True. But:
Step 3: Profit.
Step 4: Retain profit by cancelling expensive PvE mode.
Seemed less snappy I guess?
[Edit] Actually the more I think about it the more that works.
Nah, they knew they’d cancel this *before* they launched OW2, but they just only told us about it now.
I always have sympathy for individual devs, sure, but the company chose this and they’re NOT a tiny spring chick.
Saying what Jason is saying, about the company behind WoW is WILD. He’s acting like it’s some tiny indie that just doesn’t know any better.
Yup. Telling fans they had to make a new game for a new mode, then admit they knew it was a bust over a year ago but keep dragging fans along to milk them just soured what good will they had left.
At this point, Blizzard need to go out of their way to make good with fans before its too late which is bringing back a lot of what made OW1 great. 6v6 back, bring back the best maps they've vaulted, free lootboxes back, stop hiding heroes behind a battle pass and if you're going to keep the battlepass in, make it fully cosmetic with things you can't get from boxes, no heroes, nothing that gives you an advantage over others, just skins. That way free to play fans get skins and boxes to open and those that want to pay for something more flashy can get it too - since Bliz are clearly only concerened with $$$
On top of that, push as many of those story mode things they are working on as they can out, its not the PvE they promised but its something, even if its short 10 minute modes like the Kings Canyon one with Rein and co (I forget the name)
That is a start to making it up to fans
Better make the missions permanent aswell not connected to the battle pass not some crap they spent 5 seconds on like starwatch because they know itll last 5 minutes and be over
I can't believe how awful Starwatch was and how proud they are of it. There's an opening cinematic that you can't see or hear cuz it was bugged out on release, there's no instructions on what's happening, and every game I played of it was a total stomp. My friend and I did enough to finish the event and never looked back.
I've had good matches in it hit they're far between, I feel like the concept could work if given a larger map just the cram they had to do does a lot of injustice to the mode. Like if this was expanded into a first person moba mode thatd be dope af
I genuinely think they spent more time talking about starwatch in that dev video than it kept my attention for.
I'd happily take them scrapping all these 'events' in order to push proper content: maps/modes/heros/hero reworks/missing features from OW1.
It won't happen though because events = new skins for shop which apparently = content in a live service game.
It's still absolutely insane for people to harass everyone even associated with the game, like I'm sure the art director had a say in PvE being canned
That said I'm glad I didn't come back to OW when they announced PvE because I'd be so mad right now.
Remember when players sent death threats to Brig's voice actor because they were upset about Brig's kit?
Capital G Gamers are champions of misplaced aggression.
>It's still absolutely insane for people to harass everyone even associated with the game, like I'm sure the art director had a say in PvE being canned
Welcome to the OW community. Where toxic, pathetic excuses for human beings thrive.
Edit: The fact one of you fine outstanding people of this sub reported me to a suicide watch bot PROVES my point 100%
Legitimate question because I don't twitter... are there any actual examples of people harassing devs? I'm sure there are people who are frustrated by it and probably comment on it if any of those devs say something positive but it seems hard to believe people are out there just harassing random devs.
Again, legitimately I'm not saying it doesn't happen but I would love to see where it is happening.
On reddit, one twelve year old saying "el oh el die haha" is sufficient to condemn a million people as sending "death threats", because that's what it takes to keep the circlejerk going. Some variation of that has been going on for many years.
Shigeru Miyamoto Quotes
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."
i feel as if they delayed OW2 and tried to not slam it down the pipeline of games coming out during that time slot, we’d have a totally different game.
And features!!! No on fire? No enemy endorsements for a while? No cards? I can say the leaderboard thing has been way more toxic than the cards ever were.
Haven’t you heard? On Fire is coming back! They needed that 2 years to make sure the fire licks the screen the way real fire does. Maybe even spread like real fire does so by the end of your greatest game ever the whole screen would be lit so bright to signify that you are the best of the best./s
Man fuck Blizz. Sad that the devs are getting the brunt, I can’t say much when you’re working for others you’re basically at their whims.
Fuck ActiBlizz
Yeah, like I am sympathetic to the devs that are getting the short end of the stick because we have all been there, when you are at a job that is trying to do a thing everyone has agreed on is a horrible idea except for the people that actually have the final say. You can tell the emperor he has no clothes but you cannot make him dress so I get it, but it's also all of our money and all of our time so I'm not going to say anything negative to them but... Screw Blizzard, for a lot of reasons, this is just the latest.
Oh I don't know, maybe if they **didn't kill the first game literally only to release the live service part instead of working on PvE then this wouldn't be an issue**
Just straight up gave us the WC3 Reforged treatment.
"Hey, you remember that game you loved? Well, we broke it, and now you have to pay for it again. You're welcome."
The fact that I had to pirate Warcraft 3 when I bought it ON RELEASE IN 2003 at age fucking 7 so that I could play it again, rather than that bastardized buggy mess they changed my game to on bnet is absurd.
They broke original missions, and straight up REMOVED one of them.
This is the thing that gets me, No one asked for a battle pass and if you promise a pve mode but then can't support because of the live service/battle pass then maybe get rid of the fucking battle pass? And not the mode that was promised for years and the whole reason the first one was killed off.
"it's hard to support a pve game mode because we also need to support our live service, which we cant do because of attrition and company drama."
okay so get rid of the live service?
“No one asked for”
Yes they did. Shareholders.
They came to the company heads and say “we aren’t getting enough return on OW. Make a sequel and find ways to charge for it”
And then they have to, because capitalism demands it.
I have 0 desire to play it anymore. The issues at launch and everything just felt different to me some how and I can’t put my finger on what. I think I played for 30 hrs after launch and I don’t think I will ever pick it back up
>hurr durr you bought that game 37 years ago hurr durr how do you expect this multi billion dollar company to support said game for 37 years hurr durr you're just being entitled hurr durr
The above was spammed so heavily at the time. It just proved these people deserve every last bit of mistreatment that they get when they're ALWAYS so ready to side with untrustworthy giant corporations over their own interests. Actual children.
As much as it kind of sucks seeing a game I once really loved just be completely fucking ruined, it does bring me a little bit of joy seeing a lot of the shit I said turn out to be true. Who knew a company that, for the past half a decade, had done literally everything wrong would continue to do literally everything wrong.
Nah, fuck that. Enjoy your schadenfreude. You had to eat shit at the time you were stating the obvious by all of the weirdo blizzard loyalists because they thought they were getting a new toy. Now they're all crying because the most obvious outcome occurred.
I find it hilarious personally. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving player base.
Yeah that's very fair, I got told to fuck myself multiple times, all the idiot's that jumped in and immediately started buying the skins for what was once the price of the full game deserved the shit they get. And I agree, seriously from the early previews you could tell something was off and then when they said it was launching without its main selling point, I'm shocked people had any faith in them at all at that point.
Same, and I'm glad to see other people come back and state this. Was starting to think I was crazy with all the people hyping 5v5 when OW2 came out. 6v6 had a special team dynamic that has since been lost.
I used to play dive winston crushing the enemy snipers while big boy protected the healers.
It was glorious.
Now snipers rule. And tanks just counter swap on death.
Aye but how far do the devs get control over the game or are they just told to do this and axe that?
He does have a point honestly- be mad at executives and stop aiming hate at devs if they have no control over stuff like this. I would be more than happy to take back my comment if the devs are the ones who are controlling aspects like this tbh, as I don't know how it works 🤷♀️
I would give zero shits about this controversy if I could still play Overwatch 1 and if it wasn't abandoned for nothing. It could've been such an easy and low maintenance move to keep OW1 up, but greed won.
The Execs(and maybe some devs) wanted overwatch 1 to be killed off. do you have any idea how bad it would look to release OW2 separately and 4 months later people realize its shit. So what do the fans do? they go back to playing OW1. that would be a massive embarrassment for ActiBlizz. That is a moment they would have to admit to their fans that they shit the bed. I am of the same philosophy though. I would give a shit a lot less if we still had OW1 to play still.
But then the next best thing is to not play ow2 and it still becomes a massive embarrassment that they released a sequal and fucked it all up.
But that doesn't happen, ever. No matter what they release there always seems to be a player base for it, fueling the continuation.
Lesser known companies fuck up and die out but the ones that know how to market keep on striving.
Thats my random Internet opinion for the day.
not random at all. what you said is accurate. as long as they continue to have a small percentage of players paying their insane skin and battle pass prices then they will gladly let the rest of us leave.
Nah the players buying things need people to show off to. If people actually stopped playing the whales would have no one to match make with and would move on.
Actually expecting people to not let a massive company just screw them over feels like it will never happen though
Just be clear who you mean by "They". Blizzard execs make these decisions to cut costs and streamline products. Blizzard developers are trying their hardest to make the game you love as good as possible.
Just, understand who you're mad at.
Actually it's at the end of the BP so even with the $10 you'll need to do some missions but for $20 more you can skip all that and shoot right up to tier 50😁👍
Thats fine if its too much….then dont fucking promise it?! Under promise over deliver. Simple as that. But you wanted to stoke hype to cover up the fact you deleted OW1 and to make people purchase your shitty add ons.
OW2 was pitched as PVE, with OW1 still existing as just PVP.
They KNEW pve was dead YEARS AGO. Also this tweet is dumb, I'm mad at blizzard execs and leadership, not the workers. The leaders lied to us for profit, as is tradition.
I wouldn't doubt this tweet being more directed at Twitter. They're the ones with direct access to Blizz employees, and if what I've seen with Bungie employees is anything to go by, they will be mad at the workers.
I've seen random people on Twitter complain to *voice actors* about the games they're in. The tweet is probably dumb because Twitter is dumb.
I'm sorry but this insistence that Twitter is where all the drama is, and never on Reddit, is always funny to me. Reddit can be just as bad, if not worse, that certain parts of Twitter. This is just addressing anyone who feels that specific way, regardless of what media they hang around
I'm not saying Twitter is toxic and Reddit is perfect. Reddit has a lot of stupid people making big deals over nothing, too. It just tends to be worse because of how the platforms operate. Reddit is a forum with posts and threads, Twitter is made for more direct interactions.
