lemmy.world

Maggoty, (edited ) do gaming w I've never seen a company squander as much goodwill as Blizzard.

Hulu was really good a decade ago. Then they put ads in and created a higher tier. Nobody was surprised when it happened again some years later.

In Ukraine starlink was being hailed as a hero before Elon decided to turn off Internet access in areas he deemed Ukraine to be “too aggressive”.

Goodwill doesn’t deserve it’s reputation. It uses minimum wage exemptions for disabled people to pay it’s staff below minimum wage.

Edit to add - Destiny 2 was the other one I was thinking of and couldn’t quite place. Great PvE shooter with great story, and they killed it to force people to buy DLC.

funkless_eck,

D2’s problem is different. To succeed critically they needed to produce The Taken King or The Witch Queen every content cycle, but there’s no way to do that except release only once a year — but they wanted to release every 3 months, so they made shitty DLCs that everyone mildly disliked and hyped them up so people actively disliked them on release.

Then the shitty mini DLCs began cannibalizing the dev, time and monetary budget from the main DLCs and it fell into a downward spiral.

Maggoty,

Yeah that wasn’t great but I think it was the part where they literally deleted a bunch of the story so you either bought the DLC or wandered the maps aimlessly killing stuff that really broke any good will left.

HawlSera,

Or worse… you bought the DLC and had no idea what was going on because you’re a newer player and they deleted the story that this DLC is a follow up.too…

NotMyOldRedditName,

It’s amazing how people still get things wrong ages after it’s been corrected by the author and spread misinformation and the hate involved with it.

Elon didn’t turn starlink off. It was always off. It was never ON to be turned OFF.

Further, allowing ukraine to use starlink as a weapon in an offensive attack was against the terms of service and would put spacex in a very difficult position with regulations. That’s why the DoD took it over, and it’s okay now.

Maggoty,

If it was always off then why did they lose Internet? And why was Ukraine’s counter offensive bad but Russia’s offensive okay?

NotMyOldRedditName, (edited )

They lost internet because they went out of range of where it was on. They assumed it was on everywhere.

They strapped them onto boats where the internet was on, and drove them to where the internet was off. Then they begged SpaceX to turn them on, and they refused.

Not turning it on to allow the attack was in line with the terms of service and weapons export rules. SpaceX doesn’t want their consuner service to be considered a weapon.

Russia was getting satellites from 3rd parties and using them in ukraine because they work in ukraine.

Edit: and just to clarify, now that the DoD is managing this for ukraine through a contract with SpaceX, the DoD is allowing its use as a weapon AFAIK.

Maggoty,

A. That’s not how satellites work

B. The US considers Crimea to be Ukrainian territory.

C. These uplinks were already purchased by the DoD, who was very vocal about Elon fucking with the signal.

I know it sucks that your idol turned out to be the vain villain instead of Tony Stark but we were all here. We all remember.

NotMyOldRedditName, (edited )

Lol, service absolutely can be turned on and off based on regions. SpaceX doesn’t turn it on in a region until the local government had an agreement with them. Just because the US gov sees Crimea as Ukraine does not mean SpaceX is obliged to turn it on there.

And no, there was no DoD contract in place at the time. SpaceX was providing services for free out of their own goodwill.

The DoD had a formal contact in place in June 2023, the incident falsely commented on by OP was in 2022.

Edit below

…wikipedia.org/…/Starlink_in_the_Russo-Ukrainian_…

You can go read it all in the wiki yourself but the relevant part

In June 2023, the Department of Defense officialized a contract with Shotwell’s SpaceX to buy Starlink satellite services for Ukraine.[10] The deal includes the Pentagon buying 400-500 Starlink terminals for Ukraine, giving the Pentagon control of where Starlink works inside the country without fear of interruption.[79] The terms of services of the final contract were undisclosed for security issues.[10] Following the contract, The Pentagon stated Starlink was a “vital layer in Ukraine’s overall communications network” amidst “a range of global partners to ensure Ukraine has the capabilities they need.”[10]

Edit: oh, you’re OP. LOL

Maggoty,

I’m not going to read the wiki on an active war with a cult of personality involved. It’s not going to be unbiased.

News reports from the period make the situation very clear. As well as whistle blowers straight up telling us Elon personally shut down their Internet.

Get fucked.

NotMyOldRedditName,

Okay dude, continue to have your raging hard on for hating Elon

reuters.com/…/pentagon-buys-starlink-ukraine-stat…

I’ll wait for a verified source that shows spacex had a formal contract to supply starlink services to Ukraine with the DoD prior to this. I imagine I’ll die before you can do that since you can’t.

Edit: specifically before the event in question.

Blackmist, do gaming w I've never seen a company squander as much goodwill as Blizzard.

Concorde would have loved to get 115,000 reviews…

The_Picard_Maneuver,
@The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world avatar

That game flopped so hard.

