There's a handful of devs i like/trust to a high degree even now.

That include Platinum (when they are allowed to work on a good game), Vanillaware, SuperGiant, Arcen, Tomorrow Corporation, Level up Labs, DragonDyne, and Zachtronics.



Says a lot when it doesn't include Blizzard, EA, Nintendo, SquareEnix, Ubisoft, Bethesda, or any other large companies.

Just a correction: Splinter Cell and Rainbow Six are both available on Gog. No need for online activation or the use of Galaxy.
+1
I have no desire for instant communication. Telephonics require an immediate response, whereas the medium of electronic mail (and applications like a discussion forum) are half-duplex by nature, whilst still retaining modal focus (only one voice at a time).

I almost exclusively use my (non-smart) mobile cellular telephone for sending and receiving Short Message Service texts. I still remember perfecting the art of using every character to fit a complex message within one billable packet, without using (millennial) abbreviations. (But emoticons — text strings— are okay, of course. ^_^ :)

Unsurprisingly, I recognize almost every one of those, except DragonDyne. They apparently developed/published a table top game, Neverwhen?

Correct. Not every dev has to be a video game developer afterall.

I loved the campaign setup/configuration that opens up 3.5/Pathfinder/4th to multiple worlds, levels of technology levels and other things. Too bad i only got to play it at the conventions as i couldn't find a group in our area...

I completely gave up on "AAA" publishers near the end of 2014 and so far haven't found anything to prove myself wrong. Right now, none of the megapublishers represent my interests. Here's a list of them and their problems.

EA: Mandatory Origin client (known for privacy issues, see the Wikipedia article on Origin) on all games after 2010-2011.Denuvo on all major games after early 2014. Horribly mismanaged one of my favorite sci-fi franchises (Mass Effect) into the ground, ruining it with Andromeda and then completely scrapping the franchise in favor of always-online Anthem.

Ubisoft: Mandatory uPlay on everything. History of hostility against PC gamers and bad console ports that run like crap on PC.

Squeenix: Denuvo on all games after early 2014. Thoroughly ruined the Deus Ex franchise with microtransaction and Denuvo-ridden "Mankind Divided", from which I predict they will sit on the IP rights and the franchise will never recover.

Bethesda: Used to be good until greed took them over starting with paid mods and everything went straight downhill from there with no sign of reversal. See https://www.gog.com/forum/general/is_bethesda_floundering_and_failing/page1 for further reading.

Activision Blizzard: They've spent the last year self-immolating and thoroughly torching their credibility to the ground. Failed to innovate, obvious pivoting to mobile. Even WoW has many mobile paradigms in it now such as dumbed-down "simplified" skills and talents plus the garrison system. Don't need to go into detail as this topic is already dedicated to showcasing their unending spectacular failures.

Nintendo: Horrible habit of abusing copyright law to bully people and obliterate the classics. A few years ago there was an uproar when Nintendo used copyright takedowns to remove "Let's Play" (impression) videos of people playing Nintendo games (see https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/nintendo-kicks-lets-play-videos-off-youtube-then-slaps-ads-on-them/ ). Fails to innovate, instead preferring to milk the same few franchises again and again. Also, Nintendo generally doesn't make their games available on laptop/desktop platforms. As someone who near-exclusively uses laptop/desktop platforms for video gaming, it's safe to say I have no interest in Nintendo games whatsoever and probably won't in the foreseeable future.

All the major publishers in China: Hell no. Beijing is increasingly using its biggest companies as fronts to advance their Communist Party agenda (see https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-pushes-for-a-direct-hand-in-chinas-big-tech-firms-1507758314 ). In June 2017, Beijing declared that all Chinese companies "must collaborate in harvesting intelligence" (see https://nypost.com/2018/12/22/how-arrest-of-chinese-princess-exposes-regimes-world-domination-plot/ ).

All the major Korean publishers: Low-quality pay2win MMO knockoffs with terrible rigged gacha. No.
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Looking through my Steam purchase history, the only newer games I buy anymore are from indies and medium-sized developers. The only "AAA" big-budget game I purchased recently is Destiny 2: Forsaken (after receiving the base game for free as part of a promotional event). It was fun for a few months before the devs decided to nerf everything and generally make the game unrewarding if you don't PvP (which you shouldn't considering Destiny 2 is a contender for "Worst PvP in the genre"). Bungie's going on my "don't buy" list if they don't turn this trend around quickly.