A post that says "I hate Blizzard" and a tweet at Blizzard employees that says "I hate you" has the same message, but one is less passive.
This is why everyone complains on Twitter. It's much more impactful being a dickwad in there than here.
Not like there isn't any dickwads here, it's just that the dickwads on Reddit don't interact with the people they criticize as much as Twitter.
I mean, the crises and poor attrition are mostly blizzards own doing though. Sure they couldn’t really control covid, but they’re also the ones forcing people to come back from remote work or be fired, they’re the ones with the insane CEO, they’re the ones with the Cosby rooms… I get that making the pve stuff is hard, but they’re also one of the largest gaming studios in the world. They’re ignoring the PVE game mode because all the higher up pencil pushers don’t think it’s financially viable. That’s why ow2 took so long, that’s why the development sped up so much after Kaplan left, because realistically he was the only person with enough power to hold onto the PVE concept. Once he left they probably had no intention of working on it any further, but waited until now to mention it because they knew how bad it would look
Yes, can we stop pretending like the PvE mode they announced was some herculean task? It was easily achievable for a company of Blizzard's scale, especially since they paused development of the "live service" game to work on it. They had four years and accomplished squat. This was not a case of the task being too difficult, they just didn't want to invest any resources into it.
This is what I see most people ignore. Blizzard isn't a small indie studio with a dozen or so devs. If they really wanted too, management could've put all hands on deck and leave a dozen or so devs to develop the skins for the shitty battle pass. And pop PVE like, a year after OW2 released if not sooner.
I dont think many people know who Jason is and think that anyone asking for decency is a blizzard employee lmao.
We are all dissapointed, im sure devs are all too. imagine working for something and the one paying your check saying "oh well we wont do that anymore" and now you have to deal with the huge ammount of kids telling you to kys.
Edit: its insane how many people are suggesting that the devs shouldve broken nda.. They could lose their jobs and be blacklisted from the industry thanks to that.. EVERY COMPANY does shitty things like this.. Hiding stuff and lying to their customers is extremely common and its not the workers choice, the higher ups decide that and you either quit or keep doing what youre being told.
I think the NDA part is significant. They aren’t always for shady business dealings. And it would all just culminate in ruining these devs lives for a video game. Imagine crippling you’re entire career for some skill trees
The problem is they knew a year and a half ago. If they announced it back then about how hard it is creating a new game. How PvE wasn’t going to happen. There wouldn’t be anywhere near this amount of fallout. But, if they did that? Then there would be a lot less money being spent and Blizzard knew that.
I can't believe so many videos haven't focused on this part. They knew for over a year. They talked about how "they didn't want to stop updating the game for long" to carry out a huge update...when that's the thing they did with the original overwatch. The game was begging for any sort of content for years and they didn't seem to care at all about leaving the community hanging.
They misguided the playerbase for over a year, of course people are going to be disappointed.
Agreed! If they just had been upfront and honest about it from the beginning? There would be a lot less anger and frustration. But they teased us, baited us, gave us hope that something could happen, like Regina George from Mean Girls just stringing us along.
Exactly. They apparently made their decision what did they say?? A year and some change??? That would mean they were ACTIVELY advertising a PVE component that was ALREADY SCRAPPED. Literally even recently they were hyping PVE
Thats the thing I cant get my head around. In some sick way I get why they didnt outright say it was cancelled. People would have been mad and not bought into OW2 on the promise of what was to come. But even if you're not going to tell the truth why would you double down and say don't worry guys give us time it'll be great in a few seasons. Again in a sick, cold business way they could have just dragged this out and and let PvE kinda fade out or deliver the little missions they are apparently still going to do to buy time and say "here guys we wanted to get you something while we work on the big stuff". But no, like you said, they were actively were marketing it almost up until this announcement AND CONFIRM on the interview they knew a year or 2 ago, like wtf is that decision making?
>AND CONFIRM on the interview they knew a year or 2 ago, like wtf is that decision making?
I still can't believe that they fully admitted this on stream lmao. They knew before even OW2 released, and yet still advertised as if it was still in the pipeline.
Quarterly profits mindset. Product shelf life and brand loyalty are tomorrow's ceo's problems. Seems like a real strange business model for a continual live service game, but i guess that's why f2p works 'great' for them, too. Gdi, why can't these morbidly obese cats stop draining the fun out of anything good just so they can nap on a slightly taller bed of cash? This is why we can't have nice things!
"Won't somebody please think of the shareholders?! They've given so much to this labor of love, and they share a deep passion for 'whatcha-call-it'..."
/s
>Again in a sick, cold business way they could have just dragged this out and and let PvE kinda fade out or deliver the little missions they are apparently still going to do to buy time and say "here guys we wanted to get you something while we work on the big stuff".
Pretty sure that was the plan. There was already a concept of Blizzard Soon, where something promised will come out sometime between tomorrow and when the Milky Way collides with Andromeda, and it does legitimately seem like their plan was to keep promising PvE was coming Soon while hoping most people would either be satisfied with small PvE events or just get bored of asking.
But the majority of the community didn't, and kept asking when PvE was coming, and I think they realized they couldn't string players along forever.
More of it, 11 months ago one of hero designers said that they "had a significant amount of time dedicated to creating the talent trees." [https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/vicyeq/comment/iddexd2/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/vicyeq/comment/iddexd2/)
Note the context of the question that person is responding to. "What is the biggest timesink that fans might not understand?"
Though they do use present tense to describe the talent trees, but for the most part that post seems to be explaining how their promised systems are presenting difficulties.
Technically it’s not a lie. They “HAD a significant amount of time dedicated”.. he didn’t say they were CURRENTLY dedicating a significant amount of time to it at the time😉😉😉
Wait, so the PvE aspect was cancelled before the game even released / converted?? Since it released in Oct of 2022, that would mean they were advertising, as a main selling point, an aspect of the game that was cancelled at a minimum of 6 months prior to release.
Yes but MOST of us reasonable people aren’t talking about people just doing their job. We are talking about blizzard as an entity. The COMPANY knowingly advertised a product that was already dead to justify blowing off and blowing away the old one.
This is getting spread way too much (although it's still partially true). The year and a half ago was when they stopped putting 100% into the PvE and started making the PvP launch for OW2 that came out it in October. That's likely when the suits said, "you need to start making money by the end of 2022, make it happen."
Aaron Keller said in THE SAME INTERVIEW in no uncertain terms that they made the decision to abandon the larger-scale PvE "late last year". Obviously that could refer to a wide range. They still might have reached that decision well before we got OW2 PvP in October. A generous interpretation would be that while PvE was on the backburner since they started on the PvP, they were holding out hope to settle into an easier development cycle and pick up where they left off. But after a couple seasons of balance issues and lackluster content they realized there was no hope of making two games at once.
I'm not trying to defend ActiBlizzard here, though I will stand up for the devs. I don't like that a lot of the discussion is parroting misinformation though. The gamespot interviewer went hard with with the questions and got us some good answers, let's use them them.
Again, developers can’t just go out and say “oh guys, Blizzard cancelled everything” unless they want o lose their job and every other prospect in the field. They are most likely under NDA.
Exactly! I'm disappointed that PvE is cancelled, but it happens. Im mad that you KNEW it was out of reach for such a long time but you wanted to capitalize more money on the fact that people had hope for it, even marketing and promoting it.
Not mad at the devs, but fuck the company that would condone and follow through these practices. No one asked you to make the game a live service except you so you can monetize it harder and now you want sympathy for your decisions lol.
That still doesn't mean it's the devs fault. They don't get to decide what they're allowed to say, and they don't get to decide when they're allowed to say it.
This could have been something the execs yanked the rug on like a couple days before the stream.
Professional game dev checking in - this is par for the course. I've worked on more shit that got cut than I've shipped. The people in the trenches are absolutely not to blame when dumb business/marketing/corporate bullshit like this happens, they're just doing what they're told and sometimes they're told to stop doing those things. We just sigh, have a little cry, and pick up the next task... heads down till the work is done. A common mantra we have is that sure, sometimes you have to kill your darlings, but it just hurts a little more when your darlings are murdered.
As a gamer though, I am *extremely* disappointed. This is going down in history as one of the dumbest bullshit calls in entertainment history. Without all this, OW2 is just OW1 with a UI update and cut maps. Push is trash, they would have normally released twice as many heroes if they just kept the live service model, and I'll be damned if I ever say this again but I actually miss loot boxes. The new maps are okay but I actually miss 2CP after playing the new stuff.
I've been saying for years that they've failed to make a right decision in so long I'm not sure if they can win me back. I've uninstalled Overwatch more times than I can count... the thought that I might get to play Lucio on Illios again just keeps pulling me back until I realize how busted and mundane the rest of the game actually is now.
IMO the biggest change from OW1 to 2 gameplay-wise is the team size reduction from 6 to 5. It's one simple change, but had a sweeping effect on how teams are set up which lead to a lot of heroes being re-worked and balanced for 5v5. It's still not enough a change to warrant a numbered sequel, but probably the closest thing to it.
Someone should sticky/pin a post explaining that this guy is a journalist and not a blizzard dev, for all the people who can't be bothered to infer that from his very first statement about how he'll be reporting on Overwatch 2
>its insane how many people are suggesting that the devs shouldve broken nda..
Because a lot of people on this sub have never worked a job where NDAs are a thing. Anyone that's had one knows you don't break one unless you want the courts to dropkick you
He is pretty well known in terms of games journalists, assuming someone follows this field at all. He is actually quite well respected, and even his critics will often praise some of his work. Almost like clockwork though, every now and then he has some kind of take that gets some people angry on twitter.
One thing that I've learned about him is that he tends to be very pro-developer but less sympathetic to the customers / gamers. I've seen an interview where he basically admitted as much. He often takes the side of the developer, as you can see him doing right now.