A_Union_of_Kobolds,

The beta was boring and it was free

calcopiritus, do gaming w I've never seen a company squander as much goodwill as Blizzard.

Ever since they banned that StarCraft II pro for protesting china in Hong Kong, I’ve uninstalled battle.net and didn’t look back.

I rather buy a game from EA.

jaggedrobotpubes,

Sometimes Blizzard says things but it just sounds like Winnie the Pooh’s jizz gurgling out their mouth.

A_Union_of_Kobolds,

what

SassyRamen,
@SassyRamen@lemmy.world avatar

Same, down with the CCP

figjam,

Same dude. They had been on the downhill for a bit but I sold my stock and was done

HawlSera, do gaming w I've never seen a company squander as much goodwill as Blizzard.

“We could address the frat boy culture at our company and give reparations to the women who had their boob juice stolen… But will you settle for us changing McCree’s name to.something the fanbase still won’t acknowledge three years later?”

AFC1886VCC, do gaming w I've never seen a company squander as much goodwill as Blizzard.

Death to ActivisionBlizzard. Company of shitty games and sexual harassment.

ltxrtquq,

Hey now, what did Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard King ever do to you?

snekerpimp, do gaming w I've never seen a company squander as much goodwill as Blizzard.

I miss the Warcraft II and StarCraft days. You could tell they were serious by their cutscenes, but also knew they were having fun, and wanted the player to as well, by the gameplay and Easter eggs. “Line must go up” took over, now it’s all cash grabs. I will not buy a game from them at full price again.

criitz,

It hasn’t been the same company that delivered that gaming magic in the 90s since, well, the 90s.

LaserTurboShark69,

Their cutscenes still go hard honestly

snekerpimp,

Meh, they are what I expect from a company that is that profit centric. Looking good is top priority for selling, after all.

Rekorse,

Its probably not that hard to make an inspirational 5 minute animation though, is it.

I mean they likely have some great talent doing it, but its not the product, its not what we are paying for.

At least they started putting more cut scenes in game rather than the single intro video to hype you on the game.

ShaggySnacks, do gaming w I've never seen a company squander as much goodwill as Blizzard.
CheeseNoodle, do gaming w I've never seen a company squander as much goodwill as Blizzard.

CDPR? admittedly they’re really good at gaining it back again, kinda homer simpsons vibes where they repeatedly fuck up but then make an honest attempt to make things right only to repeat the cycle all over again.

seejur,

CDPR mistakes can be corrected, but blizzard games are designed from the ground up, with purpose, to be fuckup games in order to milk as much money as possible from it players. There is no correcting the boat for blizzard because for the managers of blizzard the boat IS correct

Raab,

Hopefully their transition to unreal engine 5 gets away with a lot of their launch issues I genuinely love all of their games but their release dates being “game launch +1-2 years” hurts me.

batmaniam,

CDPR is still on my “probably pass” list after cyber punk. I read the launch news, stayed faraway. I picked it up this year, after all the patches and work and… yeah it’s still fundamentally broken.

Not in terms of balance or bugs, but it didn’t have the magic. To start, I really don’t like fantasy games. They’re just not my thing. Witcher 3 had bad combat mechanics, could be terribly grindy and YET is one of my top five games. The story telling, from the plot itself the tiny immersive details in the world, hooked you. They nailed the big things, but it was the little things like sometimes you’d free someone, and realize they murdered a bunch of dudes who were minding their own business, and none of this was mentioned in or affected any other plot line, it was just a random detail in the universe.

Cyberpunk has a semblance of the big stuff, but exactly none of the soul. I cared about some of the main characters (emphasis on “some”) but exactly none about the world. It never felt like more than a backdrop.

A loss and misstep is ok, particularly given a growing studio, the problem with CDPR is they think they fixed cyberpunk. With that mentality I’m giving their next game a huge berth.

And if you liked cyberpunk, enjoy. There are parts to be enjoyed. There are some neat plot threads, some nifty side quests, if you enjoy it don’t let people ruin it for you.

pressanykeynow,

They lied about Cyberpunk. They knew it was bad on release and maliciously made decisions so that people would still buy it. That’s not some minor thing, that’s a crime. “We leave greed to others”, yeah, right. And this problem was never addressed by CDPR, like it’s a normal thing to do, they think it’s okay.

Ephera,

Man, Cyberpunk was not a Homer-like fuckup. They were promising features which were nowhere near ready, while their whole game hardly ran at all. That’s a crime, at least in my country. Homer doesn’t do crimes…

dinckelman, do gaming w I've never seen a company squander as much goodwill as Blizzard.

It’s a cultural issue.

People at Larian had one objective the entire time - making a genuinely good D&D based game. If the money comes, that’s incredible. And it did come.

