How blizzard died again guys? This looks kind of interesting, though this is kind of interesting. Just a few years ago, blizzard was one of the most beloved companies in gaming. They were the masterminds who made one of the biggest games of all time, and then they tried to change what it meant to be an esports pro forever. Okay, you know what you know, what i'm actually gon na go and disagree, and then they try to change what it means.

Okay, yeah. They said they tried yeah yeah yeah yeah. They tried, it seems like blizzard guys. The big problem is that blizzard always wanted to do the things the blizzard way right said last night, but this way all the time - and that was the one of the one of the big reasons for their failures in esports - is that it had to be their Way meant to be an esports pro forever, but as poor decision after poor decision began to unravel the community's trust in their favorite developer.

The ugly truth became obvious. It is a company that is so far out of touch and so corrupt that it's gross, because there were signs things were a little bit weird right, we were being told everything was going great. It is not fun, it is not skill. It is the agency alleges that male employees play video games during the work day, while delegating responsibilities to female employees, engage in sexual banter and joke openly about rape, among other things.

All of this is awful to hear about, and it's completely normal to feel, hurt and betrayed and disgusted, especially from a company like blizzard, that many people still idolized and aspired to the blizzard we all knew and loved died a long time ago guys. This is tough. This is tough because, because in games and with products whatever you can people will, i people idolize the the creative, the production of a blizzard. But it's like not the the company company, but the things that i've done, that people buying to you know.

So it's kind of tough. You know hey folks, before we get to the video. I just want to remind you all to please sub to the channel and turn on notifications. If you haven't done it yet, because stuff really does help okay, so back in the day blizzard was on top of the world.

An entire generation of gamers grew up playing, warcraft, diablo and starcraft. Every new release wasn't just a hit. It was a revolutionary new approach to a genre. Blizzard's name on any game was basically ironclad proof of quality.

They always had their reputation too, where it was like we'll release it when it's ready and it was kind of a joke in the gaming community right because, like it's like, oh it's totally delayed, but you knew when it came out. It was consuming. So it was, it was worth it. You know guys, because in gaming, blizzard literally trademarked the word soon, okay, whenever they did say something soon, all over the world, it was like changing the industry.

Starcraft became a huge hit in korea, leading to the development of a massive esports scene that eventually went global. The team was trying to create the most serious, intense strategy game they possibly could and there was no sort of expectations and then i think blizzard became very aware. Oh, this is what this could be, and years later, with the launch of the overwatch league, it seemed like a career in esports, wasn't just possible. It was basically like landing a spot on a professional sports team.

These guys are getting paid to do this. The league minimum is 50 grand a year, yes, and how high does it go potentially um, so there currently isn't a salary cap, so the scale is as good as and is to me demand of the players um. So the reality is, i don't see these guys. Any different um in these players any different than a lebron james, a stephen curry.

They are the elite of the elite at what they do globally for years, no one could compete with blizzard. Their games had legions of adoring fans all over the world. A ton of exciting new projects were coming down the pipe and for many of blizzard's employees, working for them was a literal. Childhood dream come true and all of a sudden, this email pops up and it's from what's the entertainment and i'm like - and it was a recruiter here and he said, would you be interested in taking our tests for blizzard entertainment? I was like uh yeah, it's been my dream job since i was 12 years old, but it turns out that behind the scenes that dream was more of a nightmare and the cracks in the facade began to show a lot earlier than many of us realized in 2008, where is uh yeah assad began to show a lot earlier.

It seems like they have pops throughout the office than many of us realized in 2008, blizzard merged with activision, creating a new entity known as activision blizzard, but it wasn't just the company's name that changed, even while blizzard were releasing some of their biggest most beloved games. It seemed like they were getting further and further away from their founding principles games for gamers by gamers, where every voice mattered. I love what you guys done with little chris. I love the fact that you have a lot of very strong female characters.

