Blizzard is not a separate company with just a publishing contract like Bungie did. Blizzard was bought out by Activision and is now Activision-Blizzard and treated as a subsidiary company.
I suppose Blizzard could try to raise enough capital to buy themselves but I think its unlikely
I remember Jeff Kaplin saying in an interview they had to go to activision and get the go ahead to make Overwatch and it been nerve wrecking. iirc this was after the mmo had been cancelled internally and the team had given them selfs 3 weeks or so to come up with something or move onto other things.
I’ll see if I can dig it out.
EDIT: I would swore I saw the info in video interview with in, but in the brief time searching I couldn't find it (Though I haven't had any coffee yet, so i'm not on my game just yet) but I did find an text interview[0] / - Under "Selling Overwatch to the Execs"
> It was an easy sell to Blizzard, but pitching it to Activision left the team nervous. After all, they were about to tell the makers of Call of Duty that they had a great idea for a brand new game: a shooter! (Something Kaplan says he only thought about after the fact.) Kaplan ran through the slides of Team 4’s Overwatch presentation to a silent audience, until Activision CEO Bobby Kotick stopped him and asked him to go back three slides.
> “I’m thinking ‘Oh no, what was back three slides?'” Kaplan said.
> It turned out to be the original hero lineup, which will look familiar to any Overwatch fan: a row of heroes on a white background. The heroes don’t look quite the same as they do today, but the style is already Overwatch. “This is going to be an amazing universe,” Kotick said, and the rest is history.
I mean Activision ovb didn't kick up much of a fuss as you know we actually have Overwatch :-P but it was just a point that Blizz's first new IP in years still had to go past the CEO of Activision before getting the green light to go into full dev.
thanks for pointing that out. i actually remembered reading a headline of ~8 million at the beginning of WotLK, but when i checked statistics just now, it was pinned to 5 million.
The statistic i checked started after Warlords of Draenor, however... and i didn't notice that
I don't know that using railroads as a model of non-monopolistic business is the best idea, but I agree with you that investors are critical to business. It's the original crowdfunding.
This spills over into Whole Foods as well, from my experience. I personally don't know quite how to feel about the idea that Amazon bought them out, but the in-store customer service is leagues above Walmart and on par with Publix.
Slightly related - not much a fan of hackernoon. The electric lime green banner at the top is essentially blinding. I had to zap the element with Ublock Origin just to read the article comfortably.
Or just give up on them or the entire music industry. That's what I've done. Pretty much did the same for movies. I don't want to pay their prices with their rules. Rather than steal, I just don't consume. Most of the music I listen to is either through a legal streaming service like Amazon or Pandora (which is probably 10 songs a month total) or legal video playback on Youtube through Vevo even from smaller labels like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxLA1NX9gxY.
As repetetive as pop-music and movies are today- i dont get it why there is a production industry at large still.
How difficult can it be to get a NN to sing through autotune and add some music to that.
The issue is that content creators rarely have any choice. If they don't work with labels, their careers are DOA.
Wait... so our responsibility is to preserve the careers of those people who produce that kind of IP - music, films, whatever counts as "art" -...
and yet we don't have a responsibility to preserve the careers of those who produce a different kind of IP - e.g. software?
If we're rejecting the predominant model of payment == ability to consume, it would seem that that's perfectly fine: we'll establish a new model that works to compensate content creators. Open source / free software models clearly do that, right? I mean, the creation of software is no different than the creation of any other kind of IP...
So why further the causes of content creators who release content under terms we refuse to be party to?
Hollywood, Big TV, Big Music, Big Software... Why consume their content under terms we don't agree with? And Software == IP == everything else I've listed.
Support those NON-SOFTWARE creators who reject terms we don't agree with.
It can be tough to curate but there are people making stuff and selling it at reasonable prices, DRM free, and without requiring you to make useless accounts. Louis C.K., Bandcamp ... I guess I don't personally know of any others, but I'm sure they're out there.
1) there is the music mafia
-Whereas international trade agreements upon copyright establish what copyright is. Rights holders are the creator, however...
