Activision under investigation for financial fraud

[[McD] James]

This coming right after their split with Bungie, and the news of their plummeting stock prices. Massive corporations tend to get away with doing a lot of awful things, but one thing they usually don't get away with is screwing with their investors. 

 

https://gamerant.com/activision-fraud-bungie/

[DooM_RO]

I truly hope they go bankrupt for fucking up Blizzard. They, along with EA can go eat shit and die.

[seed]

5 minutes ago, DooM_RO said:

I truly hope they go bankrupt for fucking up Blizzard.

 

I'm missing something here, what did they do to Blizzard? 

[DooM_RO]

2 minutes ago, Agent6 said:

 

I'm missing something here, what did they do to Blizzard? 

 

Diablo Immortal, the restructuring of Blizzard. It's all their doing.

[Apaul27]

31 minutes ago, Agent6 said:

 

I'm missing something here, what did they do to Blizzard? 

Fucking Overwatch

[Mordeth]

Looks like a case of alleged insider trading. Blizzard top tier management dumping stock on their investors, knowing it would go down in value due to the impending split. Since this takes place in the USA, nothing will come of it or it will settle out of court.

[amackert]

18 hours ago, Mordeth said:

Since this takes place in the USA, nothing will come of it or it will settle out of court.

 

Sad but true.

[wolfmcbeard]

Hard to believe companies like Activison and EA actually made good games at one point.

[Avoozl]

I don't like certain shitty things Bethesda has done either.

[seed]

56 minutes ago, wolfmcbeard said:

Hard to believe companies like Activison and EA actually made good games at one point.

 

Seems all eventually fall to greed. Valve, Bethesda, Activision, EA, they're all empty shells of their former glory.

 

Or not, EA was actually trash even in its early days, they were just lucky enough to put out some great games.

[wolfmcbeard]

7 minutes ago, seed said:

EA was actually trash even in its early days, they were just lucky enough to put out some great games

That is true.
Bethesda seems to be trying to be both greedy and good? it's tearing them apart in my opinion.
Activision went the way of the micro transaction, though they could still make some good games if they tried.
Valve is....well, I don't know what the hell Valve is now, a platform?

[DooM_RO]

11 minutes ago, wolfmcbeard said:

That is true.
Bethesda seems to be trying to be both greedy and good? it's tearing them apart in my opinion.
Activision went the way of the micro transaction, though they could still make some good games if they tried.
Valve is....well, I don't know what the hell Valve is now, a platform?

 

Yeah, it's a bit weird. On one hand they usually never rush games, spend all the time and money they need on their products, produce excellent DLC that is more akin to old school expansions but on the other hand you get fantastic fuckups like Fallout 76 which, without exaggerating, was just outrage after outrage. 

 

Even with all their mistakes, Bethesda is still a LOT better than EA and Activision.

[wolfmcbeard]

I half wonder if Zenimax (Bethesda's parent company) pushed the whole 76 thing on Bethesda, kinda like ESO, with that, you could tell it was a Zeni thing, it just didn't have that usual BGS feel.
76 was a true and total shitshow but if we veer our eyes away from it's underlying problems, it had the potential to be great, even as a multiplayer online only game.

[Avoozl]

Also they attempted paid mods twice despite all the backlash it got.

[wolfmcbeard]

Most have forgotten about creation club I think, I still remember their first attempt with Valve.

 

[seed]

42 minutes ago, wolfmcbeard said:

That is true.
Bethesda seems to be trying to be both greedy and good? it's tearing them apart in my opinion.
Activision went the way of the micro transaction, though they could still make some good games if they tried.
Valve is....well, I don't know what the hell Valve is now, a platform?

 

Bethesda yes, tries to be good somehow but can't seem to stop committing dumb mistakes.

 

Valve claims to still make games, but if Artifact was any indication I'm not looking forward to anything made by them.

[wolfmcbeard]

Valve as a game studio seems to be largely dead.

[Cruduxy Pegg]

CS:GO and DOTA2 say it is alive. They just aren't developing what you want. And yes am glad artifact did horribly, greedy game that's only designed around catering to the most elitism they could, be it from players, traders or deck crafters. 

 

I'd say it is time people start looking at smaller companies\indies for games. The big companies made it very clear they don't give a shit about their old fanbases. And when they try to cater to them they do it horribly and it surprisingly, backfires! The only one I can think of that managed to pull it off was Doom16 about the graphics issues. They respected the players and silently fixed it, not made dumb news about how their fans have no idea what they want. Or even worse, trying to paint most gamers as misogynist incels who have nothing to do but harass the devs. You think you want a good but you don't after all.

[seed]

29 minutes ago, Pegg said:

CS:GO and DOTA2 say it is alive. They just aren't developing what you want. And yes am glad artifact did horribly, greedy game that's only designed around catering to the most elitism they could, be it from players, traders or deck crafters. 

 

I'd say it is time people start looking at smaller companies\indies for games. The big companies made it very clear they don't give a shit about their old fanbases. And when they try to cater to them they do it horribly and it surprisingly, backfires! The only one I can think of that managed to pull it off was Doom16 about the graphics issues. They respected the players and silently fixed it, not made dumb news about how their fans have no idea what they want. Or even worse, trying to paint most gamers as misogynist incels who have nothing to do but harass the devs. You think you want a good but you don't after all.

