Activision Blizzard Is a Hilariously Bad Company

what's up everybody this is the act man here and after questioning every aspect of my life recently i've decided to come back it's time to get back to doing what i love most because if there's one thing we can all count on in life it's that activision blizzard will always find a way to make themselves look really really good why are we still here this is a very beloved and well-respected company within the game industry and it has a long history of ethical business practices and decisions and almost no history to speak of regarding controversy i'm talking of course about activision blizzard yes that one did you guys not have phones yeah you guys all have identified those of you thinking i'm being sarcastic well just take a look at this article activision blizzard clears itself of any wrongdoing i mean what more proof do you possibly need case closed now let's all pre-order diablo 4 shall we copy that and so because this company can't seem to go one month without doing something amazing i felt we should all take the time to point out all the spectacular things ab has done recently but before we do that i'm proud to announce that this video is sponsored by war thunder a vehicular combat multiplayer game engage in epic dog fights across pc xbox series x and playstation 5. pretty smooth flying fox no purchase necessary this bad boy is free to play it's also cross platform with last gen consoles and there's over 2 000 different vehicles with tanks warships helicopters and airplanes this game has had a whopping 50 million players worldwide and i'm the best pilot out of all of them there's more than 100 battlefields based on real historical events war thunder offers a robust pvp and pve experience i was very surprised by how well the planes control on mouse and keyboard typically you think you need joysticks the controls here are amazing not to mention there's tons of different factions to choose from so why not hop into a plane built by the ussr dogfights aren't just about shooting down other planes but ground vehicles and objectives there's so much to this game and war thunder is constantly being updated every few months introducing new vehicles maps and other ways to play and you can sign up for free using the link in the description and pinned comment doing so will get you some exclusive bonuses which can include a premium tank aircraft or ship and a three-day account boost so go do it download war thunder using my special link and i'll see you on the battlefield soldier thank you war thunder for sponsoring this video enough for something completely different activision blizzard clears itself of any wrong doing the call of duty publisher says it's the victim of an unrelenting barrage of media criticism they're the victims in all of this you guys but on the real i feel like the blizzard half of this company continues to prove how far one can fall at this point it's like your best buddy is hooked on crack and you've been denying it for years but you have to face reality your best friend is a crack addict and nothing you do will change that they're never going to kick the habit such as my relationship with blizzard i love the title of this article it is it is ripe for the memes after conducting a thorough investigation oj simpson has cleared himself of any wrongdoing i can only hope this company is getting all their shitty behavior out before they get acquired by microsoft so this article is about that um you know that big sexual harassment lawsuit wait can i can i still say sexual [Music] you know that lawsuit that alleged female employees were uh being harassed because they were females there we go that they were being discriminated against paid less being passed up for promotions because they might get preggers and all manner of horrible things remember that lawsuit well luckily after a thorough investigation activision blizzard has decided that you're totally crazy dude you're not being gaslit and there never was any systemic issue with harassment discrimination or retaliation at a b well thank goodness for that now we can all rest easy this investigation was conducted by a activision blizzard board of directors and i'm sure this group held no bias whatsoever towards the company they were representing or were subtly encouraged to uh portray it in a positive light but the article continues there is no evidence to suggest that ab senior executives ever intentionally ignored or attempted to downplay the instances of gender harassment that occurred and were reported basically leadership wasn't aware and therefore you can't hold them accountable i mean fair enough i wasn't there i didn't lead this investigation i have no idea what the truth is aside from the company settling this lawsuit for 18 million dollars god damn well good for those employees that won the big bugs and good for activision blizzard because they've since made back all of that money with the release of diablo immortal a perfectly ethical video game so no biggie i'm gonna go buy some legendary gems now here in america we stand by the belief that if you have problems you should be able to throw money at it and watch it all disappear that is a true american belief whatever the case is i think we can all agree that something happened at the company for this lawsuit to be settled for 18 million dollars this is just paying for silence you know i mean the fact that there were allegations of employees stealing breast milk is what [Music] breast milk i have several questions number one who's bringing breast milk to work and to activision blizzard and number two who at activision blizzard is stealing breast milk apparently they have like some internal nursery or something which i i get you know activision blizzard devs demand breastfeeding protections and other reforms they're advocating for the safety of their breast milk i think it's safe to say we live in a society but apparently a group of employees at ab have banded together with a list of demands and one of those is to have witnesses at hr meetings that sentence just makes me feel dirty dude like like what the [ __ ] happened in these meetings for workers to demand witnesses they say they want all hr meetings documented but don't worry says blizzard spokesperson jessica taylor we have for example already upgraded our lactation facilities and i just learned that activision blizzard has lactation facilities jesus they have a whole list of breastfeeding related demands i mean you go girl and all that i just find this whole concept extremely bizarre but then again i also have a penis maybe i'm not supposed to understand maybe i'm supposed to support apparently the internet also turned private detective trying to uncover who the identity of this mysterious robin hood of breast milk was and they might have narrowed it down now i can't find a high quality shot of this 4chan post but according to this kataku article apparently some guy said