Taking the side of the people working on a game isn’t a hot take and shouldn’t be. I’ve been on the internet long enough to see what some of the “fans” do and say to the developers who have nothing to do with these decisions.
The dude does pretty good investigations, but from what I can tell he has some serious bias'. He's exposed a lot of worker mistreatment in the games industry, and goes pretty hard on it, unless you're Naughty Dog apparently, and then it pretty much ends up as "Well they promised to do better in future so I'm just going to let them off with a warning".
> unless you're Naughty Dog apparently, and then it pretty much ends up as "Well they promised to do better in future so I'm just going to let them off with a warning".
I'm really confused by this, I feel like he has been *super* vocal about his misgivings and complex feelings around the crunch involved in Naught Dog's work, and the importance of awareness and openness when it comes to the working conditions of the people who create things that we care about.
Like, we has written books, plural, documenting the poor working conditions of Naughty Dog and condemning management for not doing more to mitigate that.
I'm not trying to be a Jason Schrier simp here, I'm just curious what the context is for your position that he's a sort of ... Naught Dog apologist? Probably not a good description of what you were going for.
> The dude does pretty good investigations, but from what I can tell he has some serious bias'.
Hi reputation as a journalist is well earned but he's really up his own ass about it now too.
I respect Jason's reporting but he just comes off as having an inflated ego and is really snarky. His tweet about Jedi Survivor comes to mind when he made fun of people claiming it had bad performance.
I've not read a single opinion posted here since the announcement that was negative towards the smaller employees working there. Everyone has been unanimously shitting on Kotick, Keller (the DIRECTOR) and whoever else is calling the shots at Blizzard and ultimately decided to cancel PvE after months of radio silence.
Everyone knows the bottom employees didn't have a choice and they must be equally pissed that all the work they've made on PvE is now simply gone to the bin.
Jason is just trying to distract attention and be disingenuous. Need I remind people how he was well aware of the Cosby Suite, but only decided to report on it after the cat was out of the bag?
The industry's been doing that for years. Whenever there's criticism, they blame the "gAmErS!!!!!" terribly HARASSING them. All it takes is one insult gone too far (real or not) and *voilà*, gAmErS have lost their rightful privilege to complain.
They find a random post in the darkest corner of 4chan of 3 idiot morons sending death threats and then post a black screen message on twitter about how their employees are constantly being harassed
Exactly this. The junior employees are not known by name, so how can anyone personally be mean them? They can only blame the named employees, all of which are senior management and do have influence on the direction of the game. Aaron Keller (THE DIRECTOR) is the one who delivered the news and it's his words that specifically are being picked apart. Criticism of him is warranted. Obviously harassment isn't (and I haven't seen any but I don't doubt it exists, it's the internet)
Attempting to defend upper management under the guise of defending lower employees is slimy. We already know the junior members are not to blame, but these higher up named members/execs do hold some responsibility and will be called out.
You would be suprised, sadly, just check Twitter and sort by controversial here, they're mostly children but hundreds of children telling you to kill yourself will hurt
And they'd get it (from me) if they had done something or at least tried...
It's been 4 *years* sense they made the promise. In that time they managed to make maps, characters, events, monetization, a "new" emote system, a new charm system, a new skin system...at this point looking back, ow2 was supposed to launch with the feature...but, it launched and a *year* after they tell everyone that the feature they showcased *years* ago isn't even in enough pieces to put in the game. They've been string us along knowing the feature wasn't anywhere near ready but still acting like it was. They straight up lied to us in order to sell copies and battle passes. A single dev can do a lot in 4 years, maybe not all this, but some people can do more with less. Thus id assume (yes, an assumption) that at some point they were telling us this was coming while *no one* was working on it....
I'd expect this from a slimy Kickstarter scam studio...not blizzard. They promised us they moon for 4 years and then told us we get nothing cause it was harder then they thought.
EDIT: I should point out, my frustration is more so directed at management. Devs absolutely, are underappreciated now days...but just cause it's hard doesn't mean you get to pull this card *after* you tell everyone it's coming within the year.
In the game spot interview they stated that they knew PvE was axed ***last year*** and still went forward with everything. Fucking vile.
Edit: also ***BLIZZARD*** are the ones who set our expectations this high, not the fans. Its ***their*** fault everyone wanted a big PVE mode so bad, not the fan’s. All the outrage is a million times deserved.
Imagine being one of the devs painstakingly design and implement boatloads of new pve abilities only to see it get scrapped 💀
I dont have much expectations left, but i at least hope they would reuse them in future heroes and not let all of that work die in vain.
Thank you, this isn’t a No Man Sky situation. Meaning the game didn’t launch missing features and then the team dedicated to delivering above and beyond for the next decade with free updates, transparent communication, and forward positive momentum. I’ll also add that is a small dev team
No this is a multi billion dollar global org, that launched an overwhelmingly popular franchise with an active and supportive player base. 5 years ago I was in bars and OWL was on ESPN prime programming on the tvs. They then essentially stopped dev to deliver this specific feature, killed the old game, removed basic features, dumped obvious poorly thought out monetization on top, and delivered no substantial features or improvements since launch - all while still pointing to PVE as the log jam that had lead to this mess. And then this announcement just undercuts all of that - they squandered one of the best gaming playerbases and franchises for nothing and on top of that have no meaningful roadmap that replaces it.
All this while senior devs are caught up in one of the biggest sexual harassment cases in recent years.
So nah fuck these devs. Management takes a ton of blame but year over year this team has underperformed, under delivered, lied, and lacked any transparency or accountability. And that’s all this post is - it’s passing accountability onto senior execs and saying dev teams have no control over any of their projects which I refuse to believe. Did the execs kill PVE - yes. Why did they kill it - because it obviously was never going to deliver on the promises they made and was a log jam to future revenue growth.
Execs are there to make a profitable company. Devs are there to deliver compelling experiences and roadmaps that grow player base and incentives is to spend money. They have failed so so so so so so so so fucking miserably at both those things - so no wonder there project got cut by the execs. I’d cut it too I’d they couldn’t launch it by now. Assclowns
I won't weigh in one way or the other on how it applies to this situation, but every time I see a major disappointment in games or game design, the sentiment I encounter online is always
"100% management fault, 0% devs fault"
Devs are always 100% absolved of any sort of involvement or cuplability in any failure, regardless of how the siutation plays out.
Maybe the devs told managment they could pull this off? Maybe the devs were incompetent and management had to scuttle other projects to bail them out? Maybe the devs are to blame? It just seems highly unlikely that they're always innocent lambs when something like this goes tits up.
Any large scale development project fault ultimately lands in the lap of management. If something goes *this badly*, it is impossible to be the fault of any one specific dev. As a widespread, multifaceted issue, that is inherently a management problem as they... manage the devs. If certain devs were failing, underperforming, overhyping, etc it is regardless the job of higher ups to vet, manage, and guide the devs
This coming from a low level dev. It's why these structures exist
And right on script, turning it into a humanitarian issue so now anyone still complaining looks like the asshole.
Fuck that. They don’t deserve empathy or sympathy at this point. Four years of selling lies and snake oil tanks any sort of empathy you think you’ve earned.
This. This Fucking This. We had this situation (not exactly but similar) months ago with 343 (deservedly) and now we have it with blizzard (deservedly)
I enjoy his deep dives into game dev (the Destiny one was particularly good) but yeah he's definitely extremely full of himself and has a habit of proclaiming stupid takes.
My favourite was when [he decided to randomly dunk on an innocent newly formed small indie dev studio for the heinous crime of being made up of white guys.](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1425468302583795718?t=XFSucZrhfLWo6qaDG32EpA&s=19)
Like, you know what else we teach toddlers? That lying is bad. Maybe they should reread the boy who cried wolf when they inevitably wonder where all of our trust went.
He is an ego driven prick, I blocked him on twitter long time ago tired of his shit takes coated with condescending words.
For once in my entire life I cant side with the devs, they knew long time ago what was going on and lied about it multiple times and avoided any kind of communication about pve that was not pr talk, they deserve to be called out.
I sided with cdpr devs, halo devs.. but this one is way different.
Yeah, this is such a bad and unnecessary take lmao.
"Guys please understand, the devs feel bad too"
First of all, the anger is directed at Blizzard and its leadership.
Second, literally every single decision taken regarding OW2 has been nothing but awful. You don't get to keep pulling the sympathy card to mitigate the backlash.
What a condescending thing to say. Trying to repackage the backlash as toddler gamer emotions.
OW1 was neglected for like 4 years, supposedly to develop PvE that we now find out doesn't even exist. People have a right to be upset at the devs and the executives. Both made the game what it is now, which is a strictly worse version of the previous game.
Yeah no shit it's hard to balance it out, anyone would have said that at anytime between when Story-mode was announced and subsequently canceled.
Then why string along your player base for all this time?
Why just blurp about it mid-way through a dev stream?
Why is it so obvious how much time and effort went into the damn shop and battle-pass with so little regard to old and returning (selling old skins for money in a FOMO cash shop is the height of scummy behavior)
Why does Blizzard keep making excuses when the rest of industry keeps showing them how it could or should be done?
Fuck out of here, ActiBlizz never intended to actually release PvE. Overwatch 2 was nothing more than a scam to trick people into coming back to overwatch and making them pay money to do so. It was always a scam and will always be a scam
What did me in, even before the official scrapping of PvE, was the downright predatory way to unlock new heroes. Fork over 20-40 USD or play just OW2 for a minimum of 20 hours to get the hero (often more in my experience). I recognize that’s the live service model, but I didn’t fall in love with OW for those reasons. A core gameplay loop with a promise that the only content locked behind transactions after purchase are cosmetic was what I fell in love with.
Moving to 5v5 and locking new heroes, often meta defining, behind live service standards did me in.
It sucked the joy out of the game.
