The people in charge of these companies, meanwhile, get to quietly count their millions. After all, they aren’t the ones who have to go on a livestream and defend the latest patch notes.
There are, however, a lot of opportunities during development for everyone down the chain to voice concerns about making an online-only game that doesn't need to be and requires them to go on a livestream to defend their patch notes.
And lots of opportunities for them to be ignored or fired. Devs can complain all they want but at the end of the day we have to do what our bosses order us to do.
If it wasn't on their minds before Diablo IV, I'll bet "defending our patch notes on a live stream" is going to be a difficult position to staff in the future for a company that's already had issues retaining talent.
I'm not sure anyone is having an issue retaining employees. Top employees, perhaps, but for a lot of businesses you don't need very many brilliant (and expensive) employees. Any competent soul will do. On that score, I can assure you that the game industry has no shortage of folks looking to get in to the industry.
I know a handful of developers (read: far too many) who have been fired for vocally disagreeing with management.
Sure, but if you want to see what happens when you have a lot of employee turnover from people not agreeing with the direction of a game, look no further than Redfall. Often times that top talent you're talking about will form their own studios and bring colleagues with them.
I know I'm preaching to the choir, BlahajEnjoyer, but for anyone else reading this, this is why it's important to also not play these sorts of games in addition to not spending money on them, if stopping any of this is important to you.
Enough people have left Overwatch 2 that they've resorted to putting it on Steam. Perhaps it's not happening on the timeline we would like, but people do seem to be tiring of live service nonsense.
It hasn't stopped the game from being in the top 25 most played on Steam though. And I'll bet that number is disappointing to Blizzard too, but I'm going to guess a large number of those people leaving negative reviews are still playing the game, which doesn't help.
Actually, you're right. I take that back. I let my personal dislike for the game override my thought processes. There are plenty of people who like the game, as odd as I find that fact.
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