However, i was wondering if we could have some that don't look like they've stepped out of victoria's secrets catalog. What wait wait, which catalog would you like them to step out of blizzard was small? Oh, my god, using their connection to the people they made their games for and tone deaf decisions followed one after another company that is so far out of touch and it's so corrupt that it's gross and then they merged with activision to form activision blizzard. And it was like the power rangers coming together to make a megazord of pure filth, it'd, be like combining dog and horse and then creating the ultimate pile of which is activision blizzard and blizzard's. Leadership was also ignoring the community's pleas for the sorts of games.

They actually wanted to play. Oh no, the gathering that they wanted to see in those games uh. Have you ever thought about adding servers for previous expansions as they were, then, no and and by the way you don't want to that to do that either. You think you do, but you don't miss pandaria, bled subscriber so hard that it was still shocking.

Even after cataclysm got people used to the idea, while it only lost a few hundred thousand in the first quarter. Second quarter of this expansion, really it led to a fall of 1.3 million subscribers, the game's largest, yet, of course, no game development from criticism. Oh, my god, sammy dude dude, since touching my legs dog man, dude the dog snuck in and and and and instead of going, it goes. It touched my leg a minute, but it seemed like the folks over at blizzard thought they were beyond reproach, as if they'd been told they could do no wrong for so long.

They actually started to believe it and if you need any dog bunny bunny honey, come here. Look brownie brownie honey, yeah judy his little face. Okay, it's nice doggy proof of that look! No further than the disaster. That was the diablo immortal announcement, diablo immortal.

We are so excited about this game if you want to know more, we'll be back here on the mythic stage in just a few minutes. Oh no, for those of you who are here at blizzcon. Thank you. We are gon na.

Have sorry. Is there any plans to make this playable on pc, or is this strictly mobile forever uh? Are there any uh yeah this? The current plan is to be on mobile, both android and ios uh. We don't have any plans at the moment to do a pc. Did you guys not have phones, yeah, you guys, you can play your tablet too, shocking, absolutely, no one, but blizzard fans of a franchise that really redefines the action, i'm just confused, how they didn't rehearse uh like behind the scenes and see okay.

This is clearly gon na happen. How do we get around the problem that people are not going to clap? Obviously these people are going to get mauled and, like i had nothing, but why was this not a discussion weren't exactly interested in a mobile. It seemed like they were surprised like, oh guys, why aren't they clapping? Oh my god? Yes, why they saying boo like this is so obvious, though the whole thing felt like a slap in the face. Hey uh, i just was wondering: is this uh an out of season april fool's joke? I mean you've got to know you up when people like your own you've got to know when people at your own convention are booing you right, but things were about to get a lot worse from blizzard back in 2016, a few years before the diablo immortal debacle, Blizzard announced its boldest undertaking yet a multi-million dollar professional esports league for one of its most popular titles, overwatch fans could attend, matches live in person or watch them on twitch when the league finally got underway in 2018, blizzard was selling out their studio games, bringing in Big name talent from all over esports and the people loved it.

It looked like blizzard did it again, but behind the scenes things started to go sideways, i don't think the venue ever sold out. Okay, in february 2019, blizzard announced their record-breaking fourth quarter, earnings and, in a shocking twist, a wave of mass layoffs to go along with those earnings, because there were signs. Things were a little bit weird right where, at the end of the first season, we had blown all of our that we knew of all of our viewership metrics out of the water um, we were being told everything was going great uh and then, at the end Of the year they were like it had drops and embedded you guys guys guys guys guys a broadcast has a trifecta okay, okay for your metrics you're gon na have the broadcast. Let's get back the content there's a lot of viewers.

Then you have drops that bring that bring yours, and then you have embedded viewership, which literally inflates their stats. So of course they blew it takes out of the waters they were. They were completely skewed guys the metrics were completely skewed like and how would you like? A pay cut too and or like well, that's a little bit strange and it seemed like the same thing was happening over on twitch's end. I was not able to speak publicly about owl.

While i worked at twitter, sorry about ronnie come on she's eating. My fried rice man, obvious reasons, but you better believe that i was the guy in every meeting going. This is stupid and you're all stupid it. It did not feel good i'll.