People at blizzard make games with the goal of making money. The era of making something fun has been long over in this studio

The_Picard_Maneuver,
@The_Picard_Maneuver@lemmy.world avatar

It seems that publicly traded game companies simply can’t help themselves from becoming this (e.g. Activision/Blizzard, Ubisoft, EA).

It’s very sad, but at least there are still a few private AAA companies and indies who seem to make fun games for the sake of fun games.

dinckelman,

Once you go public, you’ve practically forced yourself into aiming for infinite growth. “Just enough” revenue is not in the vocabulary of these people

henfredemars,

That’s what happens when MBAs start making too many product decisions at a tech company, and game companies are no exception.

oxideseven,

Not even just game companies. Publicly traded companies are a curse on humanity.

arefx,

I don’t buy or play their trash any more. It ain’t the 90s or 00s any more. Blizzard is ass.

Ea, ubisoft, Blizzard. The games aren’t even that good

dinckelman,

Yeah, pretty much. A lot of their games appear on a 80% sale half the time, and even then it’s still not worth it. It’s not even about the money, it’s about being disrespected by the dogshit they continue to release.

I would rather give my time to a passionate indie studio, where the people put together a genuinely unique experience

Cornelius_Wangenheim,

It’s an ownership issue.

Larian is privately owned by Swen Vincke. They can concentrate on making good games because they don’t answer to anyone but Swen.

Blizzard is publicly owned. It has to answer to greedy and short-sighted shareholders.

MarcomachtKuchen, do games w Daily Screenshot Drop - Trooper at Imperial Checkpoint (Star Wars: Outlaws)

Really cool shot, love the composition Is this from outlaws or one of the jedi parts?

all-knight-party,
@all-knight-party@fedia.io avatar

The description on the imgur link says Outlaws

AFallingAnvil,
@AFallingAnvil@lemmy.ca avatar

Outlaws, the out of focus lady in the center with her hands in her jacket pockets is the main character

PunchingWood,

Correct. I forgot to mention it, as it’s a cross post from the Outlaws sub.

finitebanjo, do gaming w I've never seen a company squander as much goodwill as Blizzard.

Blizzard died quite a while ago. Even if the same dudes are still making decisions at the head of the studio after the Activision buyout, clearly they have dementia or some other cognitive defects.

InEnduringGrowStrong,
@InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works avatar

I think the execs were always somewhat shit, even when they were making good games. It’s just their creative team miraculously managed to make good games despite the shitty execs.

finitebanjo,

Yeah, they used to have a Caste System in Blizzard HQ where badge color decided your importance. And get this, their tech guys, security guys, and hardware guys (not firmware) were all the lower caste lmao.

RizzRustbolt,

Firing Nethaera was a bullet in their brain.

bungle_in_the_jungle, do games w Daily Screenshot Drop - Trooper at Imperial Checkpoint (Star Wars: Outlaws)

Holy reflections, Batman!

blind3rdeye, do gaming w I've never seen a company squander as much goodwill as Blizzard.

It was easy to predict a downward slide as soon as they merged with Activision.

finitebanjo,

Rather than merged I think they were simply bought by Activision. An Acquisition is when one business entity becomes a child to another, a merger is when the two become one different entity.

Saleh,

“Mergers” end up being acquisitions in the majority of cases. One company culture will prevail, one companies middle management will take over the administrative sides and depending on the structure also the technical side.

finitebanjo,

Okay but the merger was Vivendi Games who merged with Activision. Blizzard Studios was never at any point Activision’s equal, they’re a bought and paid for property of Activision.

TankovayaDiviziya,

I didn’t even know they merged with Activision. And I didn’t even know that the latter has also gone worse than I expected. Which is a shame because I have fond memories of pre-2010s Call of Duty games.

tacosanonymous, do games w Day 46 of posting a Daily Screenshot from the games I’ve been playing until I forget to post Screenshots
@tacosanonymous@lemm.ee avatar

That game lets you murder Aisha Tyler for some reason. Like, I thought it would be a “game over” type scenario but nope. Just get the cops on you.

offspec, do gaming w I've never seen a company squander as much goodwill as Blizzard.

I’m pretty sure is right there with them

  • Wszystkie
  • Subskrybowane
  • Moderowane
  • Ulubione
  • rowery
  • fediversum
  • FromSilesiaToPolesia
  • healthcare
  • test1
  • krakow
  • Gaming
  • Cyfryzacja
  • muzyka
  • Blogi
  • NomadOffgrid
  • esport
  • Technologia
  • ERP
  • shophiajons
  • informasi
  • retro
  • Travel
  • Spoleczenstwo
  • gurgaonproperty
  • Psychologia
  • slask
  • nauka
  • sport
  • niusy
  • antywykop
  • Radiant
  • warnersteve
  • Wszystkie magazyny