Blizzard roars from one shitstorm to the next. Is this breaking the game studio’s neck now?
Almost a year ago, I wrote an article in which I lamented about the then-current state of Blizzard. I was sad because Blizzard continued to stray from what I loved about gaming. My hope was that Blizzard would recover in 2019 and get back on the right track. Not only in terms of new games but especially regarding PR disasters, strange statements, and “bowing to China”.
Even though the year is far from over, it can already be said: 2019 did not work out. Blizzard has been staggering from one shitstorm to the next for a year now, sometimes even with a running start.
BlizzCon 2018 – The beginning of the end?
The proper wave of negativity started with BlizzCon 2018. Normally, Blizzard’s trade fair is always a great success and a highlight, but the 2018 event could have also run under “Failures, Bad Luck, and Mishaps.” Many fans were disappointed that the big announcement at BlizzCon was “only” Diablo: Immortal. A mobile game that would not be released on PC.
The question “Don’t you guys have phones?” became a meme that still appears again and again today. Blizzard was accused of losing contact with its core player base.
The core gamers, the ones who had built Blizzard up, were no longer important, only fast money in the mobile market mattered. That was and remains the concern of many.
The layoffs of employees
Shortly after J. Allen Brack took over the position of CEO at Blizzard Entertainment from Mike Morhaime, more bad news came. Over 800 employees from Activision Blizzard were laid off and over 100 support employees were offered severance pay if they left voluntarily.
According to reports from some employees, workers were summoned one by one into the offices to receive their layoffs like on an assembly line. This, along with reports that Blizzard exploited its employees and their passion while paying comparably low wages, caused further outrage.
The discontinuation of the eSports league for HotS
Although the “Heroes of the Storm” league was still advertised in presentations at BlizzCon 2018, a different message came shortly afterward. The HGC, the largest HotS league with high prize pools, was discontinued. Many pro players were already counting on the HGC and had prepared for it. They and the game’s casters suddenly found themselves without a job and had to reorient themselves.
It was no surprise that Blizzard had to endure massive criticism here as well. However, there was no exact reason given as to why the tournaments for HotS were canceled. It fit with the fact that the number of developers for HotS was drastically reduced. After all, development has slowed significantly since BlizzCon.
All-time low of employee morale
The many layoffs, the harsh criticism from HotS fans, and the general work climate at Blizzard led to the morale of the developers reaching an all-time low.
This emerged at least from sources that wanted to remain anonymous in conversations with Kotaku. Everyone was worried about their job, and many feared that they were now understaffed. In just about every area not related to direct game development, personnel was reduced.
Shop Mounts without end in WoW
This point is not a real shitstorm, but still a smoldering fire that has become increasingly intense over the last few months. In World of Warcraft, players have long been dissatisfied with the current expansion “Battle for Azeroth”.
Many did not like the game’s mechanics, the overall setting, and the content. Within the community, Battle for Azeroth is considered by many players to be the worst of all expansions.
In this state of dissatisfaction, Blizzard stuffed extremely many mounts into the shop of World of Warcraft that can only be purchased with real money. The criticism here was that instead of actually improving the game, Blizzard simply churned out mounts to offset losses.
When there was then a “See You Later” bundle at the end of 2018, in which Blizzard removed many items from the shop under the small threat that they might never be available again, the anger boiled over.
Since then, every mount in the shop has faced criticism, especially since the quality of the mounts that are actually available in the game is declining, and more and more often only “recolors”, i.e., reskins of existing mounts, can be found.
The “Purity” patch of Hearthstone
Another incident took place in the Hearthstone subreddit. During a patch for Hearthstone, there was a small detail change in the game. Jaina’s chest was packaged a bit more modestly. This was taken lightly, but a few months later another patch arrived.
This removed a large part of the brutality and nudity from the game. Blood was removed from several cards and rather “raunchy” demons like the succubus were replaced with completely different cards.
At that time, fans speculated that these changes happened in deference to China, where extremely strict rules apply concerning depictions of violence or revealing clothing.
Blizzard argued that the portrayals were no longer contemporary and did not represent what Hearthstone wanted to stand for. This personally annoyed me especially because succubi had always been an integral part of Warcraft.
The Blitzchung affair and Hong Kong
The latest shitstorm is just a few days old, and by now, most have heard about it. The Hearthstone player Blitzchung was thrown out of the Grandmasters by Blizzard and all his prize money for this season was taken from him. Although this penalty has since been significantly reduced and Blitzchung will likely remain in the Grandmasters, fans are still very angry with Blizzard for this harsh step.
The reason for the penalty was that Blitzchung made a political statement during a stream, supporting the protests of the residents of Hong Kong. But not only he was removed from Hearthstone, but also the two shoutcasters who conducted an interview with him.
They were supposed to never work with Blizzard again, although they had immediately sent the stream into advertising right after his statement. Meanwhile, their penalty has also been reduced to “6 months suspension”.
For the players, it is clear that Blizzard acted this way because they did not want to fall in the eyes of the Chinese government. China is a huge market, and anyone who wants to establish themselves there needs the approval of the government. Any “Anti-China” comment is not taken well.
Within 2 days, all hell broke loose. All subreddits for all Blizzard games were flooded with boycott calls. Tens of thousands of players declared that they had deleted their Blizzard accounts and would never buy another game from the company if Blizzard did not reconsider its stance on human rights.
At the same time, the protesters from Hong Kong and the angry players wanted to send a message. They made the Overwatch hero Mei a symbol of resistance, hoping that China would ban images of Mei and thus also ban Overwatch in China.
Even American senators have dealt with the incident, and even other game companies issued a statement about it, like Epic – which is ironic since Epic Games is largely owned by the Chinese company Tencent. But that would be material for another article.
BlizzCon 2019 – Predestined to fail
With this heated atmosphere, we are now heading toward BlizzCon 2019 in a few weeks. This should be the “best BlizzCon ever”, as numerous new announcements are expected. But can gamers really be happy about it when in the background, an avalanche of negative news is still raging, gaining momentum, and showing no signs of stopping?
Especially the last event with Blitzchung and Hong Kong could also influence BlizzCon. Hundreds of fans announced that they wanted to wear T-shirts at BlizzCon that read “Free Hong Kong”. Keeping the various Q&A panels free of all questions regarding this decision will also be difficult.
Blizzard is sitting on a powder keg that is already on the verge of exploding.
If BlizzCon is not to end in the next major scandal with a shitstorm, it is urgently time for Blizzard – especially the management – to clarify a few things. That Blizzard adheres to its own values, which are still proudly displayed on the company’s campus.
Another year of disastrous PR could break Blizzard’s neck. Because even if there is a big difference between “complaining loudly” and “really turning your back on Blizzard,” the group choosing the latter is apparently growing. Some are even already burning their games.
As a prior US Marine who fought for freedom, your actions apall me. Goodbye blizzard from r/Blizzard
It would be very ironic if a company that advertises honor, responsibility, decency, and slogans like “The world always needs heroes” in its games ends up going under because of the fear of not profiting in a country whose government has nothing to do with freedom of speech and pluralism.
Or what do you think about it?
