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 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.
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 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.
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’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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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