Can we storm the Activision offices and publicly execute Bobby Kotick for crimes against video games yet?

SpardaSon, Kotick is a very tough boss surrounded by many tough groups of minions. We will need a very large raid to take him out. Frogboy will lead the raid!

Amazing thing is, this post was just today. Or now yesterday here, and already you have 24 pages of comments that are simply classic examples of vitriolic anger and rage. You look at the countries from which the posts were made, and they come from all over the world. This suggests a serious revolt of the StarCraft community that must be unprecedented for Blizzard and perhaps for the industry. These are the long time StarCraft fans who should be counting the days until July 27.

Instead they are intent on fetching ropes, a rail, and tar and feathers! This sort of reaction is not what a marketing department hopes to see from its fans.

Now for those who do not know, this is not a storm in a tea cup. Team Liquid is the most respected independent fan site and repository for StarCraft in the English speaking world. They have a huge number of members, many of whom are the sharpest tools in the shed. These people are capable of causing major negative buzz to say the least.

I wondered how long it would take before Activision would decide it needed more control over Blizzard.  After the InfinityWard debacle, I'm guessing they want to make sure those leashes are nice and tight when Starcraft 2's profits come rolling in.

If I was going to kill Bobby Kotick I'd do it in a manner befitting his actions to date towards video games:  I'd buy him, rent him out to vulgar, unintelligent people who are only interested in satisfying their most basic needs, at which point I'd then cut him into small pieces and then sell those pieces at inflated prices to farms housing only the most uneducated and disgusting animals for mass consumption.  Then I'd take whatever was left, cram into a jar and sell it for US$49.95 on Steam and region lock it to ensure that it also cost EU$49.95.

Holy Fucking Crap!!! (Sorry but this deserved the language) I just read that entire external link.

I am not generally one to take any particular story in the news at face value. But the sheer amount of volume of absolutely insane, evil overlordish, underhanded, greedy, grasping, dominating, Bullshit that guy pulled.

Wow where to start.

The End User Agreement for Battlenet.

The CoD developer firing

The taking the fun out of making video games.

Even if I was to only take each article with a grain of salt. there are enough grains to bury me alive in there. As much as I hate to admit it, and as much as I hate to say I won't buy a video game that I like becuase those who would profit off it are so scummy that I would rather do without than allow them to gain from me. I am seriously questioning if I am purchasing SC2.

I remember in some other thread here I spoke up against blizzard bashing. I have to officially say I think I just changed my toon. While blizzard may have put out some of the best work out there in a long long time. Here I am going to have to condemn on pure association.

Activision's CEO has just made it to the top of my most Hated Corporate Head Asshole List.

The end is nigh.

Kotick has a reverse midas touch, he destroys any game franchise he touches. Activision already has several franchises in trouble, and they killed one of their best studios in IW. Now they're going to try to screw up Blizzard too, by putting people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing in charge.

$180 is cheap at the price! Here is what has the international e-sports community upset:

In each region (I'm not sure how many there are) there is one unified BattleNet server. If you have set up your account in that region then you can only play against people in that region. No cross region play.

But competitions usually run across regions. e-sports is international. So, if you want to play someone in another region then either you have to buy a new account at full price for that region, or the other player has to buy a new account in your region.

Just five regions and you have spent $300 x 3 chapters = $900.00 US Dollars, even much more if Euros or other currency since they do not adjust the price "overseas." Plus competition map packs, say another $100. Plus things I haven't thought of.

As the monkey said when he peed in the cash register, "This is going to run into real money pretty quick!"

To him, it's all just business. And increasing shareholder's stock's worth. That's it.

That post had a picture I find especially descriptive of both Kotick and his actions:

As Darth Vader, he's running an evil empire (Activision), and his strangling is what he does to every IP Activision gets its hands on.  I think we should now refer to him by his proper name and title of "Darth Kotick".

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Join with me brothers, for we must form the resistance.

That is an insult to Vader and hes ordered that pic to be destroyed.

And hes also odered kotick to be destroyed by slowly being dipped in 100% pure sulfuric acid

Good point.  I guess Activision are playing their Ace in the Hole; the good will of the Blizzard name.  Blizzard has more fans than just about any other single developer in the world save maybe for Nintendo.  I suppose Activision are hoping that buys them in with fans.  "Hey Kids, look at this new game from Activision Blizzard - the makers of Diablo, Starcraft and World of Warcraft!"