The title is not there to get your attention alone. I truly think that Activision Blizzard being acquired by Microsoft (assuming the deal goes through) is a good thing for the average gamer who plays or even has a slight interest in any of the affected games. I am normally extremely against the seemingly continuous consolidation of the games industry, but this is a special case. To bring it in perspective, there are only a handful of companies that own almost every major game studio. These include Tencent, Microsoft, Sony, Take-Two, Riot Games (which is partially owned by Tencent). That’s right, the previous five studios own basically every AAA game and most “indie” games that are being made. I only really threw in Riot as a saving grace because they are the only studio on the list that isn’t a giant conglomerate or owned by one.
The obvious reaction to my opening statement is a resounding “why?!”. The “why” is focused on two main points. The first is that Activision Blizzard has become an ethical pariah in the games industry in every sense of the phrase. Wrought with sexual harassment claims and employees coming out constantly with a new horror story from working at Activision Blizzard. It had become clear over the last year or so that there was not going to be any change in the executive leadership regardless of how many times the employees walked out or how much bad press was created. The board is not going to push out leadership that is making shareholders copious amounts of money, as is the case with any publicly traded company.
The second point is admittedly due to some of my personal bias from growing up with Blizzard games specifically. The biggest fear that many players have when their favorite game studio is vacuumed up by one of these mega-companies is that their games will get worse or they will lose their identity. Well…that’s not much of a problem with this acquisition (at least from the Blizzard and CoD sides) because every Blizzard game and the monolith that is Call of Duty are in the WORST state they have been in pretty much ever. Starcraft is barely hanging on despite being the only competitive RTS with an audience in the last half a decade. World of Warcraft is more content starved than they have ever been, which is really saying something if you remember a few expansions back. Heroes of the Storm is still alive, barely, but it is in no worse of a state than it was since they stopped supporting it (yes I see the irony in that statement). Diablo has faired a bit better than the other games, probably because it can be a single-player experience and the only real competition in the genre is a game that caters to hardcore players more than anything else. That being said, Diablo 4 has been delayed. Even though it didn’t have a release date yet.
Finally, we get to Overwatch, the chosen one from Blizzard is now a shell of its former self. They took the most popular FPS game in the world and decided to stop delivering any content to it for multiple years in favor of creating Overwatch 2. That combined with the absolutely pathetic handling of the Overwatch League (OWL) has put Overwatch on life support. To put it into perspective, Heroes of the Storm has had more characters added in the last 18 months than Overwatch. That’s right the game that Blizzard basically pretends doesn’t exist and has devs working out of what I can only assume is a small room under the stairs has had more content.
Since I mentioned Call of Duty earlier I did want to give a special shout-out to how bad the newest iteration is. While I am not as familiar with CoD as I am with the suite of Blizzard games, I am acutely aware of the state of the game through my network. If it weren’t for Warzone, I’m not sure CoD would have half the audience it currently does. Based on what I have heard and witnessed Vanguard is an enormous step back in the franchise from every competitive level of the game. The system that CoD has run on where the player loses all of their progress every year to buy what is little more than a $60 expansion is weighing on the audience. Relearning huge portions of the game is weighing on any competitive player from amateur to pro. Talking about pro play, the Call of Duty League (CDL) is not necessarily growing the way that was promised. Changes are made to CDL that go directly against what fans and teams prefer.
Blizzard has a very unique place in my journey as someone who really enjoys video games. The first PC games I played were Starcraft Brood War and Diablo 2. I remember being a kid playing all of the player-made maps on Starcraft because I didn’t have the knowledge to play an actual match. My time playing Diablo 2 is what I attribute to my love of arpgs to this day. When I was a bit older my friend group all got into World of Warcraft during Wrath of the Lich King. We would come home from high school and immediately start prepping for raid night. We were never that good but it was where I learned the importance of teamwork in games.
Heroes of the Storm is where I took my enjoyment of previously made MOBAs like League of Legends, Dota, and Heroes of Newerth and buckled down to play on a semi-pro team for a short period of time. Of course, Blizzard infamously killed the professional scene with no warning. Strike one for me. Then during grad school, I became the manager for two collegiate Overwatch teams at my university. This is what brought me into the business side of esports and catapulted me into my day job. Since I left the Overwatch scene Blizzard has mismanaged the game so badly no one even considers it a competitive contender to other FPS’s. Strike two from me. The final straw that made me not play Blizzard games or support them was the sexual harassment and employee abuse claims that arose in the last year as I mentioned earlier.
Microsoft has the potential to take out the diseased core that has turned Blizzard from a bastion of gaming to a joke in the industry. This sale also shows that if studio leadership ignores ethical complaints they will be blackballed in the industry and have the one thing they can’t buy taken away, a legacy. That is why I see this as a good acquisition for the players and the industry.