I downloaded the game like a week ago just to check out all the new stuff and was excited to play the new hero. I log in and immediately remember why I uninstalled lol. I don’t understand how people still play this game.
With all due respect, fuck off Jason. Stop acting like you care about the devs. Did you care about the devs when you intentionally leaked Fallout 4? He still defends that and bitches about how Bethesda still blacklists him over it. He's so tone deaf and up his own ass.
If he apologized at some point, I'd respect him a lot more. But as is, he's a hypocrite.
Months? Homie it was almost a year ago now. They knew they weren’t making PvE a thing when they *launched* OW2 and still said “don’t worry guys, you’ll get PvE by the end of 2023!”
They knew before they shooed Jeff Kaplan out the door. That's most likely the whole reason he left. He was adamant that the game needed the PvE mode, and his bosses disagree.
Yea I wasn’t playing Overwatch at the time so I just recently found out that’s more than likely what made Jeff leave. God I miss Jeff. In retrospect, I think that was the first indication of this outcome :/
I swear the gaming industry constantly goes around begging for empathy and sympathy. I can't think of any other industry that does this at every level.
Blizzard especially loves to use this as a shield. They've been doing this for years. Every time they fuck up or break promises, they immediately say that all criticism is bad because their poor devs are being harassed (as if people don't say 'devs' to refer to the leadership, not literally the intern coding a subroutine). It's such an obvious red herring argument that people love to agree with.
See that's not the issue. Here's what I feel:
1) Frustration and betrayal because a game I love was gutted for more $.
2) Empathy for those within Blizzard who didn't not want any of this to happen.
3) Disgust all those in Blizzard who supported hiding this decision for so long.
** NEW **
4) Anger towards Jason Schreier, because he couldn't help himself from being petty and essentially called the fanbase "toddlers" for ~~catching flame~~ flaming a product ~~he represents. You know, the good old "I'm sorry you feel that way. But I'm a human too you know?!"~~
5) Shame. I'm an idiot, I thought he was part of Blizzard. But the general sentiment still stands.
See? We can feel many things at the same time. Which means the empathy doesn't cancel out the outrage and breach of trust.
Jason, ask your toddler what exactly they are "maintaining?" How small is their team if introducing a couple new characters, maps and 5v5 and putting out a battlepass has stretched them to the limit?
Blizzard has had years of stagnation with Overwatch, so they've had plenty of time to figure this shit out. Empathizing with employees who are just going along with whoever makes the decisions there is all well and good but making excuses for this game being the way that it is, and then comparing people who are justifiably upset with it "toddlers", is just asinine.
I have empathy for the people who were head down working on it, catching strays from toxic people lashing out.
I have less empathy for the community managers (who also developed the game) who downplayed concerns about this very thing. That kind of dismissing concerns from fans that turn out to be true is the fastest way to lose me as a fan.
And the inability of Schreier to clearly make that distinction between "don't harass developers" and "the community managers misled fans" tells me he doesn't get it.
Yea they’ve been saying vague things like ‘more to come later about PvE’ since last summer while they clearly knew it wasn’t coming as originally promised. I don’t care if it’s your job, you are still responsible for lying.
This should have been worded waay better because it comes off as very condescending. Like everyone is pissed at that news (and rightfully so).
Revealing they really just did overwatch 2 as a cash grab to but overwatch as ftp with a battlepass
TL;DR Schreier made a tweet about how he + his team (back when he was at kotaku) had gotten several reports about the abuse going on at blizzard but decided to not report on it because they couldn't confirm it (and how he was sad that he never did, of course). Despite, you know, publishing rumors being Kotaku's bread + butter.
The general feeling was that it was done to keep Kotaku's access at Blizzard at a time when other companies were blacklisting them for their antics.
It's clear this is what happened
Team 4: We'll need a larger team to deliver Hero Missions, we need to hire more.
Bobby Kotick: No, we don't have money
Team 4: You do, this game has made a lot. And will make more if we deliver
Bobby Kotick: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DON'T TACH MY MAHNEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
Please stop talking down to us like "Toddlers" just because we do not agree with anything you are saying.
It's such a strawman/nonsense take now if people are upset with what you are saying you just go "well think of all the hard work people did!"
We are NOT MAD at individual developers, we are furious at how you've handled literally EVERY STEP of this from the pause in OW1 content to literally today. Nothing but deception and lies and people are rightfully fed up.
He’s likely referring specifically to people lashing out with undirected anger at anyone remotely involved with the Overwatch team.
Rather then realizing that this is a very disappointing, but also complicated situation and it’s normal to feel multiple things at once about it.
I mean I do feel bad for the devs, but at the same time this should make anyone in their right minds furious at the producer, it is incredibly sloppy for them to announce PvE and then not only delay it but cancel it, they’re not some indie studio, they’re the largest video game producer in the world.
If they were actually serious about making PvE it would be done already.
Ahh yes, the classic of video games controversy, redirect blame toward the fans under the false premise that they're channeling their anger at the wrong element of the corporation. Even though the vast majority of vitriol is aimed towards the C-levels and marketing team.
You'll always note that these games journalists who have the actual means of reaching those that they say you should blame never actually explain how you *could* voice your concerns to those at fault. If there is one thing I learned from my time in journalism it's that "insiders" like Shams Charania in the NFL, or Jason Schreier here in video games are all really just their industry's biggest sycophants. They're little more than mouthpieces for the billionaires of their industry, but with gaming it is somewhat unique because one of the first things insiders in our industry do is blame the C-levels that insiders in other industries spend their times astroturfing for because in gaming the C-levels are so insulated most don't even know their names and it is almost impossible to actually reach them so they're a sufficient boogeyman to lay the blame upon. You say that everyone needs to direct their hate towards them, but since that is impossible you're really just saying to shut the fuck up and accept it.
Ah, yes, the old "devs are martyrs" defense. Next we'll hear about how "entitled" the fanbase is for wanting the PvE mode that was advertised to them. Then we'll have just enough time to wrap it all up with "toxic gamers are actually the reason Overwatch died!"
Game will live on through porn. Otherwise it's dead to me. They're going to pull as much money as they can and move the devs to other projects and in a few years it'll be just like Hero's of the Storm.
I haven't seen a single comment attacking the developers at all though? All the hate is clearly directed towards Activision Blizzard and it seems the general consensus is that the higher ups are fking things up. Is he just trying to stir the pot to get some traction to his name or something?
Edit: To be fair, I don't use Twitter and this post was on Twitter so maybe he is right.
He has no real rebuttal to the allegations that they were purposefully misleading consumers, so we have to divert to "Some people are being mean to the devs 😥"
@the first tweet
“Maintaining a live service is hard enough without building a new game on top”
THAT IS WHY EVERYONE IS MAD! Blizzard took **nearly 3 years** of a development hiatus *specifically to work on PvE content* and have actual jack shit to show for it.
I empathize with the employees. I am sure that for such a large company in the industry, the executives are just fucking awful. But holy shit, what were you doing for 3 years?
Four years
Four *years*
No sympathy. They really are getting better and better at making themselves look like a small indie company. Considering the size of Blizzard, this is easily one of the most embarrassing gaming fuck-ups I’ve ever witnessed. The higher ups may be greedy jackasses, but it’s obvious the devs are also incompetent themselves. It’s ridiculous that they managed to fail completely at developing pve.
I’d give a fuck what sympathizers thought if OW2 literally wasn’t just an excuse to monetize the fuck out of the game because OW1 promised not to. I don’t blame entry level developers, they don’t make those decisions. But blizzard/OW is still dogshit.
Calling us toddlers for believing in promises they made. The audacity to not only not keep your promise but to also expect empathy from the people whom you broke your promise to.
I don't have empathy when the company knew this for a long time and didn't tell the players explicitly for the purpose of deceiving them and making more money through that deception.
Y'know how this could've all been avoided? By keeping OW1.
Step 1: Promise total overhaul of the game to include PvE. Step 2: Say you need a battle pass to pay for it. Step 3: Cancel the PvE. Step 4: Profit.
I think profit would come before "cancel PvE"
True. But: Step 3: Profit. Step 4: Retain profit by cancelling expensive PvE mode. Seemed less snappy I guess? [Edit] Actually the more I think about it the more that works.
Id never heard that they cancelled PvE. That was the only thing that had me waiting on this title...Guess I'm out.
Nah, they knew they’d cancel this *before* they launched OW2, but they just only told us about it now. I always have sympathy for individual devs, sure, but the company chose this and they’re NOT a tiny spring chick. Saying what Jason is saying, about the company behind WoW is WILD. He’s acting like it’s some tiny indie that just doesn’t know any better.
remember when they said ow1 would never have a battlepass? Yah me too.
See that's why they made OVERWATCH 2!!! so they technically didn't lie!
Yup. Telling fans they had to make a new game for a new mode, then admit they knew it was a bust over a year ago but keep dragging fans along to milk them just soured what good will they had left. At this point, Blizzard need to go out of their way to make good with fans before its too late which is bringing back a lot of what made OW1 great. 6v6 back, bring back the best maps they've vaulted, free lootboxes back, stop hiding heroes behind a battle pass and if you're going to keep the battlepass in, make it fully cosmetic with things you can't get from boxes, no heroes, nothing that gives you an advantage over others, just skins. That way free to play fans get skins and boxes to open and those that want to pay for something more flashy can get it too - since Bliz are clearly only concerened with $$$ On top of that, push as many of those story mode things they are working on as they can out, its not the PvE they promised but its something, even if its short 10 minute modes like the Kings Canyon one with Rein and co (I forget the name) That is a start to making it up to fans
Better make the missions permanent aswell not connected to the battle pass not some crap they spent 5 seconds on like starwatch because they know itll last 5 minutes and be over
I can't believe how awful Starwatch was and how proud they are of it. There's an opening cinematic that you can't see or hear cuz it was bugged out on release, there's no instructions on what's happening, and every game I played of it was a total stomp. My friend and I did enough to finish the event and never looked back.
