Blizzard loses 11M players in 3 years

Gee I wonder why.


Bored The Office GIF
 
As much as I've really enjoyed ActiBlizz games over the past several years it's easy to see why people feel their time is best spent elsewhere. They are so out of touch with the people that love their games the most.
 
2018 was the year they dropped Steam and published COD on the Blizzard App. It's not the biggest factor, but it's one of them.
 
Misleading thread title - it's just Blizzard games that lose their playerbase, which shouldn't be a surprise given their output in recent years. As far as Acti's condition goes, CoD games are dong exceptionally well, Warzone alone has tens of millions of playerbase.
 
It would be more, but WoW players have a sort of collective Stockholm syndrome.

There is no bigger fan base on the planet that will endlessly whine about how shit a game is while paying monthly to play it than WoW fans.
 
SJRB said:
Probably the part in the article that states that revenue went up..
Click to expand...
So? If they retained those players would it have been even higher and does it really justify that big a pay bonus? Especially when there's data that high paying CEOs perform worse.

Call of duty is too big to fail now they will make revenue almost regardless of anything
 
ZywyPL said:
Misleading thread title - it's just Blizzard games that lose their playerbase, which shouldn't be a surprise given their output in recent years. As far as Acti's condition goes, CoD games are dong exceptionally well, Warzone alone has tens of millions of playerbase.
Click to expand...

Please message mods so that they change the thread title and I apologize for the mistake.
 
AV said:
It would be more, but WoW players have a sort of collective Stockholm syndrome.

There is no bigger fan base on the planet that will endlessly whine about how shit a game is while paying monthly to play it than WoW fans.
Click to expand...
I can confirm this. It was the same for me for many years. But, I'm finally free to shit on other games. At least they don't have a subscription.
 
Last edited:
Hots failed. Their content cadence in other games is atrocious and wow has boring systems that drive you away unless you play it like a job. Not to mention their warcraft 3 remake flopped.

Wow should be a megahit but they don't know what to do with it. They put out content once every year. FF14 eats their lunch in content quality and update speed.
 
Last edited:
Why does Bobby have a job?

His decisions basically seem to be:
- Call of Duty
- Milk Blizzard fans

Unless I'm missing some big brain moves by the CEO literally anyone on this forum could do that same job.
 
Wake me up when Warcraft IV or Starcraft III come out. If all they are going to do is MOBA games and Diablo "point and click" games then they are off the map for me.
 
If you are counting just 3 years then this is likely mostly due to Overwatch. WoW players (myself included) have stockholm syndrome so they keep coming back for each expansion so the player dip there probably depends on when you do the sampling. Hearthstone milked the playerbase down to only the whales and the absolutely ultra casual. Diablo and Starcraft have already died prior to the 3 year window so I doubt they had players to lose lol.
 
Foorbits said:
Why does Bobby have a job?

His decisions basically seem to be:
- Call of Duty
- Milk Blizzard fans

Unless I'm missing some big brain moves by the CEO literally anyone on this forum could do that same job.
Click to expand...
OP says "Revenue is up", and nothing else matters to board members and shareholders unless he does something so bad that it's a PR nightmare.
 
After playing ff14 with a controller, I can't even look at WoW. Release WoW on a console with real controller support and you'd get those subscribers back
 
As a diehard Blizzard fan during the '90s and '00s I'd love to see it shut down completely. I imagine Hearthstone, WoW and Overwatch can keep it afloat for another decade though.
 
Foorbits said:
Why does Bobby have a job?

His decisions basically seem to be:
- Call of Duty
- Milk Blizzard fans

Unless I'm missing some big brain moves by the CEO literally anyone on this forum could do that same job.
Click to expand...

yes you are missing the part where he bought a company that was bankrupt 30 years ago and turned into a company with a 70B market cap and 8B in revenue. if anyone on this forum could do what we would have thousands of activision blizzards
 
Last edited:
Foorbits said:
Why does Bobby have a job?

His decisions basically seem to be:
- Call of Duty
- Milk Blizzard fans

Unless I'm missing some big brain moves by the CEO literally anyone on this forum could do that same job.
Click to expand...
CEO's don't just do "big brain moves", they have daily responsibilities and need to drive these "big brain movies" or decisions and ensure that the company not only accomplishes them but does so cost effectively.

Most people on this forum would make horrible CEOs, because they'd be too scared to lay people off , would focus money on non lucrative endeavors, would shift too many things for the benefit of the consumer, and/or just wouldn't have the skills to actually be any sort of manager.

The artful mincer said:
Great work there bobby! Really justifying your 200 million bonus!!
Click to expand...
Not that I think he should have got such such a large bonus. His bonus had nothing to do with blizzard's active players metric. Because having less players who already bought your game continue to potentially play your game for free isn't that interesting big picture. Revenue and stock of the overall company being up is.
 
