I’ve felt like I needed to talk about this point for a few days now, but honestly was uncertain exactly what I would say about the matter. If you remain blissfully unaware of the situation happening with Blizzard entertainment, I would like to have some of whatever you are smoking because apparently, it works extremely well. The short rundown is the State of California has filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard for hostile working conditions, specifically targeting women and in EEO language “protected classes”. Since this point, a cavalcade of horrible stories of Blizzard employees behaving badly has been loosed upon our community. I am in no way trying to diminish these stories but there are way too many of them to ever realistically cover in a blog post. If you have remained oblivious then I highly suggest educating yourself and PC Gamer has a fairly good rundown of the timeline of events.
As part of this discussion, I feel like it is important to at least talk about the employee walkout at the Blizzard campus. The first image in this blog post is a picture of Blizzard staff walking out on July 28th to protest the situation. Corresponding to this action there were calls across social media, many of which coming from Blizzard staff to boycott all of the studio’s games on that day and to create a virtual picket line. This specific call to boycott was targeting a specific time and date and not a larger drive to boycott the games as a whole. The thing is… once this ball started rolling it was difficult to stop and now there are a number of individuals that are maintaining the boycott as a way of showing support. It is all a double-edged sword because, in order to make the “corporate overlords” take notice, the company has to be losing money. However, in order for the company to lose money, you have to take actions that will actively harm the folks that are still working there.
In fact, there are folks in the community trying to say “hold up a minute” and stop the boycott. Alanah Pearce is a trusted voice in the gaming community, and I generally speaking appreciate her opinion on things. Yesterday she released a heartfelt video talking about how a boycott might do more harm than it does good. I’ve seen this echoed in the comments on Twitter of my own friends who work at Blizzard. Now that the initial employee action is over, there seems to be a general fear that the fans won’t be coming back. I mean and honestly, that fear is warranted given that I myself cannot stomach the thought of playing any of the games right now. Diablo 3 Season 24 is happening currently and the start of a new Diablo season is generally my happy place, but I cannot bring myself to touch the game.
If you have reached this spot in the blog post, you might be wondering… “Bel why are we even talking about this right now?” On Tuesday just ahead of the investor earnings call, J. Allen Brack the president of Blizzard Studios left the company to “pursue other opportunities”. Replacing him is a team of “co-leaders” made up of Jen Oneal that came from Vicarious Visions, and Mike Ybarra previously from Microsoft and the Xbox platform. Firstly let me be clear, that I absolutely believe that JAB needed to go to begin the process of change. Secondly, I don’t necessarily see anything specifically wrong with the choices that were made other than they seem to reflect Activision more than they reflect BLizzard as a studio. They are choices that point at corporate control and stability with Jen Oneal being a pretty familiar surrogate for Activision and Mike being looked at as a rainmaker from Microsoft.
I think my ultimate fear with all of this is that these were simply performative actions in order to show the stockholders that Kotick and crew were seizing control just ahead of the earnings call. Additionally, the head of Human Resources left the company, which makes sense given that every single tale that I have heard involved either that department being apathetic or openly hostile towards those coming forward to report incidents. The timing of this all synchronizing with the earnings call, however, makes this all seem like a calculated series of steps in order to smooth out investor sentiments. I wouldn’t exactly classify the stock prices as being in freefall, but there has absolutely been a downward trend since the announcement of the lawsuit and the other information coming to light. There is even a lawsuit coming from the investor community alleging that the company misleads shareholders.
Tuesday, August 3rd was the Activision Blizzard earnings call. If you are so inclined you can check out the webcast recording of this call here or view the slide deck from which the above image is pulled. Some of the core takeaways are that Blizzard as a whole continues the downward slide of MAU’s reported, losing another 1 million players and down roughly $50 Million in revenue compared to the first quarter. Additionally, Diablo Immortal the oft-maligned mobile port of Diablo 3 has been pushed out to a 2022 release and there are still no firm dates for either Overwatch 2 or Diablo IV. Diablo II Resurrected appears to still be on track for a September launch which is largely the big positive.
In 2015, Blizzard stopped reporting subscription numbers in favor of a more ambiguous engagement figure of MAU’s or Monthly Active Users. However in the above image pulled from MassivelyOp, shows that since 2018 Blizzard has lost 32% of its Monthly Active Users. In other terms, it is now sitting at 26 Million MAUs for Q2, which means it is down 12 Million users for the company as a whole in that timeframe. I think what is scarier is the fact that this quarter doesn’t even take into account the current exodus of players from World of Warcraft. That all more or less started during the Month of July. My own World of Warcraft account was canceled and laying dormant, but still on the books until the first part of July for example. When it comes time for the investor call in Q3, it is likely going to be pretty bleak.
So I guess we wind up back at the first question of the post. Should you boycott Blizzard games? Ultimately I don’t have a clue. I don’t know what actions are going to lead to a significant change in that company. I do know that it is a more complicated issue than just seeing some performative actions taken to convince the investors that change is coming. Change actually needs to happen. The other side of the coin that we have not even begun to discuss is the fact that not only are the allegations of sexual assault horrific, but the fact that World of Warcraft has not been in great shape for the last four years. I didn’t quit World of Warcraft because of the allegations, I was already long gone when I bounced hard off the Shadowlands content. While my six-month sub timed out corresponding with the great exodus that is happening, it is not part of it. I simply input didn’t want to play this game anymore.
Going back to the changes that are happening with the company, the Employees that were protesting made a list of pretty straightforward demands. To the best of my knowledge, none of these demands have actually been met or even publicly discussed by those in power at Activision Blizzard. Until these demands are taken seriously I am hesitant to ease up on the pressure. So if you did in fact quit World of Warcraft or any other Blizzard titles over this recent situation, then it isn’t exactly time to take your eye off the ball because no tangible action has actually been taken to improve the situation other than a changing of the guard. If you were boycotting for this specific reason then it is a pretty fraught decision to determine if you should go back to playing like normal or not.
It is very easy to look at any corporate action taken as being “good enough”. The thing is gamers have very short attention spans when it comes to boycotting the things that they love. There are deep structural issues at work in the gaming industry as a whole, and that doesn’t align itself with rapid change but instead, a slow and prodding ship that takes decades to turn. I’ve been guilty of being angry with a company and then forgiving them quickly because it means that I can return to doing the things I want to do guilt-free. Nostalgia is a powerful drug and we all want to return to the places that give us those happy feelings. I would love to be able to return to playing Diablo 3 for example with a clean conscience.
The thing is… I can’t, at least not yet. I can’t tell you what you should do or the actions that you should take. Your situation is different than mine and in the eyes of one of my friends “the money is already spent”. That is a perfectly cromulent way of viewing the situation if it works for you. For me, it does not, because I know that regardless of what I happen to be doing… I am also broadcasting that action to the world. I can’t in good faith keep publicly supporting Blizzard or its games. That is not to say that this will always be the case. It is entirely possible that next week I buckle and return to the fold, but for the time being, I am holding my ground. It is not so much a boycott but instead me doing what feels right. You need to look deep inside yourself and determine what feels right to you.
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