I've had good matches in it hit they're far between, I feel like the concept could work if given a larger map just the cram they had to do does a lot of injustice to the mode. Like if this was expanded into a first person moba mode thatd be dope af
>Like if this was expanded into a first person moba mode thatd be dope af Battleborn?
This map has a very under utilized outside part too... Checkpoint B could have been placed outside and given it something unique and interesting.
I genuinely think they spent more time talking about starwatch in that dev video than it kept my attention for. I'd happily take them scrapping all these 'events' in order to push proper content: maps/modes/heros/hero reworks/missing features from OW1. It won't happen though because events = new skins for shop which apparently = content in a live service game.
Wait. There was an opening cinematic???? LMAO I NEVER SAW IT 😂
Wait what? I saw the robot face or whatever and then a black screen. Pretty sure I thought thaaat was the cinematic .5 seconds.
I love that Starwatch brought in new technology low-key. I hope they allow 2 cp to return as randomized 4 cp.
AND BRING BACK WINSTONS INTRO BEFORE THE MENU
They aren’t going to. As long as everyone keeps buying their games, battle passes, cosmetics and the like they will keep doing what they are doing.
It's still absolutely insane for people to harass everyone even associated with the game, like I'm sure the art director had a say in PvE being canned That said I'm glad I didn't come back to OW when they announced PvE because I'd be so mad right now.
Remember when players sent death threats to Brig's voice actor because they were upset about Brig's kit? Capital G Gamers are champions of misplaced aggression.
>It's still absolutely insane for people to harass everyone even associated with the game, like I'm sure the art director had a say in PvE being canned Welcome to the OW community. Where toxic, pathetic excuses for human beings thrive. Edit: The fact one of you fine outstanding people of this sub reported me to a suicide watch bot PROVES my point 100%
Legitimate question because I don't twitter... are there any actual examples of people harassing devs? I'm sure there are people who are frustrated by it and probably comment on it if any of those devs say something positive but it seems hard to believe people are out there just harassing random devs. Again, legitimately I'm not saying it doesn't happen but I would love to see where it is happening.
On reddit, one twelve year old saying "el oh el die haha" is sufficient to condemn a million people as sending "death threats", because that's what it takes to keep the circlejerk going. Some variation of that has been going on for many years.
Shigeru Miyamoto Quotes "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." i feel as if they delayed OW2 and tried to not slam it down the pipeline of games coming out during that time slot, we’d have a totally different game.
OW had *no new content* for 2+ years while they worked on OW2
And Overwatch 2 was a net loss in content
And features!!! No on fire? No enemy endorsements for a while? No cards? I can say the leaderboard thing has been way more toxic than the cards ever were.
Haven’t you heard? On Fire is coming back! They needed that 2 years to make sure the fire licks the screen the way real fire does. Maybe even spread like real fire does so by the end of your greatest game ever the whole screen would be lit so bright to signify that you are the best of the best./s Man fuck Blizz. Sad that the devs are getting the brunt, I can’t say much when you’re working for others you’re basically at their whims. Fuck ActiBlizz
Yeah, like I am sympathetic to the devs that are getting the short end of the stick because we have all been there, when you are at a job that is trying to do a thing everyone has agreed on is a horrible idea except for the people that actually have the final say. You can tell the emperor he has no clothes but you cannot make him dress so I get it, but it's also all of our money and all of our time so I'm not going to say anything negative to them but... Screw Blizzard, for a lot of reasons, this is just the latest.
Didn't they delay it repeatedly?
Oh I don't know, maybe if they **didn't kill the first game literally only to release the live service part instead of working on PvE then this wouldn't be an issue**
Just straight up gave us the WC3 Reforged treatment. "Hey, you remember that game you loved? Well, we broke it, and now you have to pay for it again. You're welcome."
"Why don't you appreciate the sweat and tears we put in professionally dismantling the game you held dear?"
The fact that I had to pirate Warcraft 3 when I bought it ON RELEASE IN 2003 at age fucking 7 so that I could play it again, rather than that bastardized buggy mess they changed my game to on bnet is absurd. They broke original missions, and straight up REMOVED one of them.
This is the thing that gets me, No one asked for a battle pass and if you promise a pve mode but then can't support because of the live service/battle pass then maybe get rid of the fucking battle pass? And not the mode that was promised for years and the whole reason the first one was killed off.
"it's hard to support a pve game mode because we also need to support our live service, which we cant do because of attrition and company drama." okay so get rid of the live service?
“No one asked for” Yes they did. Shareholders. They came to the company heads and say “we aren’t getting enough return on OW. Make a sequel and find ways to charge for it” And then they have to, because capitalism demands it.
I have 0 desire to play it anymore. The issues at launch and everything just felt different to me some how and I can’t put my finger on what. I think I played for 30 hrs after launch and I don’t think I will ever pick it back up
I paid $40 for Overwatch 1. I just want to be able to go back and play it every once and awhile with the old heroes.
Giving me visions of having to buy Overwatch: Classic for $40 in a few years.
Overwatch classic will be 70$
70 is gonna be the standard for new releases soon enough, it's gonna be 90+.
It's going to be tied to having an active WoW subscription by then.
If/when that happens, please don’t buy it lol
Honestly wouldn't shock me if that is part of their plan.
Overwatch will be like heroes of the storm in a few years. Kept alive through one intern keeping the server up.
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>hurr durr you bought that game 37 years ago hurr durr how do you expect this multi billion dollar company to support said game for 37 years hurr durr you're just being entitled hurr durr The above was spammed so heavily at the time. It just proved these people deserve every last bit of mistreatment that they get when they're ALWAYS so ready to side with untrustworthy giant corporations over their own interests. Actual children.
As much as it kind of sucks seeing a game I once really loved just be completely fucking ruined, it does bring me a little bit of joy seeing a lot of the shit I said turn out to be true. Who knew a company that, for the past half a decade, had done literally everything wrong would continue to do literally everything wrong.
Nah, fuck that. Enjoy your schadenfreude. You had to eat shit at the time you were stating the obvious by all of the weirdo blizzard loyalists because they thought they were getting a new toy. Now they're all crying because the most obvious outcome occurred. I find it hilarious personally. Couldn't have happened to a more deserving player base.
Yeah that's very fair, I got told to fuck myself multiple times, all the idiot's that jumped in and immediately started buying the skins for what was once the price of the full game deserved the shit they get. And I agree, seriously from the early previews you could tell something was off and then when they said it was launching without its main selling point, I'm shocked people had any faith in them at all at that point.
And 2 tanks. I fucking hate 1 tank. It's a totally different game, and I haven't touched Overwatch since the change.
Same, and I'm glad to see other people come back and state this. Was starting to think I was crazy with all the people hyping 5v5 when OW2 came out. 6v6 had a special team dynamic that has since been lost.
I used to play dive winston crushing the enemy snipers while big boy protected the healers. It was glorious. Now snipers rule. And tanks just counter swap on death.
I also spent probably 99% of my playtime on Winston but with a duo mercy. Was so much fun being able to coordinate backline dives!
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Aye but how far do the devs get control over the game or are they just told to do this and axe that? He does have a point honestly- be mad at executives and stop aiming hate at devs if they have no control over stuff like this. I would be more than happy to take back my comment if the devs are the ones who are controlling aspects like this tbh, as I don't know how it works 🤷♀️
You’re right, that’s how it works. This type of fuck up is the fault of management.
I would give zero shits about this controversy if I could still play Overwatch 1 and if it wasn't abandoned for nothing. It could've been such an easy and low maintenance move to keep OW1 up, but greed won.
The Execs(and maybe some devs) wanted overwatch 1 to be killed off. do you have any idea how bad it would look to release OW2 separately and 4 months later people realize its shit. So what do the fans do? they go back to playing OW1. that would be a massive embarrassment for ActiBlizz. That is a moment they would have to admit to their fans that they shit the bed. I am of the same philosophy though. I would give a shit a lot less if we still had OW1 to play still.
But then the next best thing is to not play ow2 and it still becomes a massive embarrassment that they released a sequal and fucked it all up. But that doesn't happen, ever. No matter what they release there always seems to be a player base for it, fueling the continuation. Lesser known companies fuck up and die out but the ones that know how to market keep on striving. Thats my random Internet opinion for the day.
not random at all. what you said is accurate. as long as they continue to have a small percentage of players paying their insane skin and battle pass prices then they will gladly let the rest of us leave.
Nah the players buying things need people to show off to. If people actually stopped playing the whales would have no one to match make with and would move on. Actually expecting people to not let a massive company just screw them over feels like it will never happen though
That’s also the executive’s
Just be clear who you mean by "They". Blizzard execs make these decisions to cut costs and streamline products. Blizzard developers are trying their hardest to make the game you love as good as possible. Just, understand who you're mad at.
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Sorry, Empathy is included in the premium version of the Battle Pass for $10, all your old credits can’t be used to purchase it
Also takes you “X” amount of hours to do, with less then your $10 will get you.
Actually it's at the end of the BP so even with the $10 you'll need to do some missions but for $20 more you can skip all that and shoot right up to tier 50😁👍
Thats fine if its too much….then dont fucking promise it?! Under promise over deliver. Simple as that. But you wanted to stoke hype to cover up the fact you deleted OW1 and to make people purchase your shitty add ons. OW2 was pitched as PVE, with OW1 still existing as just PVP.
They KNEW pve was dead YEARS AGO. Also this tweet is dumb, I'm mad at blizzard execs and leadership, not the workers. The leaders lied to us for profit, as is tradition.
I wouldn't doubt this tweet being more directed at Twitter. They're the ones with direct access to Blizz employees, and if what I've seen with Bungie employees is anything to go by, they will be mad at the workers. I've seen random people on Twitter complain to *voice actors* about the games they're in. The tweet is probably dumb because Twitter is dumb.
