ActiBlizz is deeply indebted to the Chinese government. Back in 2013 when CEO Bobby Kotick (the living embodiment of the totally amoral asshole CEO who doesn’t give a single shit what his company actually does as long as it makes money) was trying to buy the shares back from Vivendi, the Chinese goverment, in the form of Tencent, helped him out immensely.
They’ve since lowered their investment, so they own only 5% of ActiBlizz, but the Chinese govt still owns 1/20 of ActiBlizz, and Kotick still owes them a huge favor. In addition, all their very lucrative Chinese publishing is done by Netease, another arm of the Chinese government, so they are pretty much required to lick Xi Jinping’s ass lovingly whenever it is presented to them.
Here, here. Our predominant economic theory is that “growth is the only measure of success.” Instead, how about “our company makes enough money to pay the bills and we have happy customers.” I consider that success, as would anyone else. But the rich folks who get their income from stocks and bonds HATE that measurement. And we’ve had forty plus years of stating that growth is the only good measure. Hence all the current stories about how “millennials aren’t buying anything and profits are going flat, those bastards need to shop more!”
It would be difficult to enforce, but putting an end to profit based bonuses could help cool things down a bit. Maybe bonuses could be earned for sticking to a sustainable trend line.
Blizzard may be able to afford it, but you can use the same method to take down anyone you don’t like.
Back during the infamous “Climategate” affair there was a similar attack on Hadley research center where people were urged to request random data using FOI to ensure the scientiests would be so busy filling in those requests they could do no research.
Yeah, but that only worked for about a minute. They stopped responding to the flood, the review of what happened eventually cleared them from having stopped, and eventually the rules on FOI were changed I believe (been too long, I should probably go back and re-read some of the outcomes of that). Same will happen here. It’ll send a message to Blizzard though, until the EU adapts the rules to save corporations.
I make the mental distinction of course between “scientists doing research for the public good, versus corporations propping up authoritarians for their profits,” but your point is well taken. One person’s “good guy” is another person’s “black hat.”
It’s European law. Every citizen of the EU has the right to request ALL data a company has saved about them and an explanation why it is needed. Not complying costs a hefty fine which grows with every case of noncompliance. If you want to know if these laws are enforced, you may want to ask for example Facebook or Microsoft. Each of them already had to pay several hundred millions in fines for not complying to different, basic European data protection laws.
It is interesting to see just how effective the Chinese Communist Party has gotten at using economic pressure to pursue their pan-Han nationalist agenda.
But this is kind of my point. Laws aren’t self-enforcing, and the more seriously they’re taken by the enforcement bodies, the less likely something like this is to work. There will be plenty of EU bureaucrats with the discretion to waive or suspend that 30-day deadline, because where the GDPR is concerned, the EU’s interest is in promoting transparency in data collection, not punishing a company that took a stance that was unpopular with its clients but not inherently illegal.
You know what REALLY sucks? Having your life messed up because of the greed of a bunch of soulless cowards.
As for Blizzard being “slaves”, they knew the job was dangerous when they took it. They can eat a bowl of you know what.
Yeah, though it’s essentially a licensed game, made by a Chinese “partner” company, specifically for the Chinese market, though released everywhere to expand their offerings to phone gamers. Blizzard are clearly trying to cultivate the Chinese market, but that’s also clearly not one of their strengths. I was wondering if they had been investing more in China, but it doesn’t seem to be the case - besides a few token efforts (panda-people in WoW!), it looks like they’re just offloading the effort onto other companies.
The irony is that is really how Blizzard got so big in the first place. (Along with a lot of other famous game studios.) I know people who worked there in the early days, and they credit the company’s success to the fact that their corporate owners basically ignored them. They were able to just make the games they wanted to make, looking to maximize quality and their own satisfaction rather than profit. (Which made them quite profitable, coincidentally, despite having wasted a lot of money on making games they deemed not good enough for release.) Now that they’re part of a larger corporate structure looking to maximize profits, they’re losing their luster among gamers.
Firstly, it would have been helpful if the author of the article gave accurate information. Don’t u just hate it when someone passes themselves off as some sort of subject expert but they know feck all? Based on the info in the article the requests will all be rejected or at least sent back for more information.
In a company like this it will take them about 10 seconds to process each request. All the data will be processed for the same reason, shared with the same people, blah blah blah. So they will most likely already have a template with this in it and only need to add your name. Or, if they are really smart they will just send you a link to their privacy notice, you know the one u accepted when u signed up with them, telling u the information is all there. Totally pointless exercise in a company like this. Only of use where the organisation might be processing your data for lots of different reasons, ie. a Local Council, and doesn’t have a co/ordinated approach to managing data.
it’s a little off topic with games, but you can invest in green stocks and the like. so basically, there are investor groups where ethics pay - it’s just our computer driven extract every penny wall street culture is the norm, rather than the other.
