Blizzard's Bizarre Adventure

Like a crappy boss, Atsuku, like a crappy corporation...

You know, I remember a time when Blizzard weren't just looked at fondly within the gaming world, but were revered as gods! You could sculpt a stature in their honour and you'd have droves of pre-mainstream gamers flocking to pledge their fealty to this covenant of the Bluemoon. And this was because theirs was one of the first studios to covet the line of "We're a studio of gamers" which is now such a commonly mundane phrase that I swear it's become the industry mantra that every out-of-touch CEO hangs on their wall so that they can point to it everytime their avaricious tactics get dragged out into the light. "Yeah, we ask for the soul of your first born in order to pass the first paywall but remember the sign; we know what you guys want! We're one of you- or something..."  It's wild to see a studio that was once a champion of being 'One with the people', dissolved and disseminated into little more than a warped corporate printing press for bad stories. Seriously, games Journalists everywhere could carve their careers out of such a trainwreck of public relations; but then that would require them to do journalism and we all know there's only 3 reporters willing to do that in the entire gaming industry. (God, I'm feeling spicy today! Must be something I ate.)

Perhaps the beginning of their woes can be traced back to the acquisition of Blizzard by everyone's least-favourite anti-creativity entity; Activison. EA may be bad with their practises but... actually, nah them and Activison are just as bad as each other for their own reasons; yeah, that's a battle of mediocrity that I don't want to get in the middle of right now. But as a fan, I can only imagine how heartbreaking it must have been to see the heroes of the gaming world get swallowed up by the Acti-rich, Devourer of Studios, all the while assuring everyone that it would be all right and that they wouldn't change too drastically. It would be like watching Bethesda take all of their years of hard-earned public love and systemically burn it down with bad decision after bad- ouch. (That one hit a little rough.) So did Activison change Blizzard? Yeah, they did! And for the absolute worse too.

If I stick to the high-profile incidents; then we have the notorious 'Diablo Immortal' scenario wherein the next title in the famed Diablo series was revealed at the coveted 'final announcement' slot of that year's Blizzcon; only for it to turn out to be a mobile cash grab aimed at gouging the player base for every last schmeckle the team could get their hands on. Blizzard got called out on it, they apologised and nothing was fixed. Then there was the Warcraft 3 remaster which released missing many promised features, looking half-assed and aggressively stamping down on the original Warcraft 3 community who had been some of the most passionate people in all of gaming. They were called out, Blizzard sort-of apologised, (they removed the false advertising) and nothing was changed. Then there was the freedom-of-speech issue where Blizzard got caught silencing a tournament player speaking out for the freedom of their country, all in a transparent attempt to wiggle up to their Tencent investors. Blizzard were lambasted by everyone from gamers to politicians and they did this weird thing where they half-apologised whilst emphatically lying to everyone that their agenda was to kowtow to their Chinese sugar daddies. (How does that even- You know what? Shut up, Blizzard. We're all done hearing your crap.) Oh- and nothing ultimately changed aside from some vague ban walkbacks. Are you seeing a pattern here, yet?

There's more, smaller stuff, too, but I have neither the drive nor the attention-span to recall it all so lets stick with that. It's still all damning stuff and paints a poor picture of those who were once the heroes of so many. What's worse, is that the people who really suffer from all this nonsense, not just because they have to put up with it but because they're also on the frontline for all the vitriol when it blows up in management's faces, is the employees. They don't make these dumb decisions, yet they're often the most accessible to the common man and so they hear it all for their bosses sake. It get's to the point where some employees have to take matters into their own hands in order to affirm that they are not aligned with cooperate's crappy mandates. Such was the case with the mild defacing of the gaudy Blizzard monument outside their headquarters in the wake of that last issue, there were some real voices inside the fold that were just as disgusted as we were, real good eggs that deserve to be remembered as such. So it's in the interest of them that today we talk about the latest failing of Blizzard; in signing their employees' checks.

I'm being factitious, obviously, as far as we are aware Blizzard do pay their employees the wages they are due, although, that does not mean said wages are substantial. According to a recent internal employee action that was rather contentiously leaked, several lower level folk at Blizzard have begun to look at their pay and realise the significant disparity between what they earn and, say, what the companies top brass earns. So far so normal, I hear you remark, and I am much the same. But Blizzard does take it a step further by, in some people's situations, failing to provide a liveable wage within the expensive areas that Blizzard drags their employees to. I mean, I'm hearing that what Blizzard have to offer it's employees is bad, really bad; as in, they are developing a relationship within the industry of being particularly poor payers, bad.

Now in some respects this is a reflection of the wider gaming industry, (Not that that's supposed to be a positive in this situation) in that around the board there are positions that are notably undervalued by the developers and publishers. One of the particular positions noted in this expose was the role of 'tester' and given the sorts of tales we've heard coming out of Activision I think it's fair to say that story tracks. If you remember back to the tumultuous development cycle of Black Ops 4, there was a pretty serious situation wherein play testers were underpaid, kept on short contracts and ostracised by other teams, with most only staying on board out of the slim hope of being hired on a permanent basis. Apparently that's a practise that has somewhat leaked over to Blizzard and the way that they run things, because we're starting to see history repeating itself.

Given that we're in a year of significant financial downturns across the world, but especially in America, (which houses Blizzard's base of operations) it certainly isn't a good look for a majority of your lower staff to turn around and realise that they're being underpaid for all of their hard work. Certainly not as the company in question remains one of the biggest in the industry that string together successful product launches like the Nameless King strings together my many deaths at his hand. (I'm still playing Dark Souls 3, it's becoming a problem.) From this there have even been a few stories about just how bad things have become, and it's rough to listen to. One employee spoke about how his partner had stopped talking about starting a family, knowing that they couldn't afford to raise a child. Another spoke about making less today than they were when they started working at the company, 10 years ago. And one person said they had to often choose between paying rent and keeping themselves stocked on food for the week, meaning that they had to use the company coffee as an appetite suppressant. (I typically use toothpaste for that, didn't know coffee worked too.) Now this all reads pretty awful, almost like the kind of machinations you'd hear from the ultra-corporate world of Obsidian's 'Outer Worlds', and that's meant to be a parody. (Actually, the 'appetite suppressant' thing is a plotline from that game.)

So what does this all mean? What indeed. One of the biggest companies in the industry has had their dirty laundry aired out to the public and it's to the point where now the employees are getting sick of waiting. Negative press is starting to build, heads are starting to turn, and soon people are going to start really heeding the words of those who moved to other studios and industries in order to see an instant bump to their income. Blizzard's in a hell of a do-or-die situation right now, and their management has a history of doing nothing and waiting for everything to just go away. (I don't know if that's going to work out this time.) It's heartbreaking to witness the fall of someone you used to respect, even if that's a corporate someone, but one can only hope that positive lessons come out of it. I don't want to see Blizzard gone tomorrow, but I also want them to fix up their act before this industry loses some of it's best talent. But the power to turn things around, lies only in their hands. (Now watch them totally squander it.)