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More news from Activision Blizzard:

GameSpot: Activision Blizzard stock slides after reports of layoffs
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/activision-blizzard-stock-price-falls-after-report/1100-6464937/

Layoffs and general cost-cutting are a dangerous way for a company to pad its bottom line (revenue minus costs). In certain cases (such as this), investors might view it as a sign that the company is generally failing - and punish the stock price anyway despite the cost-cutting producing a short-term rise in the bottom line.


Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for Activision...

EA throws a curveball: New "Apex Legends" battle royale could sideline latest "Call of Duty" battle royale mode and eat whatever's left of Activision's lunch
https://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2019/02/12/after-apex-legends-the-next-call-of-duty-battle-royale-needs-to-be-free-to-play/

More details: Apex Legends just made all of Activision Blizzard's current problems even worse; introduces class-based, team-based battle royale that analysts say Overwatch should have done first
https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2019/02/12/apex-legends-just-made-all-activision-blizzards-current-problems-even-worse/

EA stock jumps after Apex Legends gets very positive reception; could grow into a credible competitor to Fortnite
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/ea-stock-jumps-after-company-says-apex-legends-hit-10-million-players-in-first-three-days-2019-02-08

Am I the only one who desires Snail Mail?
Sorry, but this is objectively False.

Not to drone on as a Nintendo fanboy but the Wii, DS/3DS, Wii U and Switch, amiibos are most certainly innovations. As to franchises? Splatoon directly by Nintendo and other games like Wonderful 101, are new ips. They're not abundant as they were in the past, but they're not dead.

No. :) I like to send and receive hand-written letters.

Snail mail (sMail?) is important for legal documents, too, and all my logistics have receipt confirmation technology (signature on delivery, usually).

So you'd rather have e.g. a 3x installation limit like some Securom, than a client that just functions as an offline launcher?
Sure... whatever floats your boat! (put some Starforce in it!)

A tale of greed and stupidity: Despite record revenue for fiscal year 2018, Activision Blizzard lays off 8% of its staff; throws classic and critically acclaimed franchises under the bus in favor of the mobile-microtransaction swamp
https://www.polygon.com/2019/2/12/18222096/blizzard-layoffs-february-2019

Activision Blizzard laying off ~800 people in "non-development roles" while pledging to scale up development positions. Stupid move. Non-developers are important too. Running a major video game publishing-developing company with a bad shortage of non-developer support staff makes no more sense than running a WoW raid group on current content with only 1 tank and 1 healer (spoiler: it doesn't work). Having all the developers on the continent doesn't mean diddly-squat if you have no marketing, IT, or customer support.

Interestingly enough, president and chief operating officer Collister “Coddy” Johnson reported "weaker than anticipated retail demand" (doesn't take a genius to figure out why), admitting the company wouldn't "improve retail monetization as quickly as we liked" - a reference to general slowdown in microtransaction sales, mainly Overwatch cosmetic boxes and Hearthstone cards. About time. Microtransactions are largely a ripoff - historically, every game with non-cosmetic microtransactions objectively produces a worse experience compared to something similar with one-time payment or subscription fee.

CFO Dennis Durkin says Blizzard doesn't have a major "frontline" release planned for fiscal year 2019. Blizzard's taking the blame for lower income and revised guidance for the upcoming year. I don't know how Blizzard manages to screw up so badly. They're sitting on a gold mine of franchises and intellectual property. They have StarCraft, World of Warcraft, Diablo II, and Overwatch - and fumble incompetently anyway. What you're seeing is a company starting to go the way of Venezuela, having massive resources waiting to be tapped and used - and instead they're stuck largely doing nothing due to massive managerial incompetence while the underlings flee for cover.

Activision anticipates its revenues to remain “flat,” leaving the company to redirect efforts to the Call of Duty franchise. There's a new Call of Duty entry scheduled later this fiscal year, plus a mobile spinoff from Tencent. Activision Blizzard is making a financially dangerous maneuver - throwing their traditional customer base under the bus to favor something of dubious value - the mobile games market. I recently read an article warning that gacha (lootbox) games are plateauing because people with large amounts of time and money invested in their favorites refuse to make the same investment in the next gacha, and the next one after that.

