"68.7 billion, I didn't want to refuse, but he did give too much."
The 31-year-old "Dragon Slayer Boy" has been recruited, but he is destined not to be "Walker Wu Erlang", and may become "Hu Baoyi Song Sanlang".
Blizzard "Fuyang", Microsoft "Big Green" (data source Futu Niu)
Later in Beijing on January 18, news came from the United States across the ocean that Microsoft would buy Activision Blizzard for $95 per share, with a total transaction value of $68.7 billion, and then let Activision Blizzard's stock surge by 37% before the market. Microsoft, on the other hand, fell 35 percent after the opening of the next day. In the same time, China, as the largest market in the "post-Blizzard" era, rushed to the sixth place in the hot search list on Weibo, with a peak popularity of 2000W, and fell to the twenty-seventh place the next morning. Through this set of data, we can see that the stock prices of the two companies have formed a sharp contrast, which is naturally a big positive news for the shareholders of Activision Blizzard, and in the eyes of Microsoft shareholders, this may be just another "money throwing" behavior of the company. The degree of discussion in China also supports this reason, in short, Activision Blizzard, or the former Blizzard, is cold.
The popularity of related domestic Weibo topics
As the largest transaction in the history of game acquisitions, the $68.7 billion acquisition is equivalent to the market value of domestic game company NetEase, which is about one-fifth of the domestic output value of 300 billion yuan in 2021. In China, it is only limited to a small number of people to pay attention and discuss, compared with the last 2019 rumor that "due to the Blizzard falling too hard, Disney intends to acquire Activision Blizzard" (this is another story), everyone's participation is much lower. But what can be seen is that Blizzard has been "swinging" for too long and too long.
Once lying down, you can earn the money in your pocket
There are too many works about Blizzard's place and influence in the history of gaming, as well as the widely discussed works, so we will not introduce them here. But about the activision Blizzard in the past two years of "rotten" content, compared to a lot less, let's take a look at how Blizzard has gradually lost its former aura and become a "street rat that everyone is too lazy to pay attention to".
Activision Blizzard
Everything began in 2007, Blizzard parent company Davidson & Associates acquired Activision (Activision), the two companies merged to form Activision Blizzard, in the process of internal capital game, Blizzard's original creative team lost autonomy, and even directly led to the postponement of the release of "Diablo 3", and the next few consecutive years of member changes also made the Activision Blizzard "Ship of Theseus" gradually begin to sink.
In terms of products, as a game company with creativity as the core, Blizzard did not have a big work in the next three years, and "World of Warcraft" was updated step by step, and I couldn't make up anything else. "StarCraft 2" was launched in 2011, and "Diablo 3" was released in 2012, that is to say, in the past five years, Blizzard has begun to show innovation fatigue, and no new forms of game products have been launched, but because the game "World of Warcraft" has maintained a high quality in that era of game barrenness, the industry has not seen that Blizzard has begun to decline.
Activision Blizzard New Product Launch Overview (Information from the Internet)
In the next five years, now the heat has passed, the word-of-mouth "Hearthstone" was released in 2014, the "Swing Pioneer" release time was in 2016, you said that there are still "StarCraft 2" and "Heroes of the Storm" Sorry, there are not many people playing, Blizzard will also feel ashamed, do not mention it, at this time Activision Blizzard was established for ten years, can not say nothing, but also did not achieve. For the game of "post-Blizzard years in recent years", we can refer to the above figure, we can see that although it is one per year, it is a sequel to the classic IP. The "Overwatch 2" in the table has been skipping tickets indefinitely so far, and "Destiny 2" is due to seeing the influence of the original generation of the work, as an operation involved, that is to say, Activision Blizzard began to try to turn its business content to the operator is nothing more than a creator, before Blizzard has also carried out acquisitions and interventions in other companies or products, and the effect is not too obvious. As a result, various reset versions have also been put on the agenda, becoming a sharp weapon for a new round of cutting leeks.
But in fact, during this time of Activision Blizzard, the company's operation is still no problem, although it has been scolded, but there is still a steady stream of feelings players to pay, Activision Blizzard is also very clear that it can lie down and eat the old book, sell IP authorization, do movies, is no longer working the game.
"Look at that old dog, it's like Blizzard and Tyrannosaurus"
In these fifteen years, Blizzard continues to "feed", its core players are still "willing as a glutton", even if "World of Warcraft" and "World of Warcraft Nostalgia" have become the place where the studio collects money, they are still like masochistic ascetics, guarding the magic city where Blizzard's foundation has been hollowed out, fantasizing that it can one day still bring cross-era significance to the work, but unconsciously, these core players are aging, livelihood, family has become a challenge in the new stage, and the "copy" of life is much more difficult than the game. Therefore, everyone can't afford Blizzard, the company that has always been "sworn to be the player's father", and has voted with its feet.
"World of Warcraft" has had an extraordinary influence in China (image source from the Internet)
On the other hand, the new generation of players, under the influence of ACT and MOBA games, have no natural interest in traditional RPG games, which also makes Blizzard users lose their influence on the industry. On the other hand, due to the continuous improvement of mobile phone performance, Chinese game manufacturers have gradually found their own profit models in mobile games, and the banknotes in players' pockets have flowed to more game types. Blizzard's players have become an island in the game industry, and some people have a hard time feeling the joy of new games, constantly reminiscing about the glory of the past, and gradually being marginalized. Some people choose other platforms or genres to restart their adventures. These people may have completely left the soil of the game they once loved and found that "now full" can also be really fragrant.