-"rights enforcement/payment collection" societies exist in nearly every nation, which are basically private associations of lawyers that have the gall to insist that they represent ALL musical artists, even those who never signed up with them nor wish to.
For example, as a musical artist who has NOT cleared works with ASCAP, BMI, SPA, SUICA, etc, I have literally seen them extort event promoters where I am playing my original music and demand money that ostensibly should go to me, once I sign-up to their racket.
They have collected money from cafes, bars, clubs, corner restaurants, and events of all kind ostensibly for works I have made and have the rights to, however, I would have to join their gang to get the money they have collected IN MY NAME and are currently holding. They literally have claimed the exclusive right to represent the entire musical industry with regards to copyright law in the nation they are based in! Shocking. illegal. wrong. incorrect. stoppable.
2)there is music and the people who make it, play it, love it, and wish to pursue a career in music. This entire socio-cultural phenomena should not cease merely due to some corrupt entities currently milking everyones wallet and patience. Support this. Bandcamp, indie musicians personal websites, buying cd's at shows, etc.
Amazon and Pandora??? yikes, those are other corporate behemoth coming in to scoop up thin profit margins with volume... why on earth would you support such?
3) there is pop garbage that has no artistic value, precious little entertainment value (who pays WHOM to get radio play? playlist repetition in top-40 music is due to what exactly?)
and is currently extolling the virtues of shopping malls, bubblegum, branded products, shagging, cocaine, and generally fueling the mindless vapid consumption certain industrial leaders think we all should enjoy, as it dovetails neatly with their cross-marketing strategies.
Jay-Z bought a famous french Champagne maker, for example.
In a world where your neighbor could be the next Herbie Hancock, it's a dame shame to pretend that what passes for popular music has anything to do with talent or skill.
If you buy it, shame on you. If you steal it, for petes sake, WHY!?????
stop feeding the plastic pink pop monster.
Unfortunately, some of us consider listening to music to be a big part of who we are, and 10 songs a month is akin to suicide.
With newer labels, it's much easier to stream from bandcamp, etc. but with older music it can be hard to find what you want, in the quality and quantity you desire, while staying above piracy.
I find it very hard to tell a poor person that they do not get to listen to as much music as me, or of the same quality (streaming is still sub-320kbps) because they were not born into a richer family.
I use to listen to music often. I use to play guitar, harmonica, drums and bass. Over the past 10 years I stopped caring. The music industry just turned me off. I stopped playing along. Then I stopped listening. I got so tired of the ads and money grabbing that I turned to NPR rather than a local DJ. In the end I found that the music wasn't me. It wasn't necessary.
Isn't that a bit like giving up on reading and writing because you don't like Amazon's eBook DRM?
(By which I mean it's an important aspect of the human experience, a powerful method of communication, and certainly something one can participate in without any sort of corporate intermediary - particularly if you play instruments!)
"The music industry" has nothing to do with artists of previous generations, except that they still try to make money from them. Participating in that scheme in order to appreciate their art is entirely optional.
"The music industry" has nothing to do with independent artists of this generation who promote their own stuff or who sign on to small independent labels. It is just not the same thing and you are limiting yourself by conflating them with "the music industry". Of course, that's entirely your choice but it is healthy to keep in mind this is entirely an artificial limitation.
It's also important to realize that just because you got burned out on music, doesn't mean other people who live and breathe music should also decide to stop listening to it. There are other, more effective ways of protesting the bad parts of the music industry than not listening to its IP.
The RIAA did not "create" the bands and artists that I enjoy. Some of them chose big labels, many didn't. Many of them are/were independent.
Maybe some people find enjoyment in different things than you. What do you think people did before the RIAA and other recording industries? Do you think they sat around in silence? No. Let's be realistic and not conflate the recording industry with a desire for pleasing music that extends as far back as the first musical instrument (the voice).
And you are missing my point, which is that there is a way to still get a chance to appreciate the thousands of absolute musical masterpieces out there without becoming an unwitting consumer.
Where does that end? Do you expect them to have a right to the same high end speakers/headphones that you have? To the same sound-treated room?
