Even EA is starting to look good when compared to Activision Blizzard

The past six months have been a nightmare for Activision Blizzard from the PR standpoint, as the company kept making unpopular choices and failed to release or announce a game that the fans would love.

Here are some things that hurt the public image of Activision Blizzard in the past six months:

• Mike Morhaime, a passionate and keen gamer, stepped down as the CEO.
• Cancellation of Heroes Global Championship that made hundreds of members of production crews, team employees and players unemployed overnight.
• Diablo: Immortal announcement, no comments needed.
• The Bungie (Destiny devs) exodus from Activision, and it’s Activision’s fault.
• Disappointing path, chosen for WoW development, lots of transactions, almost no innovation.

Each negative situation can be traced to a poor decision can be traced to the management, that was focusing on producing quick financial results. Low sales sent the stock price of Activision Blizzard into the downfall, which started in October.

The most recent “unpopular” decisions made by Blizzard was laying off 8% of their US-based staff. The CEO of the company Bobby Kotick made the weirdest possible statement in the context of layoffs:

While our financial results for 2018 were the best in our history, we didn’t realize our full potential.

The best in our history… Why lay off workers then?

Naturally, this statement spawned massive backlash from the fans as well as the recently laid off Blizzard Employees. You can read more about it in this article.

As a long-time fan, I’d really want to love and appreciate Activision Blizzard, but it feels impossible right now.