From a slump to a complete mess
And Activision Blizzard seems to be unable to see these players who once loved it, still in a constant mess, perhaps starting from the acquisition of mobile game companies, or perhaps announcing the beginning of the mobile game business on the agenda, Blizzard will be stagnant due to various external reasons, still arrogantly think that every time they think that the decision is correct, and even in the "World of Warcraft" and "Diablo 3" again and again riot operations, the purpose is not Krypton, but boiling, it does not want players to explode, it wants to survive these players, daily life is still its lifeblood, Can't be lost.
Former Blizzard CEO Mike Mohammed (image source from the network)
Perhaps the game shines into reality, and the activision Blizzard backyard fire is just a lack of an opportunity. In 2018, on the day of the expiration of his five-year term, Mike Mohammi was forced away by the security guards guarding the office door, and the middle-aged gamer who single-handedly created Blizzard has since left the company he has founded for 27 years, and the loneliness and doubts can be imagined (but he turned around and opened a new company, Dreamhaven, and also attracted Blizzard's creative director, software engineers and other R&D personnel).
Extranet statistics Blizzard departed core members (image source from the network)
In the years that followed, Activision Blizzard's key division leaders changed almost all of them, which also led to the postponement of overselling the release of Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4, with Activision Blizzard's net revenue in the third quarter of this year of $2.070 billion in November 2021, up from $1.954 billion in the same period last year, and a net profit of $639 million, up 6% from $604 million in the same period last year. If it is an ordinary game company, having such an achievement is enough to wait for the New Year, but for Activision Blizzard, the gap between the annual profit and the outside world's expectations is too large, coupled with the loss of investor confidence caused by the departure of the company's executives, Activision Blizzard's stock price plummeted by 14.06%.
Activision Blizzard 2021 third quarter financial report (image source from the network)
It was also during this time that Blizzard's monthly active data in the third quarter of 2021 still maintained a downward trend, compared with 30 million in the third quarter of last year, down 13% year-on-year, and the new "cold rice" "Diablo 2: Remake" did not avoid the overall downward trend. In addition, the poor operation ability and poor plot shown by "World of Warcraft" in the formal service or the nostalgic suit have been criticized by users, which directly leads to many foreign players choosing to give up.
Blizzard's statement on sexual harassment and discrimination (source from the Internet)
These may be the legacy of Blizzard's failure to navigate changes in the external market, but the series of scandals about Blizzard that followed made the company a "model" that the whole industry despised. On July 20, 2021, the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a lawsuit against game developer Activision Blizzard, which includes allegations of sexual harassment and inequality within the company's offices. The lawsuit alleges that the company engages in what it calls a "fraternity culture" that emphasizes men's rights. It was then revealed that Alex Afrashaby and Jesse McRae were officially fired from Blizzard for sexually harassing female employees of Blizzard for their involvement in the infamous "Cosby Suite." This was followed by the Wall Street Journal's summary of the revelations, which have received more than 700 complaints of gender discrimination since July last year, firing 37 employees and punishing 44 others. That is to say, the individual events originally thought by the outside world are actually the "underlying logic" of Blizzard, which once wanted to hide the sky and the sea to cover up the past, but its ugliness was finally completely exposed in the sun.
"Overwatch" Korean player insults China incident (image source from the Internet)
Another thing is about the "Overwatch" Korean players insulting China, China has always been the main market of "Overwatch", the core audience of the world-class game of "Overwatch" is also a Chinese player, because the Korean players continue to broadcast live in their own country after the end of cooperation with the Chinese live broadcasting platform, they do not shy away from publicly saying "just to make Chinese money", the insults and yin and yang and yin of the Chinese market and players are chilling. After that, Chinese players reported to the organizers and demanded severe punishment, and the Chinese teams also expressed their condemnation attitude, but what they did not expect was that the organizers of the Overwatch League actually put pressure on the Chinese teams in order to prevent the fermentation of the incident, and banned users and team members on china's live broadcast platform. Domestic players have said: "The world does not need Overwatch, nor does it need Blizzard." With internal and external troubles, Blizzard saw almost no hope.
Routine operation, only this time the acquisition is a game company that you are familiar with
So at this point in time, Microsoft came just in time. It became the "savior" of Activision Blizzard. In Microsoft's view, Activision Blizzard has an organizational structure that Microsoft needs to complete the most, including 11 game studios and 5 development groups, as well as the previous acquisition of king, the developer responsible for developing mobile games, Microsoft's game development department has suddenly expanded to 40 game studios, covering all mainstream game categories. That's a fraction of the $68.7 billion Microsoft has invested in games.
Some of Microsoft's game studios (image source from the Internet)
Many people will speculate about the purpose of Microsoft's acquisition of Blizzard, and worry about whether Blizzard will be completely reduced to mediocrity under Microsoft's influence in the future. But in fact, for Microsoft, acquiring a game company every year has become "the norm". With the acquisition of Minecraft developer Mojang in 2014, InXile Entertainment (Red Dead Ranger 2) and Obsidian Entertainment (The Fallout series) in 2018, some companies may have been acquired by Microsoft when players came into contact with their titles, and the list of game companies acquired since 1999 is numerous. So Microsoft's acquisition of the game company, in fact, there is not much intention, do not have to pull on the meta-universe, into the mobile game such strategic goals, this time the acquisition of Activision Blizzard, for Microsoft is just a very cheap and cost-effective business, by others to buy it is better to buy it yourself, can not play the restructuring and rectification, and then sell it, this wave does not lose.
For Activision Blizzard, it should also recognize that it is just a plaything at the mercy of capital, and it probably can no longer continue to be comfortable with "swinging".