I understand piracy more when it's literally impossible to make a legal purchase of something; I get it. When it's merely a matter of spending less money, I have a lot less sympathy for the copyright infringers.
Copyright isn't a right. Intellectual property is neither intellectual nor is it property.
The only point I concede is nobody should have the right to sell or distribute counterfeit, tampered, malicious items (such as Microsoft Windows) as authentic, genuine, and untampered. We don't need intellectual property for that. We have existing laws outside of intellectual property that covers this use case.
I know this can't happen overnight but our goal should be the end of this madness.
I anal but there has to be something for misrepresented goods and services. Under my plan, selling unmodified copies is ok. Selling modified versions as long as they are clearly marked as modified is OK as well.
>I understand piracy more when it's literally impossible to make a legal purchase of something; I get it. When it's merely a matter of spending less money, I have a lot less sympathy for the copyright infringers.
What if the work is old? Do you think it's wrong to make an unauthorized copy of Shakespeare's works, or Beowulf? So why should I have to pay someone for a copy of, say, a Hitchcock movie like "The Birds"? That movie is over a half-century old now, and if the copyright laws hadn't been changed, it'd have been in the public domain for the last 30 years. So why should I feel guilty if I download a copy of it? Why should I be obligated to spend money to some rights-holder who bought out the rights to a work where everyone involved in its production is now dead?
I view copyright as a means to permit society to have more creative works produced. Would Hollywood make a $100MM movie if they couldn't charge for it or could only charge the first person for it? Would drug companies invest billions in research to create effective new drugs for society if they knew they couldn't reap any financial reward for success?
I don't love all the corner cases that result from IP law and in particular hate software patents, but I also think that society and individuals therein benefit from there being a commercial payoff for investing in making creative works. I'm periodically surprised at how little value is placed on that by a some software engineers, given that most of what we create is more valuable (or made commercially possible) by virtue of copyright protections.
I understand that other people may feel differently.
The reason you think I'm not answering the question is that I believe you have a faulty premise (that the works of Shakespeare are under copyright protection today).
Now you're either missing the point, or being intentionally obtuse.
No, the works of Shakespeare are not, but works that are 50 or 75 years old still are, even though everyone who wrote or created them are now dead. How is this useful to society? It's no different than if Shakespeare's works were still protected by copyright. And since we have now enacted perpetual copyright, nothing new will ever fall into the public domain from this point forward.
Because you are a law avoiding citizen... I think that copyrights are to long, something on the order of 25 years is closer to what they should be. I feel like the current lengths are infinite as far as a living human is concerned and thus unconstitutional. But unless I want to practice civil disobedience, I should still be a civil person and follow the law.
Copying something such that no one knows I did it isn't civil disobedience
You're comparing physical goods that are expensive to produce well with a piece of encoded information that costs nothing to mass-produce. That's not a good analogy, and you know it.
> Do you expect them to have a right to the same high end speakers/headphones that you have? To the same sound-treated room?
If they can make an identical copy of those items, without removing from the marketplace the original that they were never, ever going to buy anyway, sure.
You can still listen to the radio for free music, can't you? That's what poor people always used to do and somehow CD buyers didn't feel unfairly privileged.
If you really care about what poor people are missing out on, buy it for them. Don't expect someone else to do your charity for you to ease your conscience.
> I find it very hard to tell a poor person that they do not get to listen to as much music as me
Also, you're implying that the radio is going to provide even a fraction of the great music out there.
"If you really care about what poor people are missing out on, buy it for them. Don't expect someone else to do your charity for you to ease your conscience"
What exactly do you even mean by this? Are you taking a stance on piracy?
That's a bad idea. What you should do is don't consume BMG content in any form--legal or illegal. While the effectivity of boycotts is debatable, mass switching from purchase to pirating would merely be fuel for the fire of needing better tools to combat piracy.
Piracy is going to happen - BMG should incentivize people to buy their music rather than chase down the few who obtain it illegally. The same argument has been going on since the Napster days with Metallica.
It won't work. How many other companies are you sabotaging or boycotting based on offences they committed years ago? You'll quickly forget about this when the next shocking news story takes your outrage. So will just about everyone else and it won't affect them at all.