It's often like this: you start as a small, aspiring video game developer who wants to make the greatest video games; you eventually succeed in doing so - everyone loves you. You are at the height of your creative power and popularity, make a lot of money. This leads to the developer becoming bigger and bigger. People convince you to hire all kinds of business and marketing people to help you grow further. You start worring more about the financial success of your product than the actual quality of it. This contaminates your creative power. These business and marketing people start influencing you so much that all your creative decisions have to allign with marketing trends. Your games get worse and worse and lose a lot of their soul (I mean, how else do you come up with the idea to introduce bright, flashy colors /lighting to, let's say, Diablo 3 for example). Marketing convices you that all your gaming IP's need to have the potential to always cater to the most people and, therefore, to the lowest common denominator (I mean, how else do you come up with the idea of turning a mainline Final Fantasy game into a 3rd person action game?).This influences your creative decisions badly. You further start watering down your once amazing gameplay experiences. People start noticing. People start hating you. You eventually use a good chunk of your fanbase.

Hideky Kamiya is probably right when he says there are two types of people in the gaming industry: Creators and business people.
 
Ask yourself what is Blizzards most successful game release since the Activision purchase? Ask yourself when that game was released. Now ask yourself what the current date is.

Blizzard used to take 10 years to churn out solid 10/10 experiences. They no longer take 10 years and they no longer deliver 10/10 experiences.

It what happens when you become a titan in the industry and want to cash out and enjoy your $$$. Blizzard isn't blizzard anymore and it never will be, just like Rockstar.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, HotS is kill and Warcraft 3 Reforged was bomba. Overwatch kinda lost its luster after people realized they prefer not having to be locked into class archetypes, plus it's easier to be an annoying shitter in a BR style game. Diablo 3 and SC2 have already withered. I guess it's down to WoW and HS.
 
jakinov said:
CEO's don't just do "big brain moves", they have daily responsibilities and need to drive these "big brain movies" or decisions and ensure that the company not only accomplishes them but does so cost effectively.

Most people on this forum would make horrible CEOs, because they'd be too scared to lay people off , would focus money on non lucrative endeavors, would shift too many things for the benefit of the consumer, and/or just wouldn't have the skills to actually be any sort of manager.


Not that I think he should have got such such a large bonus. His bonus had nothing to do with blizzard's active players metric. Because having less players who already bought your game continue to potentially play your game for free isn't that interesting big picture. Revenue and stock of the overall company being up is.
Click to expand...
I know lol it was a throw away comment. My general opinion is that a truly visionary ceo/company would be able to spot gaps in the market and fill them with new ips and grow there portfolio of games. Alternatively they could attempt to grow there franchises instead of immediately killing them. Call of duty itself took 4 attempts to be a mega hit. Today it wouldn't get a chance it's cut cut cut unless your a mega hit out the gate.( crash bandicoot RIP again)

Basically what Sony and Nintendo have done this gen

Activision seem completely incapable of moving beyond call of duty and their blizzard games.( I won't comment on their mobile games as I know very little about them)

I know at the end of the day the shareholders are happy ( although seriously not about Bobby's bonus) and they can sit cosy on the call of duty- blizzard cash cow but I would like to think they could move beyond that.
 
The artful mincer said:
I know lol it was a throw away comment. My general opinion is that a truly visionary ceo/company would be able to spot gaps in the market and fill them with new ips and grow there portfolio of games. Alternatively they could attempt to grow there franchises instead of immediately killing them. Call of duty itself took 4 attempts to be a mega hit. Today it wouldn't get a chance it's cut cut cut unless your a mega hit out the gate.( crash bandicoot RIP again)

Basically what Sony and Nintendo have done this gen

Activision seem completely incapable of moving beyond call of duty and their blizzard games.( I won't comment on their mobile games as I know very little about them)

I know at the end of the day the shareholders are happy ( although seriously not about Bobby's bonus) and they can sit cosy on the call of duty- blizzard cash cow but I would like to think they could move beyond that.
Click to expand...
The CEO goal isn't to create new IPs or to create large portfolio of games though. It's to increase the value of the company and help ensure it's future. Having a lot of games that sell okay isn't really desirable. Each new project introduces risk and the reward has to be worth it that they put up tens of millions of dollars up front to make it. The reward has to outweigh risk. It's why a lot of companies will spin-off/sell-off divisions that are profitable. They rather just make a profit on the sale and focus on more rewarding businesses than to allocate their finite funds into high risk low reward projects(investments). Activision seem more interested in capitalizing on trends with promising prospects than to find market "gaps" or to offer a big range of games. For example, there's RTS genre that isn't getting a lot of games made for it. It's not a very promising market and people aren't making a lot of those games. There's still money to be made if you can be good at it. But adding a few million to your bottom line after putting in the same amount of time/money/effort isn't as worthwhile as potentially adding hundreds of millions or even a billion to your bottom line by putting the money elsewhere. For someone who just loves making games or doesn't have a lot of money that's great. But for a big multi billion dollar company trying to double, triple in size, it's not worth the effort/money/risk.

