Murderion posted:

Blizzard, and probably Activision, has hit that critical tipping point where they probably just can't produce a good game anymore. The only thing they had to offer employees was ~*Blizzard Prestige*~, and that was slowly draining away before the big allegations hit. They pay like poo poo, with their biggest workplace perk being the ability to horribly abuse anyone under you in the white supremacist hierarchy. The only ideas implemented come from abusers and their toadies, so the collective braintrust is a bunch of crusty old goons who last had an original idea in 2006.

It's not that they lack the talent to build anything new, they lack the talent to capitalize on what they've got. Overwatch was every company's dream - lightning in a bottle, put together out of scraps and leftovers, raking in cash - and it just... fizzled out.

It's a dangerous fallacy to say that bad companies, bad people can't make good games. But there's a point where the evil gets dumb, where it overrides even the banal avarice of corporate capitalism, and you lose the ability to do the thing that made you money in the first place.