Tell you why it didn't feel good, because that league cost a lot of money and a year later, 11 of my staff was laid off then in 2020 blizzard a three-year deal with youtube tanking. The league's viewership numbers into the same budget, though dude, there's also a big change, that the os league is just going to die completely. I guess that's a big change, yeah and when i mean that i mean 50k viewers, the people that made that deal didn't understand the nuance of where a game lives as far as where people prefer to consume that game's content. And while i think that in an ideal, world overwatch could have certainly grown on youtube and it had, it has grown on youtube.

You know it took time, but at the moment that was a step back for sure. Meanwhile, the game itself was increasingly plagued by bizarre valley's issues, i'm still gon na say to this day. Okay, people can still say that edited i don't know what i'm talking about, or whatever, okay and and and whatnot. I i will down this hill.

Okay. We never actually saw the the the legitimate metrics for the actual league because, because of all the inflated uh um stats from either embedded or drops, nobody even knew what the league was worth on its own. Without inflation, nobody knew dude. I had an idea because we i had a a contact at mlg who leaked the numbers of how many viewers that they got on opening day because they had a deal where they would broadcast the first day of the league on mlg.

Instead of on twitch. Right. That caught the world by surprise, because the biggest day or whatever was going to be on on nlg and some of the other people that worked. There told me how many viewers that they that it gathered and i'm not going to say what it is, because i can't, but still the numbers were catastrophic.

So it was obvious in the get-go that it was gon na, be a disaster right, and i gave you a hint of how many people are actually engaged with the product. That gives you a very good idea of how many individuals right are going to to to be part of your of your of your world right interact with it in a meaningful manner, because that's how people are going to move from bottom to another army. People are going to manually go to go somewhere, you know for your league and it was really bad. Okay and the fact this was completely ignored and it's it's whatever.

It is many of its most prolific pros into retirement or seeking opportunities elsewhere. Well, goats is dead. Um and now it's just nobody uses nlg. That's what you need to worry.

That's when that's when that's how you need to understand it when you make a product, it is not how many people use that thing that you are going to go on. It's how many people are going to interact with my product, it's not about mlg, doing bad. It's about you doing good! That matters the most right. It's not about them as a platform.

Is that you as a product? That's the main, that's the main concern, because it doesn't matter how good a platform is. If your product is good, people go anywhere to consume the product. So if you, if you go somewhere else and nobody goes there, it's not only or or that that the problem sucks is that your product sucks and you can make it better we'll sniper and that's going to be terrible or oh now, everybody's just going to play. Mccree and at a certain point, i'm like what the hell do people want, so in other words, you don't want them to eat all the alts in the game like diva, no yeah makes sense.

There are these moments of regret that you have as like a game developer and perhaps eating everybody's ult is one of those. Maybe this is gon na be a hot take. I think this is the worst thing to happen to overwatch. This is up.

It is not fun, it is not skill, it is from, it is dog, it is dog. This is so bad. I don't know because people are gon na, say: oh, what about brig release or what about uh, goats or no? This is so bad and all of those problems with overwatch were only the tip of blizzard's mounting issues. There was the highly controversial ban of blitzchang a hearthstone player, who voiced his support for the hong kong protesters during an official blizzard stream activision blizzard.

It has suspended a gamer and taken his prize money away because he made comments supporting hong kong protesters. Then there was the disaster that was warcraft 3 reforged. The game looked, sounded enhanced okay, blizzard felt really bad with the fallout and what they did from that point on guys, but the the problem is that i don't guys uh man, i can't um. This is worse than its older predecessor.

Blizzard's famous commitment to quality was nowhere to be found and competitively a match between thor guys. People don't want to hear the truth. Okay, you want me to tell you what what the truth is. Okay, you can get me all.

You want, i don't give a get mad at me. All you want yes, blizzard mishandled the pr afterwards, but technically. Okay, guys, you don't take political stances on a live broadcast that isn't about politics and it's literally in contracts whenever you you play for their game. In a tournament, you sign documents on which you're not gon na do like that literally black and white, when you're part of a broadcast and you're part of a tournament or or an infrastructure.

