Even if Blizzard games haven't had a high note since 2016, I would like to remind everyone that the company still had absurd amounts of goodwill and customer loyalty for a large and corporate studio at the time, with fans owning and actively collecting literal decades of merchendise.

Things only really truly collapsed for Blizzard and saw their goodwill vanish when they openly supported and endorsed the chinese oppression of Hong Kong.

Specifically, the winner of a Hearthstone tournament was interviewed after his win and gave the pro-Hong Kong slogan "free Hong Kong, the revolution of our times", which there was absolutely no rule or stipulation against. China demanded that the company not endorse that (because authoritarianism), but Blizzard ACTIVELY WENT THE EXTRA MILE to strip the player of his prize money and ban him from all future events alongside other punishments, specifically in the name of appeasing the chinese government.

It wouldn't be fair to expect a game company to singlehandedly stand up to an authoritarian regime that loves to make people disappear. But it is absolutely fair to recognize that Blizzard's actions very clearly demonstrated that they weren't just doing this because they were threatened into it- they were more than happy to actively endorse the chinese government's oppression of Hong Kong. And THAT is what we should always remember about Blizzard's morals and principles, or lack thereof.

Just wait until GabeN retires and the inheritors of Valve start to enshittify it. Unless GabeN had a good succession plan in place, or GoG can swoop in and become the new standard, things might get rough. I might stick to retro games from then on.

I miss the Warcraft II and StarCraft days. You could tell they were serious by their cutscenes, but also knew they were having fun, and wanted the player to as well, by the gameplay and Easter eggs. “Line must go up” took over, now it’s all cash grabs. I will not buy a game from them at full price again.

Blizzard is dead. At the time they were Activision. Now they are Microsoft. The blizzard that existed to make StarCraft, warcraft and diablo only exists in name.

Ever since they banned that StarCraft II pro for protesting china in Hong Kong, I've uninstalled battle.net and didn't look back.

I rather buy a game from EA.

It's a shame, I liked OW1, even with the tired meta and 6v6 more than I liked OW2.

The loot boxes weren't predatory, allowing unlocking of skins and content without spending anything extra was a nice balance in my opinion that I wish more games did.

They took OW1 and bastardized it, it deserves the rating it has. It used to be that new versions of games were better.

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.

It was easy to predict a downward slide as soon as they merged with Activision.

Let me introduce you to Wizards of the Coast

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.

Concorde would have loved to get 115,000 reviews...

CDPR? admittedly they're really good at gaining it back again, kinda homer simpsons vibes where they repeatedly fuck up but then make an honest attempt to make things right only to repeat the cycle all over again.

If you think that's bad, wait 'till you hear about the working conditions.

I wonder why