring with my kid. I still have a lot of emotion bound up in that game time, and perhaps they were useful in the absence of a counselor (in person or through books) who could help me cultivate a sense of purpose.
I still play a couple games (Hell Let Loose as a 3-person tank crew is great) but only as a way to spend time with distant friends.
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I read their statement as “there should be some mention of the notoriety within 10 paragraphs,” not that there should be 10 paragraphs that explain it.
You can also look at the edit history of a page. Are there unethical removals of information there, in your opinion? You can even link to the edit that removed them, like this one that removed some juvenile vandalism: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/102148089...
Re: Activision Blizzard Hires Notorious Union-Busting Firm WilmerHale
#210The 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…
If the adults in the room have 'taken over' Acti-Blizzard, it wouldn't have been ran like a frathouse.
The reality is that over the years, Activision has kept their hands off their golden goose, and that the company's rot originates with the original management team. Notice how most of the harassment, and the retaliation that followed took place under the leadership of Mike Morheim (And that he's been personally called out for the latter.)