Activision never really had that many franchises. They have a long history of just making licensed games. Sony creates new IPs but they also abandon IPs too. Nintendo doesn't really create new IPs and they don't really focus on all of them. There hasn't really been an Fzero game for a while, and I don't think you'll see another kid icarus game for a while. Sometimes your IPs aren't worth investing in anymore. Neither of them really just fill in gaps. If anything it seems like Microsoft does that a lot more considering they are creating such a wide range of games nowadays that aren't necessarily very popular genres. Sony gutting Japan Studio is probably an example of them being closer to Activision nowadays as the reasoning was that they weren't profitable enough.

With all that said, I do think they should take more risks though. They don't need to have a big list of games or fill in the gaps. But they should still try to find the next big thing. Either way what they are doing, seem to be working.
 
jakinov said:
The CEO goal isn't to create new IPs or to create large portfolio of games though. It's to increase the value of the company and help ensure it's future. Having a lot of games that sell okay isn't really desirable. Each new project introduces risk and the reward has to be worth it that they put up tens of millions of dollars up front to make it. The reward has to outweigh risk. It's why a lot of companies will spin-off/sell-off divisions that are profitable. They rather just make a profit on the sale and focus on more rewarding businesses than to allocate their finite funds into high risk low reward projects(investments). Activision seem more interested in capitalizing on trends with promising prospects than to find market "gaps" or to offer a big range of games. For example, there's RTS genre that isn't getting a lot of games made for it. It's not a very promising market and people aren't making a lot of those games. There's still money to be made if you can be good at it. But adding a few million to your bottom line after putting in the same amount of time/money/effort isn't as worthwhile as potentially adding hundreds of millions or even a billion to your bottom line by putting the money elsewhere. For someone who just loves making games or doesn't have a lot of money that's great. But for a big multi billion dollar company trying to double, triple in size, it's not worth the effort/money/risk.

Activision never really had that many franchises. They have a long history of just making licensed games. Sony creates new IPs but they also abandon IPs too. Nintendo doesn't really create new IPs and they don't really focus on all of them. There hasn't really been an Fzero game for a while, and I don't think you'll see another kid icarus game for a while. Sometimes your IPs aren't worth investing in anymore. Neither of them really just fill in gaps. If anything it seems like Microsoft does that a lot more considering they are creating such a wide range of games nowadays that aren't necessarily very popular genres. Sony gutting Japan Studio is probably an example of them being closer to Activision nowadays as the reasoning was that they weren't profitable enough.

With all that said, I do think they should take more risks though. They don't need to have a big list of games or fill in the gaps. But they should still try to find the next big thing. Either way what they are doing, seem to be working.
Click to expand...
Good post I think we're on the same page lol. Let me explain myself my better.

I don't think for a second they should start backing every indie project under the sun but they should be looking for next 10 million seller and then build from there

I don't think this is an unreasonable expectation Sony did it 4 times this generation with horizon, god of war, spiderman and ghost of tushumia (not yet but I believe it will). Ubisoft and Nintendo are similar I think they both have around 10 individual games selling 10 million + units from multiple franchises.

Nintendo doesn't make that many new ips but they do have multiple franchises selling millions of units.

Yes sometimes you want to stop backing an ip but its difficult to know when some series take years then have massive growth god of war and zelda are good examples this gen. Interestingly call of duty looked on shaky grounds midway through this generation until ww2.

Other companies like sony will close or restructure studios if that are not performing but they at least seem to give multiple chances. I am amazed they closed toys for bob after one crash game especially after the crazy success of the n'sane trilogy.

Gaps was the wrong terminology to use I don't necessarily mean genres I mean just backing the right games. E.g. there's a lack of big budget openworld shooters ( only far cry really)call of duty seems perfect to have a go at that. Another example is a triple A dinosaur game if done well would rake in millions. Obviously these games would be expensive, difficult and time consuming to make but isn't everything these days?

At some point your gonna have to take a risk or you will be stuck making call of duty forever lol.
 
Good. After the Hong Kong fiasco and killing their own games to push you to the newest one, I hope they destroy themselves.
 
If users are down and revenue up, it means mtx are off the charts and/or the culling of 11 million gamers were ones who contributed little to the mtx pot.

Internally, it's best to get rid of the cheap gamers as it frees up server space.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Blizzard only hires the best talent in the world these days
2 3 4
172
684
ssringo replied
The Witcher 3 released 10 years ago today
2 3
124
2K
GamesDontSuck replied
Killing Floor 3 Delayed, Players Will be refunded
News 
13
1K
simpatico replied
Rematch had 1M players in the first 24 hours
47
792
BlackTron replied
Assassin's Creed: Shadows reaches 3 million players
News Sales-Age  2 3 4 5 6
257
12K
RCX replied
Top Bottom