 

I think we were talking about developing new games (well, I was at least), not endlessly milking existing ones. From that perspective you can say that yes, they're alive, but I say otherwise.

 

Indeed, I think in the case of certain companies it's time to turn around and look somewhere else, for developers who actually care about what they're making and their fans, not as much money as they can possibly make.

[Mr. Freeze]

On 1/13/2019 at 3:03 PM, Apaul27 said:

Fucking Overwatch

 

On 1/13/2019 at 2:35 PM, DooM_RO said:

 

Diablo Immortal, the restructuring of Blizzard. It's all their doing.

 

"They made games I don't like, so they deserve to be put into prison". 

 

You People never fail to amuse me. 

[printz]

3 hours ago, Avoozl said:

Also they attempted paid mods twice despite all the backlash it got.

Why did it have to generate a backlash anyway? Mods are hard work, they're worth turning into jobs (so that authors stay motivated to complete them), but in general they can't actually happen because of copyright problems. Bethesda having a paid mod platform would have worked as an official permission to make money on mods.

[yakfak]

7 minutes ago, printz said:

Why did it have to generate a backlash anyway? Mods are hard work, they're worth turning into jobs (so that authors stay motivated to complete them), but in general they can't actually happen because of copyright problems. Bethesda having a paid mod platform would have worked as an official permission to make money on mods.

 

in most creative fields you'll find the general audience are willing to give money to distributors, reviewers and let's players/unboxers/people making content based on the art, but absolutely loathe to give any to the creator =P

[Test Tickle]

On 1/13/2019 at 2:03 PM, Apaul27 said:

Fucking Overwatch

Overwatch wasn't bad at all. I'd say it's one of their top games.

[geo]

32 minutes ago, printz said:

Why did it have to generate a backlash anyway? Mods are hard work, they're worth turning into jobs (so that authors stay motivated to complete them), but in general they can't actually happen because of copyright problems. Bethesda having a paid mod platform would have worked as an official permission to make money on mods.

First of all, people hate to pay more money. Secondly, people felt "if devs release broken games and then use mods to fix the broken games, it would cause 100% of all mod support games to be bad and broken upon release." Space Base DF-9 comes to mind.

 

Even if you were to pay $1 per mod, some people have hundreds of mods. Then there's the logistics of 1 mod takes 2 other mods to play. Plus, people release other people's mods for their own profit. Oh not to mention there's a whole new level of copyright infringement. Mario Bros in a mod?

 

I'm all for people getting paid for their hard work, but there are a lot of other considerations in an ocean of bullshit.

 

There are people who have taken their mods and made them into official and stand alone games. Like that dude who somehow spent $100,000 on frelancers for his mod over 5 years who asked Bethesda uh can I use the Skyrim engine for a standalone game?

[seed]

1 hour ago, printz said:

Why did it have to generate a backlash anyway?

 

I think that's because some people would feel entitled to payment for their work regardless of how much effort was put into the said thing. As in, you'd see basic retextures for an unjustified price, "because they can".

 

Another reason would be the large amount of mods available for Bethesda games, and considering some people literally have hundreds of mods installed... that could potentially imply a lot of money.

 

Otherwise, I don't think people are against the idea itself, but rather potential consequences.

[FrogMaster]

I think most big publishers nowadays are outta control. EA is ignorant, Activision is abusive, and so on. I think we are slowly inching towards a gaming industry revolution where indie companies begin to shine. My biggest hope is that Bungie is brought back to Microsoft and Halo can have their people back. Maybe Bungie could focus on main titles while 343 Industries can do spin-off titles, since they are the ones who created most of the expanded universe? 

Edited January 15, 2019 by FrogMaster

[Cacodemon345]

19 minutes ago, FrogMaster said:

My biggest hope is that Bungie is brought back to Microsoft and Halo can have their people back. Maybe Bungie could focus on main titles while 343 Industries can do spin-off titles, since they are the ones who created most of the expanded universe? 

Don't expect anything good to come out of this. Most people who worked on Halo 1 left Bungie. There's only a few people who worked on Halo 1 in Microsoft. And even then, you don't want those new Halo games to be exclusive to the Windows 10 Store.

 

Only bad things will come out if Bungie goes back to Microsoft.

[Thedoctor989]

i was waiting for something like this to happen, i knew they were doing something shady as soon as i saw there sales (which where on a Colossal fail) magically raise back to there highest level they've been in years! 

 

but know this proves that even a great company can become corrupted by greed so easily.. so sad.

[FrogMaster]

Just now, Cacodemon345 said:

Don't expect anything good to come out of this. Most people who worked on Halo 1 left Bungie. There's only a few people who worked on Halo 1 in Microsoft. And even then, you don't want those new Halo games to be exclusive to the Windows 10 Store.

 

That's true. I know Joseph Staten is currently working on Crackdown 3 and Marty O'Donnell founded his own video game company and is currently composing music for the game they are designing. I think it would be a stretch to gather all the original people back, but one can only hope I guess. I know it probably won't happen lol.

[Novaseer]

1 hour ago, FrogMaster said:

 

That's true. I know Joseph Staten is currently working on Crackdown 3 and Marty O'Donnell founded his own video game company and is currently composing music for the game they are designing. I think it would be a stretch to gather all the original people back, but one can only hope I guess. I know it probably won't happen lol.

It'd be like if all of the original id members went out and made another game. It'd undoubtedly be great, but they've all gone their own ways, and the same is with Bungie.