I'm sorry but this insistence that Twitter is where all the drama is, and never on Reddit, is always funny to me. Reddit can be just as bad, if not worse, that certain parts of Twitter. This is just addressing anyone who feels that specific way, regardless of what media they hang around
I'm not saying Twitter is toxic and Reddit is perfect. Reddit has a lot of stupid people making big deals over nothing, too. It just tends to be worse because of how the platforms operate. Reddit is a forum with posts and threads, Twitter is made for more direct interactions. A post that says "I hate Blizzard" and a tweet at Blizzard employees that says "I hate you" has the same message, but one is less passive.
This is why everyone complains on Twitter. It's much more impactful being a dickwad in there than here. Not like there isn't any dickwads here, it's just that the dickwads on Reddit don't interact with the people they criticize as much as Twitter.
I mean, the crises and poor attrition are mostly blizzards own doing though. Sure they couldn’t really control covid, but they’re also the ones forcing people to come back from remote work or be fired, they’re the ones with the insane CEO, they’re the ones with the Cosby rooms… I get that making the pve stuff is hard, but they’re also one of the largest gaming studios in the world. They’re ignoring the PVE game mode because all the higher up pencil pushers don’t think it’s financially viable. That’s why ow2 took so long, that’s why the development sped up so much after Kaplan left, because realistically he was the only person with enough power to hold onto the PVE concept. Once he left they probably had no intention of working on it any further, but waited until now to mention it because they knew how bad it would look
Yes, can we stop pretending like the PvE mode they announced was some herculean task? It was easily achievable for a company of Blizzard's scale, especially since they paused development of the "live service" game to work on it. They had four years and accomplished squat. This was not a case of the task being too difficult, they just didn't want to invest any resources into it.
This is what I see most people ignore. Blizzard isn't a small indie studio with a dozen or so devs. If they really wanted too, management could've put all hands on deck and leave a dozen or so devs to develop the skins for the shitty battle pass. And pop PVE like, a year after OW2 released if not sooner.
I dont think many people know who Jason is and think that anyone asking for decency is a blizzard employee lmao. We are all dissapointed, im sure devs are all too. imagine working for something and the one paying your check saying "oh well we wont do that anymore" and now you have to deal with the huge ammount of kids telling you to kys. Edit: its insane how many people are suggesting that the devs shouldve broken nda.. They could lose their jobs and be blacklisted from the industry thanks to that.. EVERY COMPANY does shitty things like this.. Hiding stuff and lying to their customers is extremely common and its not the workers choice, the higher ups decide that and you either quit or keep doing what youre being told.
I think the NDA part is significant. They aren’t always for shady business dealings. And it would all just culminate in ruining these devs lives for a video game. Imagine crippling you’re entire career for some skill trees
The problem is they knew a year and a half ago. If they announced it back then about how hard it is creating a new game. How PvE wasn’t going to happen. There wouldn’t be anywhere near this amount of fallout. But, if they did that? Then there would be a lot less money being spent and Blizzard knew that.
I can't believe so many videos haven't focused on this part. They knew for over a year. They talked about how "they didn't want to stop updating the game for long" to carry out a huge update...when that's the thing they did with the original overwatch. The game was begging for any sort of content for years and they didn't seem to care at all about leaving the community hanging. They misguided the playerbase for over a year, of course people are going to be disappointed.
Agreed! If they just had been upfront and honest about it from the beginning? There would be a lot less anger and frustration. But they teased us, baited us, gave us hope that something could happen, like Regina George from Mean Girls just stringing us along.
Exactly. They apparently made their decision what did they say?? A year and some change??? That would mean they were ACTIVELY advertising a PVE component that was ALREADY SCRAPPED. Literally even recently they were hyping PVE
Thats the thing I cant get my head around. In some sick way I get why they didnt outright say it was cancelled. People would have been mad and not bought into OW2 on the promise of what was to come. But even if you're not going to tell the truth why would you double down and say don't worry guys give us time it'll be great in a few seasons. Again in a sick, cold business way they could have just dragged this out and and let PvE kinda fade out or deliver the little missions they are apparently still going to do to buy time and say "here guys we wanted to get you something while we work on the big stuff". But no, like you said, they were actively were marketing it almost up until this announcement AND CONFIRM on the interview they knew a year or 2 ago, like wtf is that decision making?
>AND CONFIRM on the interview they knew a year or 2 ago, like wtf is that decision making? I still can't believe that they fully admitted this on stream lmao. They knew before even OW2 released, and yet still advertised as if it was still in the pipeline.
Quarterly profits mindset. Product shelf life and brand loyalty are tomorrow's ceo's problems. Seems like a real strange business model for a continual live service game, but i guess that's why f2p works 'great' for them, too. Gdi, why can't these morbidly obese cats stop draining the fun out of anything good just so they can nap on a slightly taller bed of cash? This is why we can't have nice things! "Won't somebody please think of the shareholders?! They've given so much to this labor of love, and they share a deep passion for 'whatcha-call-it'..." /s
>Again in a sick, cold business way they could have just dragged this out and and let PvE kinda fade out or deliver the little missions they are apparently still going to do to buy time and say "here guys we wanted to get you something while we work on the big stuff". Pretty sure that was the plan. There was already a concept of Blizzard Soon, where something promised will come out sometime between tomorrow and when the Milky Way collides with Andromeda, and it does legitimately seem like their plan was to keep promising PvE was coming Soon while hoping most people would either be satisfied with small PvE events or just get bored of asking. But the majority of the community didn't, and kept asking when PvE was coming, and I think they realized they couldn't string players along forever.
More of it, 11 months ago one of hero designers said that they "had a significant amount of time dedicated to creating the talent trees." [https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/vicyeq/comment/iddexd2/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/vicyeq/comment/iddexd2/)
Note the context of the question that person is responding to. "What is the biggest timesink that fans might not understand?" Though they do use present tense to describe the talent trees, but for the most part that post seems to be explaining how their promised systems are presenting difficulties.
Technically it’s not a lie. They “HAD a significant amount of time dedicated”.. he didn’t say they were CURRENTLY dedicating a significant amount of time to it at the time😉😉😉
Wait, so the PvE aspect was cancelled before the game even released / converted?? Since it released in Oct of 2022, that would mean they were advertising, as a main selling point, an aspect of the game that was cancelled at a minimum of 6 months prior to release.
Yup 🤡
This also isn’t something that rank-and-file developers working on the game decided, though.
Yes but MOST of us reasonable people aren’t talking about people just doing their job. We are talking about blizzard as an entity. The COMPANY knowingly advertised a product that was already dead to justify blowing off and blowing away the old one.
This is getting spread way too much (although it's still partially true). The year and a half ago was when they stopped putting 100% into the PvE and started making the PvP launch for OW2 that came out it in October. That's likely when the suits said, "you need to start making money by the end of 2022, make it happen." Aaron Keller said in THE SAME INTERVIEW in no uncertain terms that they made the decision to abandon the larger-scale PvE "late last year". Obviously that could refer to a wide range. They still might have reached that decision well before we got OW2 PvP in October. A generous interpretation would be that while PvE was on the backburner since they started on the PvP, they were holding out hope to settle into an easier development cycle and pick up where they left off. But after a couple seasons of balance issues and lackluster content they realized there was no hope of making two games at once. I'm not trying to defend ActiBlizzard here, though I will stand up for the devs. I don't like that a lot of the discussion is parroting misinformation though. The gamespot interviewer went hard with with the questions and got us some good answers, let's use them them.
I doubt the devs had any say in when or how to announce the change
Again, developers can’t just go out and say “oh guys, Blizzard cancelled everything” unless they want o lose their job and every other prospect in the field. They are most likely under NDA.
How’s that the devs fault?
Exactly! I'm disappointed that PvE is cancelled, but it happens. Im mad that you KNEW it was out of reach for such a long time but you wanted to capitalize more money on the fact that people had hope for it, even marketing and promoting it. Not mad at the devs, but fuck the company that would condone and follow through these practices. No one asked you to make the game a live service except you so you can monetize it harder and now you want sympathy for your decisions lol.
That still doesn't mean it's the devs fault. They don't get to decide what they're allowed to say, and they don't get to decide when they're allowed to say it. This could have been something the execs yanked the rug on like a couple days before the stream.
Professional game dev checking in - this is par for the course. I've worked on more shit that got cut than I've shipped. The people in the trenches are absolutely not to blame when dumb business/marketing/corporate bullshit like this happens, they're just doing what they're told and sometimes they're told to stop doing those things. We just sigh, have a little cry, and pick up the next task... heads down till the work is done. A common mantra we have is that sure, sometimes you have to kill your darlings, but it just hurts a little more when your darlings are murdered. As a gamer though, I am *extremely* disappointed. This is going down in history as one of the dumbest bullshit calls in entertainment history. Without all this, OW2 is just OW1 with a UI update and cut maps. Push is trash, they would have normally released twice as many heroes if they just kept the live service model, and I'll be damned if I ever say this again but I actually miss loot boxes. The new maps are okay but I actually miss 2CP after playing the new stuff. I've been saying for years that they've failed to make a right decision in so long I'm not sure if they can win me back. I've uninstalled Overwatch more times than I can count... the thought that I might get to play Lucio on Illios again just keeps pulling me back until I realize how busted and mundane the rest of the game actually is now.
IMO the biggest change from OW1 to 2 gameplay-wise is the team size reduction from 6 to 5. It's one simple change, but had a sweeping effect on how teams are set up which lead to a lot of heroes being re-worked and balanced for 5v5. It's still not enough a change to warrant a numbered sequel, but probably the closest thing to it.
Someone should sticky/pin a post explaining that this guy is a journalist and not a blizzard dev, for all the people who can't be bothered to infer that from his very first statement about how he'll be reporting on Overwatch 2
>its insane how many people are suggesting that the devs shouldve broken nda.. Because a lot of people on this sub have never worked a job where NDAs are a thing. Anyone that's had one knows you don't break one unless you want the courts to dropkick you
He is pretty well known in terms of games journalists, assuming someone follows this field at all. He is actually quite well respected, and even his critics will often praise some of his work. Almost like clockwork though, every now and then he has some kind of take that gets some people angry on twitter. One thing that I've learned about him is that he tends to be very pro-developer but less sympathetic to the customers / gamers. I've seen an interview where he basically admitted as much. He often takes the side of the developer, as you can see him doing right now.
