I’d be curious to see if you can install the patch that reintroduces the E3 graphics and how that’s handled on the Deck. Not sure on the how-to with SteamOS.
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.
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.
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.
I not too long ago played this game and, while flawed, found it to be a very decent game with a lot of potential. My biggest gripe personally is that it devolves from an engaging and clever stealth game to a mass murder simulator, and the main character isn’t terribly likable by the end. Still, I enjoyed it quite a bit and might even replay it some time.
Good game, had a lot of fun with it. It seems a lot of people didn’t like the game because the graphics got downgraded from what they showd in the first trailers. They only real complaint I have is the handling of cars is weird.
I think Activision might be on the way out, they’ve had playercounts decline pretty much every quarter and even though their SEC filings show an increase in revenue thats only because Blizzard and other new properties get filed alongside the rest of Activision, now.
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.
“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.
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.
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.
I’d recognise Limsa Lominsa anywhere. I’ve been playing since 1.0, with some breaks here and there. FFXIV is one of my favourite games ever, for story and gameplay.
I hope you enjoy it and have a great experience. Feel free to join us at !finalfantasyxiv as well.
IMO the issue isn’t WotC, it’s Hasbro. WotC is their golden goose and they’re squeezing it for everything. I haven’t checked their recent earnings calls but I wouldn’t be surprised if WotC is still their only subsidiary where the revenue isn’t declining.
Just wait until GabeN retires and the inheritors of Valve start to enshittify it. Unless GabeN had a good succession plan in place, or GoG can swoop in and become the new standard, things might get rough. I might stick to retro games from then on.
I bought BG3 on GOG simply because it was on GOG, otherwise I would have waited a few years. I want to support AAA games being release on GOG at release because it doesn’t happen much. GOG isn’t gonna take over Steam, because largely the industry isn’t going to support DRM free AAA games.
Steam is privately held, so there’s plenty of reason to be hopeful. The recent rapid enshittification of what feels like every company is mostly due to US laws that require publicly traded companies to squeeze every last dollar out or face severe penalties. Privately held companies are not subject to those laws, and so they can stay actually decent and care about their customers without threat of legal repercussions. An example is Lego Group - there’s some valid criticism, but legos have stayed a top quality product for nearing a hundred years - and show no signs of suddenly degrading in quality. So, I wouldn’t worry unduly about this until Valve announces an IPO. Then you should start worrying.
It’s more complicated than just one law that says “you must be a bastard” I admit, but fiduciary responsibility is a core requirement of any publicly traded company and very much is legally enforceable (this parenthetical aside stands in for about three pages of niche caveats and overly wordy exceptions that I’m just going to shamelessly handwave away). At best a CEO might be found to be civilly liable, but peasants non-C-suite employees are criminally charged for neglecting their fiduciary duty every day in the US.
Absolutely, but fiduciary responsibility, has never and was never intended to mean absolutely maximizing profits and especially at the long term expense.
That was a twisted idea that was put forward in the late 70s early 80s as a means to justify destroying companies for short term gain.
If you breach fiduciary duty the best thing you can hope for is to be fired. Executives have been criminally charged for it as well though. And while it has to be an intentional act of malfeasance, that gets pretty blurry when the shareholders hire thousand dollar an hour lawyers to come after you.
So while yes, the root cause is greed, the system itself is setup to feed that.
My hope is that Gabe actually gets direct brain connection technology off the ground and he uploads his consciousness into an everlasting machine so he never has to retire.
Not only do they not understand, they actively don’t care: they have a product-agnostic business process that can convert any type of stable business into a pile of extracted equity and spare parts. They are literally bleeding their own society to death
At least actual vampires would probably have the good sense not to destroy the breeding stock that keeps them alive.
Because most of these MBA fucks don’t understand the concept of piracy being a service problem. They have run perfectly fine systems into the ground because they insist on making it infinitely harder to use legit services than to just rip shit off.
Thats interesting, I hadn’t connected those before. I think it would be hard to argue in favor of separate expectations for inflation of wages and the companies profits.
Like I understand having a stellar year, but the goal is still set the same, and its fine to return tk that baseline next year. Or maybe even doing well one year means we can lower the goal next year, or bank the difference for bad weather years.
Would be interesting if companies had an interest in the long term like that.
Oh geez there’s so many people tend to write articles about the general phenomenon rather than specific examples.
One of the biggest recent examples though has got to be Boeing. While they’re a publicly traded company, they resisted the call of greed above all until they merged with McDonnell Douglas and the MD executives won the battle for control of the merged company. Things went on a decades long slide after that which resulted in hundreds of deaths and a chain of high profile mechanical failures we’re still not sure is over.
For privately held corporations it’s all about that new leadership. In fact around 70 percent of family run ones fail in the second generation. But any generation can run the business into the ground or change it up. Bancroft and Barings are great examples of that. Barings was 232 years old when it went bankrupt under mismanagement.
Blizz was salty about not being able to sue their way into a cut of all of the professional Brood War revenue in Korea, which is why SC2 didn’t launch with LAN support (except when played at an Official Blizzard Event).
It’s a shame 'cause SC2 had some genuinely awesome ideas, like the Allied Commander mode. Probably the best casual online gameplay of any RTS, which frankly every other RTS ever made should copy.
It’s a shame 'cause SC2 had some genuinely awesome ideas, like the Allied Commander mode. Probably the best casual online gameplay of any RTS, which frankly every other RTS ever made should copy.
Unfortunately every other RTS only tries to copy the sweaty multiplayer 1v1 experience. Like playing guitar hero on expert mode on your mouse and keyboard while also doing strategy at the same time.
Even more unfortunately no one seems to be able to execute even that part half as well as Blizzard did.
Since we’re talking RTS, do you have time to talk about my shameless plug for beyondallreason.info?
This style of RTS appeals much more to me in recent years. Feels less like you need to perform like a speedrunner.
So much QOL compared to the APM spamfests other RTS can become.
The story was absolute crap, but the campaign levels were still really fun.
Also, each campaign did feel like a full fledged game from a content perspective. I can give blizzard shit for a lot, but how they handled sc2 (beyond dropping it completely) is low on the list.
SC2’s esport and competitive scene was incredibly successful. We got 14 years of incredible tournaments, content, personalities, streamers, etc… Seems like you are just a casual player that just missed the boat.
unpopular opinion: this phrase is right, sometimes. In that context, at that conference, bad call. But sometimes… people think they want something until they get it, and then they realize they don’t want it.
How you phrase things is also important. Never having played WoW, they came across as arrogant and out of touch. Something that’s only been reinforced by their further actions. The “Do you guys not have phones?” comment is just the sequel. The issues only be more and more serious since then.
Makes me think of that Reddit post where the guy thought he was into shitting and ordered an escort to shit on him, only to realise he was in fact not into shitting
lemmy.world
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