Lets break down your argument, my response in brackets.

You are free to shop anywhere you want. But grocery stores are not required to carry products that you want to buy, and companies are free to sign exclusive deals to sell products only in certain stores.

Epic isn’t a subsidiary of Tencent. Tim Sweeney still owns the controlling interest in the company. Tencent also owns a portion of Activision, Ubisoft, Frontier, and Obsidian. So if your friends want to be consistent they will also have to avoid those as well.

I love how suddenly a ton of people think that Steam’s friend list is some pinnacle of modern software engineering when the reality is that it fucking sucks.

I should be free to choose where I want to buy something same way your free to choose where you shop for groceries it’s a grossly simple concept.

I’ve tried. They bitch and moan about friends lists, or other features of steam they think are important. And i’m over here, like you, wondering what the big deal is.

We don’t have anything other than highly vested participants’ takes on this option.

They made a terrible mistake and made promises they couldn’t keep, but it appears they’ve delivered on almost every single line item and then some. Yes, it took 2+ years of free updates, but this is a shining example of making it right. 

Needs MOR VIP.

Profits are not the only measure of success. Something we’ve completely forgotten.

I suppose they could save money by getting rid of customer support, the payroll department, janitorial staff, and the company website.

What’s your industry? I run a project management / technology consulting firm that provides service to many successful companies, none of which are “ruthless”.

That is a fair point and it is a better situation than the Telltale “By the way our company is screwed and you are too” ending. I just don’t think it’s a good look to talk about your record profits in a press release confirming all of those layoffs.

The problem is that this action takes a giant dump on morale and damages Blizzard’s reputation as a legendary developer/publisher. That’s not going to help them make more long-term.

This is the end-result of late stage capitalism.  You are accountable only to investors, and no one else.  Profit is meaningless if there isn’t growth; you can make 1 billion dollars one year, and the next year make 990 million, and instead of people being happy you made a ton of money, they instead accuse you of…

Activision’s net income for 2017 was $273 million. The pay of the executives above (not including the chairman of the board) was $81.2 million, nearly a third of the company’s profits. One third of company profits went to paying seven people. That is absurd.

As a business owner, I’d like to remind you that it’s not just that you make money — you have to be profitable, after all — but how you make money.

2018 Compensation of Top Activision Executives:

I worked there at the moment they 86'd the Employee Stock Purchase Plan. So back in 2008 they made it even harder for rank and file employees to buy stock.

Man, this past weekend must have been hell for people working at Activision, knowing that you might be sacked in a few days. What an awful situation, especially since if this was Nintendo, the upper management would have taken a pay cut instead.