That was just part of it. The entire tech sector massively retracted after the boom it saw during COVID, which is also responsible for the sudden enshittification of so many different products/services all at once.
Yup. They can’t take out interest-free loans to pay off their almost-interest-free loans. So now they’re scrambling to save money and build value the old fashioned way.
People with lots of money want even more money. Less employees means less money that has to be paid out which means more money in the short term. Makes line go up for a while. Makes suits happy.
The only thing happening in the industry is the same thing happening in every industry and most of the first world:
The wealthy owners and executive leader roles have learned that COVID, COVID supply lines, interest rates, ‘consumer sentiment’, and inflation, are all very easy scapegoats that both the public and investors will easily buy as reasons for lowering product quality and availability, while also firing employees, squeezing the non-fired ones to death, and raising prices. This has lead to almost 2 straight years of corporations showing record profits (even adjusting for the inflation that they are largely responsible for in the first place).
This downward spiral will continue until some force with nearly as much power pushes back.
This is typically and ideally a representative government in the form of regulation or taxation. But the US government has suffered decades of regulatory capture and congressional gridlock.
So the only other potential option is a large amount of highly populated unions. Which have to fight against nearly 100 years of media and political demonization and nearly 150 years of ‘american independent attitude’.
The perfect modern system has all 3 parties; unions, government, and corporations, equally strong and antagonistic. Just as the perfect modern government would have the executive, legislative, and judicial branches equally strong and antagonistic. Neither could be much farther from the case here.
Stronger bigger unions. Weaker smaller corporations. And a government that actually functions. All are necessary to fix our current shit show.
It already happened, at least on Mediatonic (Fall Guys), a subsidiary. They axed lots of game designers, the UI/UX designer, some other people and even the person who made all the promo art
Activision Blizzard has become such a huge pile of disgusting shit that people are quite tempted to see what would happen if the devil Microsoft buys it.
Yeah, never thought I’d live the day to see it but here we are. Blizzard use to be the darling of all gamers, only one who did things right and released games when they were actually done. Then money hungry shitheads took over.
I’m just happy to potentially see Bobby Kotick, Ion Hazzikostas, Mike Ybarra, etc ousted.
Don’t get me wrong. Fifteen years ago I would have flipped if Microsoft put in a bid to buy Vivendi and get their paws on Blizzard, after seeing how badly they ruined Rare. Activision tanked the brand so bad that I’m actually rooting for Microsoft.
I don’t think Kotick is at all certain to be kicked out. As easily as I can see MS letting him go with an enormous golden parachute, I can just as easily imagine them keeping him onboard because all they care about is Activision’s ability to make money.
In all likelihood Blizzard isn’t going to be managed any differently. Microsoft’s modus operandi with gaming acquisitions is to leave the leadership in place and let the dev/publisher run itself. Why is everyone expecting different here? The most likely outcome is MS does nothing to Blizzard and Blizzard continues on more or less the same trajectory as before.
I know everyone says it, but FUCK they should let Obsidian do the writing, and they need to drop that ancient game engine. Microsoft has probably killed this company.
Fallout: New Vegas had some of their best story telling. The Outer Worlds had awesome lore too. I’m really surprised they didn’t bring them along.
Unions don’t work the same way in all european countries.
In France, the union I belong to is organized by local company and public service, with a spawling system of dual cascading federations by geographic sector and economic sector.
And there are several competing national union organizations which overlap. I don’t know exactly how the other ones are organized
This is the difference between a trade union and an industrial union. You can join an industrial union elsewhere in Europe or even in the US, such as the IWW.
I just replayed DAO last year. It holds up in a way Cyberpunk didn't manage on its first play through. The rest of the series is a trash fire though. Mass Effect is forgettable outside of the excellent world building of the first game.
Yeah nobody knew how to tell stories 10 years ago, it’s only thanks to new storytelling technology that cyberpunk can tell such a boring story with barely any variations. (YOUR BACKGROUND WILL SHAPE YOUR STORY! lol)
Barely any variations? Did you even finish the game?
There's several significantly different paths you can wind up going down in the end. Like, incredibly different endings. And your actions do influence how those endings all play out, too.
I hear this argument from people who played the background prologues and thought those were the major decisions in Cyberpunk. Mild spoiler alert to anyone who hasn’t played: they are essentially short tutorials, not major storylines.
I didn’t say anything like that. I’m asking you if you’re judging newer games against your nostalgic view of how good those games were. But you’re weirdly defensive about it so go jerk off to female Shepherd and come back with that post nut clarifty
I think what starfield is missing is full body animations that go along with conversations, seeing NPCs pick stuff up or pace around while talking and communicating through body language
The extent to which you are arguing against overwhelming evidence cannot be understated. You are arguing against something less controversial than evolution.
We know that unions promote economic equality and build worker power, helping workers to win increases in pay, better benefits, and safer working conditions.
But that’s not all unions do. Unions also have powerful effects on workers’ lives outside of work.
I know this isn’t a popular opinion but I’m actually pretty optimistic about this. Blizzard has been shit for a while and this will at least change things, even if it might be for the worse. Also give me their entire catalogue on gamepass pls.
The sad thing was that CoD Mobile was the last decent game in the series. Just think about that for a moment: a freaking cell phone game is better than any CoD title to come out on actual gaming systems in practically a decade.
I agree that it’s probably mostly children / teens that play those games, but I’m sure a non-insignificant portion of their player base is the type of person who is A-OK with listening to nothing but pop music.
Nothing inherently wrong with that, but they are either afraid of trying something new or they aren’t interested in discovering what they may end up enjoying more than the same derivative time-wasters.
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Aktywne