Mobile is the swamp of video gaming, thoroughly polluted with toxic business practices and trash including: "energy timers" that limit how much you can play a game before having to use premium items and refill it, manipulative/crooked/dishonest RNG (spanning in-game drops, premium "gacha", and even stacking competitive games against the player) designed to trick the end-user into paying the maximum possible, too little content, shovelware/"game-like objects", brain-dead oversimplified game mechanics (or lack thereof), lootboxes for characters/equipment that you need to progress, frivolous internet connection requirements for single-player games.

Instead of further investing in classic, well-loved franchises, Blizzard decided to disappoint their fans with a giant nothing-burger for the year, preferring instead to jump into the mobile swamp with the Chinese mobile game rogues' gallery - Abusive-Microtransactions NetEase and Beijing-owned Tencent. Classic Blizzard franchises (StarCraft, WarCraft, and Diablo) would arguably be better off if THQ Nordic would buy the IP rights and do something productive with them.

As Blizzard infamously asked: "Do you guys not have phones?"
to which I would reply: "I have a phone, and your crap won't be on it."

Articles are great and all, but you don't need to copy them verbatim.

Did they ever deliver on WoW Classic?

At this point they're not sure when Classic will release, and the Warcraft 3 remaster, is scheduled to release "By 12/31/2019" but if they're saying no frontline releases, that means either they don't consider the remaster a "Frontline" release, or it's not coming till 2020.

Blizzard is too fat for its own good. It's got some of the best IP's and some of the best resources to make games in the business, but they forced out Mike Morhaime and now the new president of the company is steering them to mobile country.

I really don't see this ending well for them. I've seem many, many reports across various corners of the internet that China is *not* excited about Diablo: Immortal because NetEase is referred to among the Chinese as "The Pig Farm" because of its shady practices and how it relies on whales to fund itself.

This is the beginning of their partnership with NetEase, and the new president of Blizzard was quoted as saying he wants to transition every IP of Blizzard to the mobile gaming platform. Yuck.

He's pissing all over us, and good ol' Bobby is stepping in because he almost single handedly killed Blizzard since taking over because of this push to mobile. Bobby is forcing Blizzard to develop more pc and console games, hence the push at hiring more devs, though some of those devs are for mobile projects.

When you screw up making money running a company like Blizzard, that has to feel like a special kind of failure. All Morhaime had to do was occasionally guide people and let his stars be stars. I really feel bad for the guy because his company was basically ripped from him and now the new guys are just fucking it up without lube left and right.

EDIT: The best part is Acti-Blizz recorded RECORD PROFITS AND STILL LAID OFF 800 PEOPLE.

They seem to be firing important people in some areas. This could end very badly.

Thoughts from ThePylonShow on the current Blizzard News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sbu7pqk1QO0

I would guess that this is the end, the last trace of the Blizzard most of us loved is being led to slaughter by the suits. I'm saying this even though I have a phone.

Ah, politics.

You complaint reveals your cognitive projection — that of a competent management process for the company — which seems to be a mistake.

Just because a company has been successful enough to grow to be a market leader doesn't mean it has a healthy culture. Or that it can't be infected with greed once it has reached a pinnacle.

I remember a friend who worked at Xerox in the eighties; he would regale us with stories of the internecine fighting between middle managers in their silos of control, each trying to undercut others to get ahead in the corporation. Basically (in the long run) cutting off their own (corporate) nose to spite their face, but not a problem if the manager/s jump ship before the ramifications hurt the business.

So, they pump up themselves and their teams, whilst kneecapping any other teams, and then bail out before the mess explodes, after (theoretically) boosting personal performance enough to gain a better position at a different company (e.g., a competitor).

Maybe someone will clean house before that happens, retcon the corporate culture and re-focus on customers that have a proven income stream, but it sounds like the board has convinced themselves they have a new unbeatable strategy. Politics over pragmatism. Wait for the implosion …

...and for THQ Nordic to scoop them up and release all their classic games here.