Taking the side of the people working on a game isn’t a hot take and shouldn’t be. I’ve been on the internet long enough to see what some of the “fans” do and say to the developers who have nothing to do with these decisions.
The dude does pretty good investigations, but from what I can tell he has some serious bias'. He's exposed a lot of worker mistreatment in the games industry, and goes pretty hard on it, unless you're Naughty Dog apparently, and then it pretty much ends up as "Well they promised to do better in future so I'm just going to let them off with a warning".
> unless you're Naughty Dog apparently, and then it pretty much ends up as "Well they promised to do better in future so I'm just going to let them off with a warning". I'm really confused by this, I feel like he has been *super* vocal about his misgivings and complex feelings around the crunch involved in Naught Dog's work, and the importance of awareness and openness when it comes to the working conditions of the people who create things that we care about. Like, we has written books, plural, documenting the poor working conditions of Naughty Dog and condemning management for not doing more to mitigate that. I'm not trying to be a Jason Schrier simp here, I'm just curious what the context is for your position that he's a sort of ... Naught Dog apologist? Probably not a good description of what you were going for.
Most issues I have with Jason are just the same issues I have with anyone who is on Twitter way too much. I like triple click pod a lot tho
> The dude does pretty good investigations, but from what I can tell he has some serious bias'. Hi reputation as a journalist is well earned but he's really up his own ass about it now too.
I respect Jason's reporting but he just comes off as having an inflated ego and is really snarky. His tweet about Jedi Survivor comes to mind when he made fun of people claiming it had bad performance.
I've not read a single opinion posted here since the announcement that was negative towards the smaller employees working there. Everyone has been unanimously shitting on Kotick, Keller (the DIRECTOR) and whoever else is calling the shots at Blizzard and ultimately decided to cancel PvE after months of radio silence. Everyone knows the bottom employees didn't have a choice and they must be equally pissed that all the work they've made on PvE is now simply gone to the bin. Jason is just trying to distract attention and be disingenuous. Need I remind people how he was well aware of the Cosby Suite, but only decided to report on it after the cat was out of the bag?
The industry's been doing that for years. Whenever there's criticism, they blame the "gAmErS!!!!!" terribly HARASSING them. All it takes is one insult gone too far (real or not) and *voilà*, gAmErS have lost their rightful privilege to complain.
They find a random post in the darkest corner of 4chan of 3 idiot morons sending death threats and then post a black screen message on twitter about how their employees are constantly being harassed
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Exactly this. The junior employees are not known by name, so how can anyone personally be mean them? They can only blame the named employees, all of which are senior management and do have influence on the direction of the game. Aaron Keller (THE DIRECTOR) is the one who delivered the news and it's his words that specifically are being picked apart. Criticism of him is warranted. Obviously harassment isn't (and I haven't seen any but I don't doubt it exists, it's the internet) Attempting to defend upper management under the guise of defending lower employees is slimy. We already know the junior members are not to blame, but these higher up named members/execs do hold some responsibility and will be called out.
You would be suprised, sadly, just check Twitter and sort by controversial here, they're mostly children but hundreds of children telling you to kill yourself will hurt
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And they'd get it (from me) if they had done something or at least tried... It's been 4 *years* sense they made the promise. In that time they managed to make maps, characters, events, monetization, a "new" emote system, a new charm system, a new skin system...at this point looking back, ow2 was supposed to launch with the feature...but, it launched and a *year* after they tell everyone that the feature they showcased *years* ago isn't even in enough pieces to put in the game. They've been string us along knowing the feature wasn't anywhere near ready but still acting like it was. They straight up lied to us in order to sell copies and battle passes. A single dev can do a lot in 4 years, maybe not all this, but some people can do more with less. Thus id assume (yes, an assumption) that at some point they were telling us this was coming while *no one* was working on it.... I'd expect this from a slimy Kickstarter scam studio...not blizzard. They promised us they moon for 4 years and then told us we get nothing cause it was harder then they thought. EDIT: I should point out, my frustration is more so directed at management. Devs absolutely, are underappreciated now days...but just cause it's hard doesn't mean you get to pull this card *after* you tell everyone it's coming within the year.
In the game spot interview they stated that they knew PvE was axed ***last year*** and still went forward with everything. Fucking vile. Edit: also ***BLIZZARD*** are the ones who set our expectations this high, not the fans. Its ***their*** fault everyone wanted a big PVE mode so bad, not the fan’s. All the outrage is a million times deserved.
Imagine being one of the devs painstakingly design and implement boatloads of new pve abilities only to see it get scrapped 💀 I dont have much expectations left, but i at least hope they would reuse them in future heroes and not let all of that work die in vain.
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Thank you, this isn’t a No Man Sky situation. Meaning the game didn’t launch missing features and then the team dedicated to delivering above and beyond for the next decade with free updates, transparent communication, and forward positive momentum. I’ll also add that is a small dev team No this is a multi billion dollar global org, that launched an overwhelmingly popular franchise with an active and supportive player base. 5 years ago I was in bars and OWL was on ESPN prime programming on the tvs. They then essentially stopped dev to deliver this specific feature, killed the old game, removed basic features, dumped obvious poorly thought out monetization on top, and delivered no substantial features or improvements since launch - all while still pointing to PVE as the log jam that had lead to this mess. And then this announcement just undercuts all of that - they squandered one of the best gaming playerbases and franchises for nothing and on top of that have no meaningful roadmap that replaces it. All this while senior devs are caught up in one of the biggest sexual harassment cases in recent years. So nah fuck these devs. Management takes a ton of blame but year over year this team has underperformed, under delivered, lied, and lacked any transparency or accountability. And that’s all this post is - it’s passing accountability onto senior execs and saying dev teams have no control over any of their projects which I refuse to believe. Did the execs kill PVE - yes. Why did they kill it - because it obviously was never going to deliver on the promises they made and was a log jam to future revenue growth. Execs are there to make a profitable company. Devs are there to deliver compelling experiences and roadmaps that grow player base and incentives is to spend money. They have failed so so so so so so so so fucking miserably at both those things - so no wonder there project got cut by the execs. I’d cut it too I’d they couldn’t launch it by now. Assclowns
I won't weigh in one way or the other on how it applies to this situation, but every time I see a major disappointment in games or game design, the sentiment I encounter online is always "100% management fault, 0% devs fault" Devs are always 100% absolved of any sort of involvement or cuplability in any failure, regardless of how the siutation plays out. Maybe the devs told managment they could pull this off? Maybe the devs were incompetent and management had to scuttle other projects to bail them out? Maybe the devs are to blame? It just seems highly unlikely that they're always innocent lambs when something like this goes tits up.
Any large scale development project fault ultimately lands in the lap of management. If something goes *this badly*, it is impossible to be the fault of any one specific dev. As a widespread, multifaceted issue, that is inherently a management problem as they... manage the devs. If certain devs were failing, underperforming, overhyping, etc it is regardless the job of higher ups to vet, manage, and guide the devs This coming from a low level dev. It's why these structures exist
And right on script, turning it into a humanitarian issue so now anyone still complaining looks like the asshole. Fuck that. They don’t deserve empathy or sympathy at this point. Four years of selling lies and snake oil tanks any sort of empathy you think you’ve earned.
101 in damage control.
As a halo fan, watching the devs kill the franchise, i feel the pain of the pve fans
This. This Fucking This. We had this situation (not exactly but similar) months ago with 343 (deservedly) and now we have it with blizzard (deservedly)
I understand the sentiment but this guy comes across so condescending
Jason has a well documented history of posting terrible takes but everyone kisses his feet cause he gets the news scoops
I enjoy his deep dives into game dev (the Destiny one was particularly good) but yeah he's definitely extremely full of himself and has a habit of proclaiming stupid takes. My favourite was when [he decided to randomly dunk on an innocent newly formed small indie dev studio for the heinous crime of being made up of white guys.](https://twitter.com/jasonschreier/status/1425468302583795718?t=XFSucZrhfLWo6qaDG32EpA&s=19)
\>Dunks on them for being white guys \>His third tweet in that thread I don't want that to always be true. It's incredibly frustrating.
Always. Dude thinks he shits gold, and I've seen the guy pop off multiple times if his take is unpopular.
I remember when he was just another guy on GAF and he was a prick with bad takes back then. Maybe a good journalist but man.
Like, you know what else we teach toddlers? That lying is bad. Maybe they should reread the boy who cried wolf when they inevitably wonder where all of our trust went.
He is an ego driven prick, I blocked him on twitter long time ago tired of his shit takes coated with condescending words. For once in my entire life I cant side with the devs, they knew long time ago what was going on and lied about it multiple times and avoided any kind of communication about pve that was not pr talk, they deserve to be called out. I sided with cdpr devs, halo devs.. but this one is way different.
Yeah, this is such a bad and unnecessary take lmao. "Guys please understand, the devs feel bad too" First of all, the anger is directed at Blizzard and its leadership. Second, literally every single decision taken regarding OW2 has been nothing but awful. You don't get to keep pulling the sympathy card to mitigate the backlash.
Hey isn't this the guy who knew about the rampant secual assault happening at Blizzard and refused to report on it? Go fuck yourself Jason
The very same!
How is he taking the high ground and calling people toddlers lol
What a condescending thing to say. Trying to repackage the backlash as toddler gamer emotions. OW1 was neglected for like 4 years, supposedly to develop PvE that we now find out doesn't even exist. People have a right to be upset at the devs and the executives. Both made the game what it is now, which is a strictly worse version of the previous game.
