Things Are Weird Right Now, Blizzard

I know I don’t need to recap the entire Blizzard situation on here right now, you’ve all read it a thousand times. Things are fucked up over at Activision/Blizzard, this we know. But at some point, the show’s gotta go on… Right?

What do I mean by this? I mean eventually the tides of shitty news will have to subside, and content creators, streamers, Blizzard employees, and PR people alike won’t need to apologize or walk on eggshells when trying to continue making a living – as they’ve done for years – from ActiBlizz products. Don’t get me wrong, I am in no rush, but hey – my income doesn’t depend on their games.

We’re in the weird period right now. Blizzard and Activision’s lies are still being called out. Bobby Kotick vomited some PR/investor friendly rhetoric on their earnings call last week (which, to be fair, is what happens on every earnings call for every company on earth). J. Allen Brack “stepped down”. So what’s next? Let me turn your attention to this incredibly sad email that I got yesterday, and I’ll elaborate further.

This email made me sad.

It did. For real. Like I feel absolutely awful for this guy. I’m no stranger to Blizzard press releases (kind of a well-connected gaming blogger, not a huge deal), and this ain’t what they usually sound like. This is fucking Diablo II that we’re talking about, and due to the shittiness that Blizzard has been engulfed in for the lion’s share of this past month – this poor bastard’s gotta basically apologize mid-email for even letting me know about it. How is this fair to that guy who’s got to do his job no matter what?

The world’s gonna keep spinning. People are going to continue to play Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Hearthstone, and eventually Diablo II (the Blizzard Launcher, currently, is not even installed on my PC). There are real people with real jobs, lives, and families – within Blizzard and without – that depend on that hard fact. I don’t know what it’s going to take, but a few more dominoes will likely need to fall before we escape this period at all.

I want to see the creeps held accountable for all the awful things that are being uncovered on a day to day basis. I hope this lawsuit is successful. I just really hope, to an equal degree, that we can get to a point where the Blizzard staff and creators that are blameless in all of this can get back to some normalcy in their lives, and can get back to doing what they love (playing and/or making video games) without apologizing for it.

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P.S. – Telling someone to “quit their job” or “just stop playing it” is an outrageously privileged perspective, because that ain’t how life works, bud. People have mouths to feed, including their own – and if your life is so happy-go-lucky and fancy free that you can just up and quit your job (or go through life without having one), then I suggest you try and get some perspective on the real world before assuming everyone else can be so lucky as you.