It's not that your political sense is good and needed is that it is just not the place and time. Unfortunately, i understand that a steak was right right, but the problem is that they try to keep the broadcasts as politically avoid as possible by just being a broadcast about games. And when you do stuff like that, it opens the door to other stuff. And then, who are you to say that that somebody's opinion uh politically, is better than another? This one is easy right because everybody agree with it.

What if it's one it's a bit more nuanced, can you can you say: oh guys, we're gon na allow this? What, if it's oh guys vote for trump lol and it's like oh dude, but like it guys it becomes, it becomes tough man. It's tough! Like it's a boy. It's about games, it meant playing and moon at dreamhack. Anaheim 2020 had to be restarted three times, because the game was just that broken.

We have no breath of fire by the way it is. Human rights is not political. Everything is political. You will learn something in life.

Okay, that, if you have take one class of politics, you understand that everything in life is political. Everything almost right life revolves around politics. Politics is like the basis of everything. Okay, that's that's how it works.

Okay, so it's why it's so hard because they try to keep the broadcast completely gaming based and nothing else. Okay and there's there there are. There are guidelines to prevent stuff from happening so yeah i understand it. The take is correct.

The the person is right right, but that's how it is man. Why getting mad, maybe pretend the truth. I don't know what to tell so big miss chance on these dragon hawks and at this point i'm gon na assume those ain't dropped, but i feel like moon was on the way to holding this attack uh. That was a disaster.

Oh wow, that was, i don't need a blood mage. I don't need you you're benched, once this and looks like another drop, so the games went to overwatch league was basically dead in the water. Everybody thought the blizzard was china's puppet. Surely things couldn't get worse but, as it turned out, blizzard was about to hit a new low on july 20th, 2021.

After a two-year investigation, the state of california filed a lawsuit against activision blizzard in this lawsuit. Multiple women who either used to or still worked at the company came forward, alleging sexual harassment, abuse discrimination, unfair wages and more. The agency alleges that male employees play video games during the work day, while delegating responsibilities to female employees, engage in sexual banter and joke openly about rape, among other things, so they're making the girls do all the work while they talk about rape and harassing them. Many of these instances were allegedly reported to supervisors and higher ups doesn't matter.

Yes, i keep getting added into a bunch of people that are getting mad at me, for is this political. Now? Is this political dude just stop man you're being overweight, dude, something? Let me see if i could just it's a little bit ass off, like shut up. Many of these instances were allegedly reported to supervisors and higher-ups at the company, and yet no action was taken to say that the gaming community was appalled and outraged would be a huge understatement. Since i've been employed at blizzard, i've been subjected to rude comments about my body.

Unwanted sexual advances, inappropriately touched jesus, subjected to alcohol-infused team events and cube crawls invited to have casual sex with my supervisors and surrounded by a frat boy; culture, that's detrimental to women. One person who is named crawling in this suit is alex afrasiabhi, former senior creative director for world of warcraft, who was permitted to engage in blatant sexual harassment with little to no repercussions. He was so known to engage in harassment of females that his suite was nicknamed. The cosby sweet after alleged rapist bill cosby.

How does a nickname like that? Come about a nickname that everybody knows about and the guy remains employed. Needless to say, internally had some serious changes they needed to make, but rather than a total overhaul of a deeply flawed company culture, they simply opted for a change in ownership. Microsoft bought out blizzard, slash activision honestly. This is like some like um crosby.

No, that that's that's the that's the guy. That's hockey, um he's a canadian he's one of our canadian heroes, man, sydney, crosby, he's a good looking he's a good looking guy he's a good looking guy disney level entertainment monopoly type. It's reported that the acquisition was for 70 billion dollars, you're, basically, comparing a known negative thing right, which is like blizzard activision owned by bobby kodick. The worst guy in the world is on epstein's black book and you know they fire people and they they're drinking their breast milk, and so it's like it's like.

We know, we know what that is. You know what i mean like. We know what that is, and so now we're going into like completely unknown. Well, it might seem that a tech monolith like microsoft would swoop in and restore order, they're leaving things the same.

