Activision and Bungle split

I hope to be proven wrong but I’m not sure how much will change. Bungie have a long history of mis-managing projects and now having to stand on their own? With a godawful development engine and less manpower how are they going to keep up the pace? They’re bad enough now, I can see buddying up with Sony or Microsoft though which could be what’s needed to reach their ambitious potential.

Activision Currently Under Investigation for Fraud Following Bungie Split

Following the news that Bungie has gained the full rights to Destiny after announcing their very public split with Activision, things are continuing to look a little grimmer for the big-name company. First, Activision's stock took a pretty steep dive following the breakup, now they are currently being investigated for fraud.

According to a recent report from Market Watch, a new investigation has kicked off concerning suspected unlawful businesses practices and other types of fraud within their daily operations. The report was set up simply as an alert to shareholders and is an official disclosure on behalf of the investors of Activision Blizzard.

The investigation is being led by Pomerantz LLP, a firm that is one of the premier names with a specialization in corporate functionality, securities, and antitrust class litigation.

Things potentially not looking good for Activision at the moment.

Lagamorph wrote:Activision Currently Under Investigation for Fraud Following Bungie Split

Following the news that Bungie has gained the full rights to Destiny after announcing their very public split with Activision, things are continuing to look a little grimmer for the big-name company. First, Activision's stock took a pretty steep dive following the breakup, now they are currently being investigated for fraud.

According to a recent report from Market Watch, a new investigation has kicked off concerning suspected unlawful businesses practices and other types of fraud within their daily operations. The report was set up simply as an alert to shareholders and is an official disclosure on behalf of the investors of Activision Blizzard.

The investigation is being led by Pomerantz LLP, a firm that is one of the premier names with a specialization in corporate functionality, securities, and antitrust class litigation.

Things potentially not looking good for Activision at the moment.

Wow.

What this means for the future, no one knows yet. But with mounting concerns of Activision's influence over Blizzard and co-founder Mike Morhaime leaving the company for good in April, something weird is happening and it needs to be addressed before it's too late.

Is good ol' Bobby still there?

He's been rather quiet for a very long time.

Floex wrote:I hope to be proven wrong but I’m not sure how much will change. Bungie have a long history of mis-managing projects and now having to stand on their own? With a godawful development engine and less manpower how are they going to keep up the pace? They’re bad enough now, I can see buddying up with Sony or Microsoft though which could be what’s needed to reach their ambitious potential.

I don't think there's any chance they'll go exclusive to Sony or Microsoft, but they'll definitely need a big publisher if they want to do a major launch again. There's no way they'll be able to afford a marketing budget comparable to what they got from Activision, and apparently they've got something crazy like 700-odd employees so it wouldn't surprise me to see them downsize at some point. Leaving Activision has lost them Vicarious Visions who did the PC port so I hope Bungie know what they're doing with that side of things

I'm wondering what the hell the new content is going to look like after this annual pass stuff since it can't possibly be any worse than that In case anyone has missed it, the third new activity from the Black Armoury content was made available last Tuesday but the only way of unlocking it so you could actually play was for one person in the community to solve a horribly convoluted puzzle to unlock it for everyone. It was a mess and by Wednesday no one had solved it so Bungie had to just unlock it anyway. It couldn't be any more obvious that this was targeted at their streamer audience and they did this to get more eyes on the game, they were basically begging people on Twitter to go and watch it on Twitch.

Wedgie wrote:Is good ol' Bobby still there?

He's been rather quiet for a very long time.

I believe he is. Probably unaware of what's going on as he's too busy partying on his yacht paid for with Acti-bucks.

All this serves Activision right for betraying Atari.

Mafro wrote:
I'm wondering what the hell the new content is going to look like after this annual pass stuff since it can't possibly be any worse than that In case anyone has missed it, the third new activity from the Black Armoury content was made available last Tuesday but the only way of unlocking it so you could actually play was for one person in the community to solve a horribly convoluted puzzle to unlock it for everyone. It was a mess and by Wednesday no one had solved it so Bungie had to just unlock it anyway. It couldn't be any more obvious that this was targeted at their streamer audience and they did this to get more eyes on the game, they were basically begging people on Twitter to go and watch it on Twitch.

I think this is a little harsh.

The content itself is really good: a set of endgame encounters that are fun to play with great rewards for this first season alone (not to mention a new raid) with the promise of another full year of content to come. What is true is that Bungie mucked up the release, with the content gated behind high level requirements and the recent debacle with the last forge.

However, this is a completely new model of content delivery for Bungie. Mistakes were made, then quickly corrected. The community reaction informed their actions which lead to an increase of satisfaction and the general consensus that things are rolling again.

Floex wrote:I hope to be proven wrong but I’m not sure how much will change. Bungie have a long history of mis-managing projects and now having to stand on their own? With a godawful development engine and less manpower how are they going to keep up the pace? They’re bad enough now, I can see buddying up with Sony or Microsoft though which could be what’s needed to reach their ambitious potential.

And yeah, this is the flipside.

