• Activision Follies

    From Spalls Hurgenson@21:1/5 to All on Sat Apr 2 22:34:24 2022
    I always get a giggle reading about gaming corporations doing stupid
    stuff. Unsurprisingly, Activision is a frequent offender.

    Activision, of course, has been having a rough year. It is being sued
    for sexually predatory behavior by its executives, it has ongoing
    relationship problems with its employees, it is under FTC review for
    its potentially monopolistic merger with Microsoft, and it isn't even
    all that well regarded by its customers. You would think a company
    with all those problems might try to stay out of the limelight. But
    nope, they're in the news again.

    This time, its for its on-again/off-again decisions about mandatory
    employee vacinations.* I'm not going to get into the why and what of
    that choice t - it's a topic that has stupidly become far too divisive
    for me to get into on a gaming newsgroup - but it's the sort of thing
    a good CEO really should have avoided. They made a decision months ago
    to do one thing; fine. It caused an uproar then, but it had to be done
    and the eventually people stopped talking about it. And that's where
    it should have been left, but of course Activision had to go and
    dredge up the issue a second time... and then a third when they
    reversed course with a third change. When there is so much bad news
    associated with your company, the thing to do is stop kicking up a
    stink, and instead huddle up and do nothing. But again and again,
    Activision manages to do anything but that.

    You really have to wonder who's running the circus there... and how
    the board can continue to justify the eight or nine digit salaries
    those people are earning.

    I mean, in the long run, this issue doesn't change anything, not for
    the employees, not for the games, not for the customers, and not for
    the merger. It's just an amusing indicator of the top-down
    incompetence of a company supposedly worth billions. It's equal parts
    amusing and pathetic. It's - I'll be the first to admit - barely worth reporting, except it's so ridiculously stupid that I can't help but
    comment. So consider this post my overly loquacious equivalent of a
    face-palm as, once again, Activision fucks itself over.







    ----------------------
    url: https://www.bluesnews.com/s/246588/activision-blizzard-drops-vaccine-requirement

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Dimensional Traveler@21:1/5 to Spalls Hurgenson on Sat Apr 2 21:26:23 2022
    On 4/2/2022 7:34 PM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

    I always get a giggle reading about gaming corporations doing stupid
    stuff. Unsurprisingly, Activision is a frequent offender.

    Activision, of course, has been having a rough year. It is being sued
    for sexually predatory behavior by its executives, it has ongoing relationship problems with its employees, it is under FTC review for
    its potentially monopolistic merger with Microsoft, and it isn't even
    all that well regarded by its customers. You would think a company
    with all those problems might try to stay out of the limelight. But
    nope, they're in the news again.

    This time, its for its on-again/off-again decisions about mandatory
    employee vacinations.* I'm not going to get into the why and what of
    that choice t - it's a topic that has stupidly become far too divisive
    for me to get into on a gaming newsgroup - but it's the sort of thing
    a good CEO really should have avoided. They made a decision months ago
    to do one thing; fine. It caused an uproar then, but it had to be done
    and the eventually people stopped talking about it. And that's where
    it should have been left, but of course Activision had to go and
    dredge up the issue a second time... and then a third when they
    reversed course with a third change. When there is so much bad news associated with your company, the thing to do is stop kicking up a
    stink, and instead huddle up and do nothing. But again and again,
    Activision manages to do anything but that.

    You really have to wonder who's running the circus there... and how
    the board can continue to justify the eight or nine digit salaries
    those people are earning.

    I know you aren't expecting a real answer to that but I'm going to give
    you a bit of information anyways. There is a school of thought in
    business that the larger the number of companies an executive has ridden
    down in flames, the MORE they are worth.

    Because it is assumed they've learned from their mistakes.

    I mean, in the long run, this issue doesn't change anything, not for
    the employees, not for the games, not for the customers, and not for
    the merger. It's just an amusing indicator of the top-down
    incompetence of a company supposedly worth billions. It's equal parts
    amusing and pathetic. It's - I'll be the first to admit - barely worth reporting, except it's so ridiculously stupid that I can't help but
    comment. So consider this post my overly loquacious equivalent of a
    face-palm as, once again, Activision fucks itself over.



    --
    I've done good in this world. Now I'm tired and just want to be a cranky
    dirty old man.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From JAB@21:1/5 to Spalls Hurgenson on Sun Apr 3 09:49:22 2022
    On 03/04/2022 03:34, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

    I always get a giggle reading about gaming corporations doing stupid
    stuff. Unsurprisingly, Activision is a frequent offender.

    Activision, of course, has been having a rough year. It is being sued
    for sexually predatory behavior by its executives, it has ongoing relationship problems with its employees, it is under FTC review for
    its potentially monopolistic merger with Microsoft, and it isn't even
    all that well regarded by its customers. You would think a company
    with all those problems might try to stay out of the limelight. But
    nope, they're in the news again.

    This time, its for its on-again/off-again decisions about mandatory
    employee vacinations.* I'm not going to get into the why and what of
    that choice t - it's a topic that has stupidly become far too divisive
    for me to get into on a gaming newsgroup - but it's the sort of thing
    a good CEO really should have avoided. They made a decision months ago
    to do one thing; fine. It caused an uproar then, but it had to be done
    and the eventually people stopped talking about it. And that's where
    it should have been left, but of course Activision had to go and
    dredge up the issue a second time... and then a third when they
    reversed course with a third change. When there is so much bad news associated with your company, the thing to do is stop kicking up a
    stink, and instead huddle up and do nothing. But again and again,
    Activision manages to do anything but that.

    You really have to wonder who's running the circus there... and how
    the board can continue to justify the eight or nine digit salaries
    those people are earning.

    I mean, in the long run, this issue doesn't change anything, not for
    the employees, not for the games, not for the customers, and not for
    the merger. It's just an amusing indicator of the top-down
    incompetence of a company supposedly worth billions. It's equal parts
    amusing and pathetic. It's - I'll be the first to admit - barely worth reporting, except it's so ridiculously stupid that I can't help but
    comment. So consider this post my overly loquacious equivalent of a
    face-palm as, once again, Activision fucks itself over.


    Just had a quick read-up of the story and yeh that's pretty daft. The
    real problems I see are that their announcement doesn't seem to contain
    the reasoning as to why the change, so at time X this is what we are
    doing, at time Y we are no longer doing that. There must be a reason
    behind that surely. The second, and I'll take this with a slight pinch
    of salt, it was the employees who wanted it in place in the first place.

    As for how people like this stay in their roles, in my experience
    (obviously at a lower level) climbing up the greasy pole has very little
    do to do with you achieve but instead do you fit in and is your priority
    your own career. It also helps if you're quite prepared to throw someone
    under the bus if you think it will make you look good.

    One of the classics I saw was a project manager being promoted to a
    position that even he knew he really wasn't capable of and when it all
    went tits up who got all the blame. Will him of course and certain;y not
    the person who put him into a role he was suitable for.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)