For now. The people most responsible for the alleged behavior at activision blizzard are still going to be in charge for the foreseeable future. On top of that, microsoft doesn't exactly have the best track record when it comes to absorbing other companies and making them work uh-oh. Let's not forget what happened to mixer look.

None of us know how this deal is actually going to work out. Oh okay, dude meantime belief in blizzard's. Integrity continues to sink amidst public scrutiny and ridicule. It's really sad to see leadership kind of mishandle.

These situations over and over again, so i think, a lot of people are just tired in that regard too. You know i just feel like when the news of the lawsuit broke. I just kind of relived, all of that at once, like just kind of like i just got so angry like wow. I live think: okay, okay, okay, okay, make sure the mixer is one thing.

Okay, but let's be honest, be honest though okay mo yang is a completely different thing: okay, you're, sometimes you're at a point of no return kind of like minecraft or mojang. What not dude you can't fail. Okay, nobody could have. Nobody in the world could have could fail minecraft.

It is global. Undeniable growing success. Okay, you dude come on now live through all of this, and here are the leaders at my company that i'm working for now saying that this doesn't happen here, because i know it does you know so then i was just like that's unacceptable and we should tr. We should own it and try to do better.

That's what taking accountability and leading responsibly is, there's no doubt that the old blizzard is dead and it's never coming back, but where does that leave us going forward? All of this is awful, and it's completely normal to feel, hurt and betrayed and disgusted, especially from a company like blizzard, that many people still idolized and aspired to it's hard to stomach continuing to give them a sub fee or publicity when they've. Let this happen especially considering their responses. On the other hand, i'm not convinced right now that boycotting blizzard is going to be a direct help to the women that work there for one, because a lot of those women still work there and have worked very hard on these properties. I look at blizzard like a dearly loved relative that is going through a very dark time and you can't uh, you can't uh, accept and condone some of the things they do but deep down, you still love them because they're family and you you wish the best For them and you'll be there to help them out if they let you you know, and so that's that's kind of how i view the whole thing at the end of the day, blizzard isn't just inevitable.

This guy's worked at a blizzard in multiple in multiple positions. Uh throughout, like his entire professional life, so i think i think i think him says that as like uh as like, as like a as like a partner like if for damage or their family, for you you're a consumer uh, it's it's a different take, but you Guys you guys act like this guy's, a consumer. You guys act like like you're in the same position to to call them something for you, like it's a completely different perspective like what so that's that's kind of how i view the whole thing. At the end of the day, blizzard isn't just inept leadership and allegedly horrible internal behavior.

It's a company that has been vastly important to gaming as a whole and that continues to employ thousands of people who are passionate about what they do. Blizzard gave us more than just their games, they helped us fully. It's not just just an employer, people relocate their lives, people, people dedicate years and and build connections and friends and yes, family at the companies that they work at. That's how workplaces work dude, it's what happens when you work a long time at a certain company.

That's how that's how it works. I know you probably worked at whatever the walmart mcdonald's for for for three months, and maybe you didn't make friends with it. You don't give a, but when adults that are older, sometimes some jobs of these magnitude, they have to relocate their entire lives. To this.

It was from another one of one country to bring their entire family over there, that's how it is and it becomes their their everything or some of our most proud is there's a problem with the company. It's not really their fault like it and it. It is. What it is like childhood memories, despite paul the love and respect it once commanded blizzard, is now also a glaring example of just how far even our most revered idols can fall.

Why stop getting baited? Why are you guys thinking something i'm not getting baited? Let me i'm trying to tell you some things that that are that are true. Some truers chad will spam. The mark and they'll say one equals shatter you're, dumb, dude you're done you're done chatting actually dumb stupidly, actually millionaire. Take a look so funny.

You know that at one time i i i didn't have a lot. I didn't have a lot of money and i didn't relocate to my entire life for a watch, a leap of faith from mom's garage alone into some random uh, a running apartment with some people that i've never met before we're talking about jupiter good night bye.