<story><title>Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer</title><url>https://www.thedailybeast.com/blizzard-employees-staged-a-walkout-to-protest-banned-pro-hong-kong-gamer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>minimaxir</author><text>A common albeit reductive meme around the entire controversy is that Blizzard games were already declining in popularity (especially Starcraft and HotS) so it&amp;#x27;s easy to boycott them.&lt;p&gt;Path of Exile is an interesting case as I know a lot of Diablo players went there since Diablo III is effectively on life support (including myself), but the resurfacing of the Tencent ownership news is causing ethical complications: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;pathofexile&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;df5zx7&amp;#x2F;anyone_else_suddenly_worried_about_ggg_censoring&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;pathofexile&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;df5zx7&amp;#x2F;anyone_...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>ddtaylor</author><text>As much as I want to think change will happen, it&amp;#x27;s much more likely this will be a few weeks of PR and ultimately nothing will change.&lt;p&gt;For something to change people have to vote with their wallets. In this context that means cancelling subscriptions or dropping games they are already playing in favor for ones by competitors with better integrity, and I don&amp;#x27;t see that happening.&lt;p&gt;Diablo players could go to Path of Exile, its closest competitor, but that game is massively invested into China as well and partially owned by Tencent.&lt;p&gt;Warcraft RTS players represent a small market right now with almost no microtransactions or ongoing revenue.&lt;p&gt;WoW players have alternatives, but not many I am aware of that aren&amp;#x27;t heavily Chinese based as the MMORPG category is dominated by Chinese companies like Perfect World.&lt;p&gt;Starcraft players don&amp;#x27;t have a lot of alternatives as SC has dominated the esports and highly polished RTS category for over 5 years with the same game. The closest competitor would be Age of Empires or Warhammer, I&amp;#x27;m not sure how much influence China has over them, but they are different types of RTS games.&lt;p&gt;Heroes of the Storm players can go to Dota or LoL. LoL being owned by China and Dota being owned by Valve with strong Chinese market involvement.&lt;p&gt;More alternatives are needed IMO.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jknoepfler</author><text>I think the good will that Blizzard earned with their early games has been eroding for a long time. They did, legitimately, used to have enormous community good will. I can think of two ways that&amp;#x27;s eroded:&lt;p&gt;(1) Blizzard&amp;#x27;s early games earned huge amounts of goodwill by enabling players to mod them. The map editor of Warcraft and the UI mod-ability of WoW let people build entire communities around modded content (DotA, for example!). To my knowledge games after Starcraft II have largely lacked anything resembling this kind of functionality (please correct me if I&amp;#x27;m wrong). Hearthstone, HotS, Diablo 3, and Overwatch all have 100% of their content locked down from the top down. I don&amp;#x27;t think the contribution of mods to the longevity of Blizzard&amp;#x27;s early titles can be overstated, and I&amp;#x27;m confused why they haven&amp;#x27;t kept up that spirit.&lt;p&gt;(2) Blizzard has had a long string of eyebrow-raising failures to foster the competitive gaming scene, which they&amp;#x27;ve been tone-deaf on since at least Starcraft II. They pulled the cord entirely on HotS after getting the game into great shape, the kept the Overwatch meta unbelievably stale for years, the Hearthstone Grandmaster League has been a joke on multiple fronts (in addition to an objectively stupid format decision for the first season, they insist on reserving seats in their flagship tournament for popular streamers rather than top players, resulting in some just... awful games). In general they try to retain far too much control and stifle anything they feel inconveniences them.&lt;p&gt;Add to that (3) a string of jaw-droppingly bad community management moves (&amp;quot;you think you want that&amp;quot;... Diablo for mobile...) and (4) Activision looming like an insect and (5) lots of Bizarre changes to games to appease Blizzard China&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t know, I used to perceive Blizzard as a good steward for games. Now I don&amp;#x27;t think the game makers have that degree of control over the company&amp;#x27;s decisions, or their priorities have changed.&lt;p&gt;So it doesn&amp;#x27;t surprise me that people were as quick to kick them to the curb as they were. It would have 10 years ago, but not today.</text></comment>
<story><title>Blizzard Employees Staged a Walkout to Protest Banned Pro-Hong Kong Gamer</title><url>https://www.thedailybeast.com/blizzard-employees-staged-a-walkout-to-protest-banned-pro-hong-kong-gamer</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>minimaxir</author><text>A common albeit reductive meme around the entire controversy is that Blizzard games were already declining in popularity (especially Starcraft and HotS) so it&amp;#x27;s easy to boycott them.&lt;p&gt;Path of Exile is an interesting case as I know a lot of Diablo players went there since Diablo III is effectively on life support (including myself), but the resurfacing of the Tencent ownership news is causing ethical complications: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;pathofexile&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;df5zx7&amp;#x2F;anyone_else_suddenly_worried_about_ggg_censoring&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.reddit.com&amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;pathofexile&amp;#x2F;comments&amp;#x2F;df5zx7&amp;#x2F;anyone_...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item><item><author>ddtaylor</author><text>As much as I want to think change will happen, it&amp;#x27;s much more likely this will be a few weeks of PR and ultimately nothing will change.&lt;p&gt;For something to change people have to vote with their wallets. In this context that means cancelling subscriptions or dropping games they are already playing in favor for ones by competitors with better integrity, and I don&amp;#x27;t see that happening.&lt;p&gt;Diablo players could go to Path of Exile, its closest competitor, but that game is massively invested into China as well and partially owned by Tencent.&lt;p&gt;Warcraft RTS players represent a small market right now with almost no microtransactions or ongoing revenue.&lt;p&gt;WoW players have alternatives, but not many I am aware of that aren&amp;#x27;t heavily Chinese based as the MMORPG category is dominated by Chinese companies like Perfect World.&lt;p&gt;Starcraft players don&amp;#x27;t have a lot of alternatives as SC has dominated the esports and highly polished RTS category for over 5 years with the same game. The closest competitor would be Age of Empires or Warhammer, I&amp;#x27;m not sure how much influence China has over them, but they are different types of RTS games.&lt;p&gt;Heroes of the Storm players can go to Dota or LoL. LoL being owned by China and Dota being owned by Valve with strong Chinese market involvement.&lt;p&gt;More alternatives are needed IMO.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>my_usernam3</author><text>On the contrary, wow classic was setting twitch records just a month ago. Obviously that spike in popularity will not be sustained, but still worth noting and shows the size of Blizzard as a brand.</text></comment>