he worked at a large tech company that he often raided the lactation room he would then pour some of the milk into a water bottle drinking it before a workout for maximum gains hell get out of here man back in november uh thousands of employees had also like staged a walkout in protest of bobby kodak and asking him to resign i mean that's just crazy so good for them for sticking up for workers rights and i hope they win and i hope activision blizzard treats its employees better so now that i can't do ad breaks um here's the part where i promote my patreon please consider donating i can't promise a whole bunch of rewards but i do make exclusive posts there informing people about upcoming videos and plans so moving on back in may ab announced this king's diversity tool which drew a lot of criticism and for good reason they uh quickly rewrote this article but thankfully the wayback machine exists but i feel it's important to note that the people who designed this system disavowed this article and the way ab was trying to use it so let's take a look at the original article and then compare it to the new one so what is this diversity tool well it's a way for activision blizzard to assign number values to a character based on their physical disabilities gender race ethnicity skin color sexual orientation you name it and assign a number value to that grading its diversity with this innovative new system the character design process now has a dystopian i mean tangible way of avoiding tokenism stereotypes and exclusion i love how they bring up tokenism while admitting how much value they place on characters simply for their diversity rating as i'll call it like isn't isn't that what tokenism is including characters not because of the value they add as a fictional person but rather the checkbox that they mark off i find something just inherently distasteful about that philosophy these mother truckers also grade characters based on like disabilities like god this is so [ __ ] weird man i'm creeped out i feel like i feel like spiders are crawling up my legs right now it's like even when activision blizzard is trying to do something good they end up doing something terrible instead i mean yeah you can say this is from a good place like yeah we want to see ourselves represented in games don't we all the question that does remain is this how do we convert this feedback from a collective desire into a tangible reality it's like maybe maybe you can't the diversity space tool is a measurement device to help identify how diverse a set of character traits are and in turn how diverse that character and casts are when compared to the norm implying there is some kind of diversity standard or lack thereof like what what is the norm for diversity like you can quantify how diverse a group of people are but you can't attach a number value to an individual like that's that's so weird maybe this tool can be used for something good but the way blizzard represented it it feels dystopian like imagine if the government got a hold of this you also can't really trust activision blizzard to mean what they say when they say diversity is important to them like this this company is mathematically engineering its video game characters to appeal to the broadest demographic possible which isn't inherently a bad thing it's just we're talking about activision blizzard you don't want to do that you think you do but you don't so you bet your sweet buns that diversity and money are two inextricable terms to them alana cole says the tool was tested by the dev teams working on call of duty vanguard we use the diversity tool to figure out what more diversity looks like across all our characters in both campaign multiplayer and live seasons see i knew i was onto something when i was talking about how boring and uninspired the vanguard cast of characters were like like it feeds into that idea that this these games are being mathematically engineered scientifically engineered to be as diverse as possible not because it makes the games better but because they want to appeal to everyone i i feel like when i can tell that you're trying to be diverse and it doesn't feel natural then it feels like there's an ulterior motive there and it turns me off overwatch is actually pretty good about its diversity and variety of characters because the basis of the story is the best operators from all over the world coming together and it's a hero shooter it makes sense the diversity in overwatch is cool the overwatch 2 team at blizzard also had a chance to experiment with the tool with equally enthusiastic first impressions now let's look at the updated article i'm surprised they didn't start with it seems this blog post struck a nerve there has been conversation online regarding this tool particularly concerning its intent and our commitment to diversity we've edited this blog post to clarify that this prototype is not being used in active game development so that was a [ __ ] lie it's not being used in active game development folks it's only being used in cod vanguard and overwatch too how could you walk back the straight up lie you know the objective of using the tool is to uncover unconscious bias by identifying existing norms and representation and acknowledging growth opportunities for inclusion imma keep it real with you activision blizzard this isn't going to make people forget about that massive sexual harassment lawsuit the tool identifies what stereotypical characters in different genres look like which are not always the most conducive or representative of diversity yeah but sometimes stereotypes are fun in video games just look at the cast of the call of duty zombies crew exaggerated stereotypes when applied equally allow us to all laugh at ourselves i don't know this whole article just feels like such a robotic sterile cold and corporate way of looking at character creation in video games like why do you need some kind of diversity calculator in order to make good unique characters i just feel like that's normal storytelling that's art it comes from a passion to deliver an experience or a feeling to people moreover why do you need to brag about this tool and write up a blog post if your motives aren't to get brownie points especially alarming is how you removed all reference of it being used in active game development like come on we know you're using this in overwatch too speaking of overwatch 2 overwatch 2 will be a free-to-play live service god damn it oh no not again i feel like the term live service has just been completely soured over the years like it i'm sure blizzard can handle it but but you know with how they've created diablo immortal everyone has to start asking some serious questions about what kind of ethical problems overwatch 2 is going to have because you know it's going to have some of those while this game is marketed as a sequel it's more like a blob that's going to absorb the current overwatch and change it into something