Yeah no shit it's hard to balance it out, anyone would have said that at anytime between when Story-mode was announced and subsequently canceled. Then why string along your player base for all this time? Why just blurp about it mid-way through a dev stream? Why is it so obvious how much time and effort went into the damn shop and battle-pass with so little regard to old and returning (selling old skins for money in a FOMO cash shop is the height of scummy behavior) Why does Blizzard keep making excuses when the rest of industry keeps showing them how it could or should be done?
Fuck out of here, ActiBlizz never intended to actually release PvE. Overwatch 2 was nothing more than a scam to trick people into coming back to overwatch and making them pay money to do so. It was always a scam and will always be a scam
well, thats why they sell overpriced skins, to keep running overwatch. no empathy for these greedy liars.
What did me in, even before the official scrapping of PvE, was the downright predatory way to unlock new heroes. Fork over 20-40 USD or play just OW2 for a minimum of 20 hours to get the hero (often more in my experience). I recognize that’s the live service model, but I didn’t fall in love with OW for those reasons. A core gameplay loop with a promise that the only content locked behind transactions after purchase are cosmetic was what I fell in love with. Moving to 5v5 and locking new heroes, often meta defining, behind live service standards did me in. It sucked the joy out of the game.
I downloaded the game like a week ago just to check out all the new stuff and was excited to play the new hero. I log in and immediately remember why I uninstalled lol. I don’t understand how people still play this game.
With all due respect, fuck off Jason. Stop acting like you care about the devs. Did you care about the devs when you intentionally leaked Fallout 4? He still defends that and bitches about how Bethesda still blacklists him over it. He's so tone deaf and up his own ass. If he apologized at some point, I'd respect him a lot more. But as is, he's a hypocrite.
All out of empathy today. Fuck them for lying for months.
**years
Months? Homie it was almost a year ago now. They knew they weren’t making PvE a thing when they *launched* OW2 and still said “don’t worry guys, you’ll get PvE by the end of 2023!”
They knew before they shooed Jeff Kaplan out the door. That's most likely the whole reason he left. He was adamant that the game needed the PvE mode, and his bosses disagree.
Yea I wasn’t playing Overwatch at the time so I just recently found out that’s more than likely what made Jeff leave. God I miss Jeff. In retrospect, I think that was the first indication of this outcome :/
I swear the gaming industry constantly goes around begging for empathy and sympathy. I can't think of any other industry that does this at every level.
Its quite pathetic really
Blizzard especially loves to use this as a shield. They've been doing this for years. Every time they fuck up or break promises, they immediately say that all criticism is bad because their poor devs are being harassed (as if people don't say 'devs' to refer to the leadership, not literally the intern coding a subroutine). It's such an obvious red herring argument that people love to agree with.
Yep, sorry, empathy machine broke. Give me back OW.
See that's not the issue. Here's what I feel: 1) Frustration and betrayal because a game I love was gutted for more $. 2) Empathy for those within Blizzard who didn't not want any of this to happen. 3) Disgust all those in Blizzard who supported hiding this decision for so long. ** NEW ** 4) Anger towards Jason Schreier, because he couldn't help himself from being petty and essentially called the fanbase "toddlers" for ~~catching flame~~ flaming a product ~~he represents. You know, the good old "I'm sorry you feel that way. But I'm a human too you know?!"~~ 5) Shame. I'm an idiot, I thought he was part of Blizzard. But the general sentiment still stands. See? We can feel many things at the same time. Which means the empathy doesn't cancel out the outrage and breach of trust.
Jason, ask your toddler what exactly they are "maintaining?" How small is their team if introducing a couple new characters, maps and 5v5 and putting out a battlepass has stretched them to the limit? Blizzard has had years of stagnation with Overwatch, so they've had plenty of time to figure this shit out. Empathizing with employees who are just going along with whoever makes the decisions there is all well and good but making excuses for this game being the way that it is, and then comparing people who are justifiably upset with it "toddlers", is just asinine.
I have empathy for the people who were head down working on it, catching strays from toxic people lashing out. I have less empathy for the community managers (who also developed the game) who downplayed concerns about this very thing. That kind of dismissing concerns from fans that turn out to be true is the fastest way to lose me as a fan. And the inability of Schreier to clearly make that distinction between "don't harass developers" and "the community managers misled fans" tells me he doesn't get it.
Yea they’ve been saying vague things like ‘more to come later about PvE’ since last summer while they clearly knew it wasn’t coming as originally promised. I don’t care if it’s your job, you are still responsible for lying.
This should have been worded waay better because it comes off as very condescending. Like everyone is pissed at that news (and rightfully so). Revealing they really just did overwatch 2 as a cash grab to but overwatch as ftp with a battlepass
Tbf, condescension is sort of Jason's bread and butter.
That, and openly admitting you know about rampant sexual abuse + harassment and refusing to report on it.
Context?
TL;DR Schreier made a tweet about how he + his team (back when he was at kotaku) had gotten several reports about the abuse going on at blizzard but decided to not report on it because they couldn't confirm it (and how he was sad that he never did, of course). Despite, you know, publishing rumors being Kotaku's bread + butter. The general feeling was that it was done to keep Kotaku's access at Blizzard at a time when other companies were blacklisting them for their antics.
It's clear this is what happened Team 4: We'll need a larger team to deliver Hero Missions, we need to hire more. Bobby Kotick: No, we don't have money Team 4: You do, this game has made a lot. And will make more if we deliver Bobby Kotick: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DON'T TACH MY MAHNEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
Please stop talking down to us like "Toddlers" just because we do not agree with anything you are saying. It's such a strawman/nonsense take now if people are upset with what you are saying you just go "well think of all the hard work people did!" We are NOT MAD at individual developers, we are furious at how you've handled literally EVERY STEP of this from the pause in OW1 content to literally today. Nothing but deception and lies and people are rightfully fed up.
small indie company please understand
This is like adding fuel to the fire. Basically coming out about how they treat their fans like toddlers. Or maybe it’s just the Twitter users lol.
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He’s likely referring specifically to people lashing out with undirected anger at anyone remotely involved with the Overwatch team. Rather then realizing that this is a very disappointing, but also complicated situation and it’s normal to feel multiple things at once about it.
I mean I do feel bad for the devs, but at the same time this should make anyone in their right minds furious at the producer, it is incredibly sloppy for them to announce PvE and then not only delay it but cancel it, they’re not some indie studio, they’re the largest video game producer in the world. If they were actually serious about making PvE it would be done already.
>how they Who do you think "they" is? He's a Bloomberg journalist, not a Blizzard employee.
Ahh yes, the classic of video games controversy, redirect blame toward the fans under the false premise that they're channeling their anger at the wrong element of the corporation. Even though the vast majority of vitriol is aimed towards the C-levels and marketing team. You'll always note that these games journalists who have the actual means of reaching those that they say you should blame never actually explain how you *could* voice your concerns to those at fault. If there is one thing I learned from my time in journalism it's that "insiders" like Shams Charania in the NFL, or Jason Schreier here in video games are all really just their industry's biggest sycophants. They're little more than mouthpieces for the billionaires of their industry, but with gaming it is somewhat unique because one of the first things insiders in our industry do is blame the C-levels that insiders in other industries spend their times astroturfing for because in gaming the C-levels are so insulated most don't even know their names and it is almost impossible to actually reach them so they're a sufficient boogeyman to lay the blame upon. You say that everyone needs to direct their hate towards them, but since that is impossible you're really just saying to shut the fuck up and accept it.
Ah, yes, the old "devs are martyrs" defense. Next we'll hear about how "entitled" the fanbase is for wanting the PvE mode that was advertised to them. Then we'll have just enough time to wrap it all up with "toxic gamers are actually the reason Overwatch died!"
Game will live on through porn. Otherwise it's dead to me. They're going to pull as much money as they can and move the devs to other projects and in a few years it'll be just like Hero's of the Storm.
The most real comment i think I’ve seen on this post
Am I the only fucker in existence that doesn't regularly watch OW porn? Lmao
I haven't seen a single comment attacking the developers at all though? All the hate is clearly directed towards Activision Blizzard and it seems the general consensus is that the higher ups are fking things up. Is he just trying to stir the pot to get some traction to his name or something? Edit: To be fair, I don't use Twitter and this post was on Twitter so maybe he is right.
Most comments I’ve seen are directed specifically at the marketing team
He has no real rebuttal to the allegations that they were purposefully misleading consumers, so we have to divert to "Some people are being mean to the devs 😥"
He is one of these people who hates gamers and thinks they're "entitled".
@the first tweet “Maintaining a live service is hard enough without building a new game on top” THAT IS WHY EVERYONE IS MAD! Blizzard took **nearly 3 years** of a development hiatus *specifically to work on PvE content* and have actual jack shit to show for it. I empathize with the employees. I am sure that for such a large company in the industry, the executives are just fucking awful. But holy shit, what were you doing for 3 years?
Jason and being a contrarian - name more iconic duo
Ah yes, it's the gamers who we just did a rug pull on who are the problem.
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Four years Four *years* No sympathy. They really are getting better and better at making themselves look like a small indie company. Considering the size of Blizzard, this is easily one of the most embarrassing gaming fuck-ups I’ve ever witnessed. The higher ups may be greedy jackasses, but it’s obvious the devs are also incompetent themselves. It’s ridiculous that they managed to fail completely at developing pve.
I’d give a fuck what sympathizers thought if OW2 literally wasn’t just an excuse to monetize the fuck out of the game because OW1 promised not to. I don’t blame entry level developers, they don’t make those decisions. But blizzard/OW is still dogshit.
Calling us toddlers for believing in promises they made. The audacity to not only not keep your promise but to also expect empathy from the people whom you broke your promise to.
SquareEnix was able to build a new FFXIV while the old one was still running but I guess its because they actually cared for the game.
I don't need empathy for keeping up a live service noone asked for. Years of no content, because "we work non-stop on PVE" and then nothing.
I don't have empathy when the company knew this for a long time and didn't tell the players explicitly for the purpose of deceiving them and making more money through that deception.