Reliable rumours are that D3 will be far more MMO focused, with open world PvP and a bigger emphasis on RPG elements. This is exactly what I'd want from the game but it's the sort of leap that should have been made with D2.

As far as I can see, Bungie haven't self financed a game since the Marathon series and the company today is very different than the company then. It could be a disaster (I'm really hoping they shunt Luke Smith onto something else*). But...it could work.

We'll find out.

*Many people are forgetting that it was Bungie, not Activision, behind the micro-transactions and the fake levelling stats. The decisions were no doubt influenced by Acti's profit expectations, but it was reportedly Luke Smith himself who came up with these ideas.

One thing to remember with Destiny is that it is likely never going to be a perfectly rounded game. It's massively ambitious and arguably Bungie have bitten up more than they can chew with the concept. They've really struggled with it all at times and yet I think they deserve a lot of credit for Forsaken. As I said before, it's probably the best the game has been.

But it's never going to be all things for all people. It's just got too many spinnign plates, some are bound to drop every now and again. For some, like Photek, it's probably that the PVP side isn't as comprehensive as Halo 5, not is it as good as the Halo series' multiplayer at its peak. It's more than good enough given the package as a whole, but for diehard PVP aficionados it might not always be enough.

Actually it's used to be that it was PVE players who felt short changed, as focus was on the Crucible, but that's changed a little now. But still, because Bungie say they won't balance the two sides of the game separately, there's always going to be a bit of a seesaw between them.

It must be an absolutely nightmare to work on at times. I don't think the passionate fanbase always help too, as they are quite quick to cry for nerfs or fixes.

I do think Bungie's heart is largely in the right place though. They do strawberry float up, fairly frequently too, but maybe I'm just naive and I like the game, but they do genuinely seem to want the best for the game and the fanbase. They do listen - as the recent puzzle mess up and Black Armory fixes show - and I do think that they appreciate the community around the game.

As for the puzzle strawberry float up, I think they do deserve some slack for that. Despite other qualms with the game, the playerbase have always loved the hidden stuff, the riddles and the secret missions. And Bungie have normally done them really well. This one was a rare misstep, possibly by being too close to their own creation and under-estimating how difficult their puzzle was.

Parksey wrote:But it's never going to be all things for all people. It's just got too many spinnign plates, some are bound to drop every now and again. For some, like Photek, it's probably that the PVP side isn't as comprehensive as Halo 5, not is it as good as the Halo series' multiplayer at its peak. It's more than good enough given the package as a whole, but for diehard PVP aficionados it might not always be enough.

I was always impressed by their ambition, but the overall game was never going to be my kind of thing

I remember being disappointed with the PS3 beta's PVP and how little thought had gone into map design.

Seems no one, including Bungie and 353i, can replicate that early Halo map design.

The only reason they would have done this is if it made financial sense for both of them. If your business model isn't just about pleasing share holders it' s probably pretty easy to make a lot of money off of Destiny. If it is pleasing shareholders it's probably best to jettison a 700 strong work force if it's not making as much for your shareholders as you'd over optimistically promised.

Well I think it's telling that around November we had two articles - one was that Destiny Forsaken had brought in the most income across all of PSN for the past month. That meant it surpassed stuff like Fortnite in terms of revenue brought it (and if I remember rightly I think it was excluding the purchase cost for the expansion too, though I may be mistaken there).

There was also a second article around this tiem, featuring someone from Activision, that said Forsaken had been a disappointment because it hadn't resurrected the playerbase.

Now, considering that Forsaken was an expansion for a year old game, it was never going to bring across every Destiny 2 player. By virtually all accounts, Forsaken was a success - it has re-energised the playerbase, it provides a tonne of content, kept bringing players back each week and it fixed a lot of problems with the base game. But there was still a sense that it was not enough for the publisher, as they somehow thought it was going to get every D2 back on board and, presumably, spending money.

As I said before, it's like how Square Enix viewed the tomb Raider games. And though I don't always agree with Jim Sterling, I can't help but think of a quote he repeats fairly often - for triple A publishers, it's not about making money, it's about making ALL the money. You can't help but feel that they set unrealistic expectations for a second year expansion. For most people, Forsaken was: Job. Done.

So despite cutting production budgets, increasing micro-transactions and monetisation and generally crying that business is bad...

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... nis-durkin

Activision Blizzard Inc.’s Dennis Durkin will receive awards worth $15 million as part of his appointment to chief financial officer.

Durkin will get $11.3 million of restricted stock tied to operating income and earnings-per-share targets, and a $3.75 million sign-on bonus, the Santa Monica, California-based company said Friday in a regulatory filing. That’s on top of his $900,000 salary and a $1.35 million target bonus.

Now, a lot of that is in shares and stock, but it includes a $3.5 million cash bonus.

I know that often these sorts of deals are a requirement when attracting "top talent" but I do think this is a good illustration of just how strawberry floating awful late stage capitalism is.

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I didn't know Bungle from Rainbow was with Activision. Maybe he was on the rebound after hearing Geoffrey had recently passed?

the perks of being the guy who makes the budgets is you can budget a lot for yourself