you may like or may not apparently the format is switching from 6v6 to 5v5 which i feel like poses a lot of problems with only one tank on each team it's like i'm sure it'll be fun but i stopped playing overwatch because the game felt more and more restrictive with later updates and changes roll q takes so much fun out of the game i you know part of the appeal of overwatch is that you could change characters at any point and now you can't now you have to be a specific class of character and stick to that like imagine if they did this to league of legends god damn people would be pissed the free to play nature is likely there to lower your expectations for what a sequel should be and if you like the current version of overwatch well too bad it's going to be replaced entirely whether you like that or not some of the other highly advertised features include maps but the time of day is different you mean the bright map is now dark and the dark map is now bright i don't know if this is just me but i'd be much more excited for overwatch too number one if a b wasn't such a terrible company but also if it was marketed as like a full priced sequel just sell me the game you know overwatch is still fun however with blizzard's track record i wouldn't be surprised if the brass milk was stolen with this one too luckily they've been focusing on the important things like changing mccree's name to pull cassidy i'm still calling him mccree moving on to diablo immortal i always feel like blizzard intentionally packages terrible news or terrible games with things they know people are going to be excited about i can't tell if they were trying to be crafty or stupid with showing diablo 4 gameplay just 10 days after immortal came out diablo immortal if you don't know is one of the most insidious examples of video game monetization in history blizzard has gone so far down the path of greed they've actually outdone themselves with immortal having beaten the previous record for lowest metacritic user score a record previously held by blizzard with warcraft 3 reforged now for shits and giggles let's see how much money we would have to spend based on the odds to get a five-star gem the best kind of item this app calculates how much it could potentially cost you to get a five-star legendary gem in fact one streamer had spent over ten thousand dollars without getting one [Music] yeah ah well would you look at that only 6925 buckaroos and you only have to complete 2770 dungeons what a steal now we all know mobile games have a tendency to be monetized in ways that are questionable but the extent of immortal and the fact that it comes from blizzard it just pushes the boundaries of video game monetization in ways yet unseen by man truly some demonic forces have taken over at blizzard but it's much more likely that they've been there the whole time it's very insidious how the story is specifically set up to encourage players to buy the 25 bundle of gems by making the other bundles just shy the amount of orbs you need to buy legendary gems just like how blizzard is mathematically engineering diversity so too has diablo immortal been mathematically perfected to be the most profitable video game possible red shirt guy tried to warn us hey uh just was wondering is this uh an out of season april fool's joke he tried to stop diablo immortal from releasing from infecting the phones of innocent people and we didn't listen we didn't listen did you guys not have phones yeah you guys all have identified blizzard also tried to warn us quickly burn your phone everyone so you don't install diablo immortal take that just when you thought loot boxes were done for and on the path to obscurity just when you thought the industry consumers and [ __ ] lawmakers all agreed that loot boxes were gambling and terrible well blizzard has successfully found a way to reintroduce loot boxes while trying to sidestep gambling laws yeah luckily it didn't fool the people of belgium or other countries where this practice is prohibited now i can't say i'm surprised by this level of dedication to reintroduce loot boxes blizzard does not have to disclose the odds of these legendary gems and whatnot because technically there's some in-game skill required to get to the loot box and therefore isn't gambling all this stuff is described in perfect detail in the video the immoral design of diablo immortal by josh streif hayes and i highly recommend watching that diablo mortal sets a new love for gaming but also blizzard at least with loot boxes and overwatch like the cute and fun characters gave some kind of justification for purchase but the stuff you buy in diablo immortal is to progress the actual game bro like i said it seems aby always has some new game to announce right around the time a bunch of people are really pissed off at them sir more allegations of sexual harassment in the workplace have surfaced oh no problem how's that trailer for overwatch 2 coming doesn't this new video game make you forget about all the stolen breast milk at our company torbjorn says no to sexual harassment i don't know man big companies like this tend to show you who they really are with their actions and not their meaningless words as funny as it is that stuff like stolen breast milk can be a punchline for my many many jokes the truth is that some pretty terrible things happened at blizzard most likely but humor is how i always deal with tragedy in any case it's hard to be excited for any upcoming blizzard games given their horrible track record truth is if they were to announce warcraft 4 i'd probably be like great can't wait to see how they ruined that one too that's where my mind is at with blizzard games the only new stuff i'm interested from them is re-releasing old games like wrath of the lich king but who knows maybe activision blizzard will get acquired by microsoft and this will all be some horrible dream that we look back on and laugh so thank you all for watching the misadventures of activision blizzard they are a hilariously bad company if you enjoyed the video make sure to like it and subscribe don't forget to check out war thunder in the description below make sure you click the link in the description and download it today to get those exclusive rewards and a big thank you to all my new patrons alright everyone that's all i got for today this is the act man signing out peace [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: The Act Man

Views: 1,829,257

Keywords: activision blizzard, blizzard entertainment, overwatch 2, diablo immortal, act man, the act man, actman, act man blizzard, blizzard act man, gaming news, diablo 4, overwatch gameplay, diablo 4 classes, diablo 4 gameplay, diablo immortal microtransactions, diablo immortal loot boxes, diablo immortal bad, call of duty, activision blizzard lawsuit, bobby kotick, activision lawsuit, blizzard lawsuit

Id: 474vm54r9xo

Length: 22min 51sec (1371 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 03 2022