Their product lineup is arguably in the worst state it’s ever been in, the state of California is against them, the public is against them, their employees are against them, and now their investors are against them.

The scope doesn’t have to be that vast, ruthless capitalist bullshit means any loss of efficiency is seen as a massive deal to the shitheads pulling the strings. Check out how much effort Disney is making to not give ScarJo a relatively paltry amount: it’s not about making money, it’s about making ALL the money.

Ah, there’s the other shoe dropping. Blizzard was able to bury employee harassment lawsuits with its arbitration agreement, but it’s a lot harder to distract shareholders losing their money. 

Writers all over Gizmodo’s website have spent more than 2 years saying they have no control over the number of ads or where they are placed on the page (nor how broken kinja is). With that end mind, I doubt they have any influence over what gets advertised beyond “theinventory.com” and all other ads are probably just…

That’s likely not up to anyone writing or editing these articles.

Oh there is a ton of xenophobia directed a China whenever there is economic competition against “the west” in any way. But that said, large corporations like Tencent do seem to have a rather incestuous relationship with the government. Not as much as Russia’s large oil companies, but then again Russia has a much more…

All Jeff did was get out before the shit hit the fan.

When’s the last time a government existed that didn’t have any court intrigue or a “Minister of X” trying to advance by sabotaging a “Minster of Y”?

Jeff? The guy whose EQ name was Tigole Bitties? (as in Big Ole Titties), that Jeff? The Jeff that is best buddies with Afrasiabi, that basically ran the infamous FoH guild in EQ with Afrasiabi?

The answer to that is the ingenious concept of “pretending it didn’t happen and disappearing anyone who points it out.”

Back in 2014, for example, the Chinese Ministry of Education blamed “weaker” college students on video games

Maybe that’s the thing that will make the cowards at Blizz value free speech over profits. If they are content to be bossed around by China’s arbitrary whims, it’s only fitting that said whims tank their profit margins there

Kaplan fucked off right before this blew up. We probably shouldn’t trust him either.

who, this guy?

Yep.. Stepping down and probably has enough money to never ever need to work again while living extravagantly.

Shit, forgot my tiniest fiddle to play a sad ditty for this dude. Guess he’ll have to fuck off in silence.

Damn, based on that picture I expected something like “He’s stepping down to spend more time on his hobbies, collecting swords and hitting on high schoolers in the local bowling alley parking lot."

Remember, Brack did run in the same EQ social circles as Afrasiabi and Kaplan -- it’s hard not to imagine that he’s gonna get dragged even more as more dirt comes to light.