Give me reason's to hate Activision that aren't COD related

[Cabisco]

They've got your kids @ShadowRatchet92, they've got your kids.

On a more serious note (they don't have your kids yet don't worry) Considering every big corporation is meant to be evil and hated by us all I don't think they will particularly stand out compared to others, if valve becomes a big player in publishing for other companies you can bet a thread with Valve replacing the word Activision/Apple/Ea/Microsoft will be on this forum.

Although as a massive fan of Timesplitters I am annoyed that they haven't pulled their entire resources together with the sole aim of giving me Timesplitters 4. I'd let it go even if they only put half their entire workforce into it.

 

[Aerosteam]

They've shut down numerous developers who didn't deserve it.

They end franchises that have not done as well as Call of Duty.

 

[BBboy20]

Dropping studios and franchises like garbage?

But they're starting to look like the good guys recently.

 

[cerebus23]

Upon hearing that they are were not allowed to release Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines before Half-Life 2, they forced Troika to shovel out the game in its incomplete state ON THE SAME DAY as Half-Life 2. They then proceeded to shut down Troika.

What he said

If you're not familiar with me: hi, I'm DoPo, you may know me from trying to plug Bloodlines as often as possible. And you know what? It's a bad game. Also, it's a bad game because of Activision. It's a bad game I love, but imagine if it was actually good, then other people would have loved it, too. But even this aside, Troika was killed, over it. They willingly sacrificed themselves, so the game isn't horrible but that's about it.

But WAIT, there is more. You know what Activision does with Bloodlines now? Nothing. Well, aside from releasing it on Steam and some other digital distributions, that is. But they wouldn't have done this if the fucking fans didn't make the game playable first and provided support. That's it - they wouldn't have made much money on the game over these past years, if there weren't people to do their work for them and for free. That's a new level of exploiting your customers.

Also, Bobby Kotic is a dick.

QFT

i love VTMB, one of the few rpgs i replay every few years. deus ex, fallout 1 and 2 in that list.

All the major publishers are souless godless asshats. only thing that pushes activision over the top is bobby himself, really let these clowns run these one great gaming companies into the ground.

EA and activision used to mean games made by games for gamers, and quality stuff, now they are games made by commities of people that know nothing about games, and even less about gamers.

 

[Ryotknife]

We dont need COD to be angry at Activision. Hell, we dont need any GAME, Bobby Kotic is enough of a reason to hate them.

Hell, blizzard has quite a few skeletons in their closest, plus the rumors about how activision treats their employees makes Dante's Inferno look tame by comparison.

 

[TrevHead]

Their main crime is the same as EA's.

Changing gamers from customers to consumers.

Most posts are spot on but this is the best imo. Their games get more like farmville everytime.

 

[Cyfu]

Well, If one of the IPs they own become popular they release 500 games with that IP. They drive them into the ground.

 

[TallanKhan]

Well Activision is now part of the same company as Blizzard so Im going with Diablo 3.

 

[Ledan]

Gray Matter Interactive (Call of Duty 2), merged into Treyarch
Luxoflux (True Crime), closed down
Shaba Games (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and Project 8), closed down
RedOctane (original Guitar Hero games), closed down
Sierra Entertainment (King's Quest series, Space Quest series), closed down
Underground Development (Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX, Guitar Hero: Van Halen), closed down
Budcat Creations (later Guitar Hero games), shut down
Bizarre Creations (Blur, The Club), shut down
Radical Entertainment (Prototype), shut down

Waitwaitwait.... Activision killed Sierra?! Darthvader No!
I was wondering what had happened to them.

OT:
Pretty much what people have said. They kill of developers and hog IPs without using them. They rush games. Also they are pretty shitty to their employees.

 

[shrekfan246]

except for killing Radical Entertainment.

I don't see why killing Radical doesn't count. Especially since just today I had the pleasure of finding out that the PC port of Prototype 2 suffers from one monster of a memory leak (or something that masquerades as a memory leak), and since Radical was crushed, it's likely never going to be patched.

They did something very similar with Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines.

They created, oversaturated the market with, and then crushed Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk (at least, I think the Tony Hawk games have been crushed, if they're still making them then they're much, much lower profile than they were twelve years ago).

Bobby Kotick has gone on the record as saying "I want to take the fun out of game development" or some close approximation of that.

There you go.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

Upon hearing that they are were not allowed to release Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines before Half-Life 2, they forced Troika to shovel out the game in its incomplete state ON THE SAME DAY as Half-Life 2. They then proceeded to shut down Troika.

What he said

If you're not familiar with me: hi, I'm DoPo, you may know me from trying to plug Bloodlines as often as possible. And you know what? It's a bad game. Also, it's a bad game because of Activision. It's a bad game I love, but imagine if it was actually good, then other people would have loved it, too. But even this aside, Troika was killed, over it. They willingly sacrificed themselves, so the game isn't horrible but that's about it.

But WAIT, there is more. You know what Activision does with Bloodlines now? Nothing. Well, aside from releasing it on Steam and some other digital distributions, that is. But they wouldn't have done this if the fucking fans didn't make the game playable first and provided support. That's it - they wouldn't have made much money on the game over these past years, if there weren't people to do their work for them and for free. That's a new level of exploiting your customers.

Also, Bobby Kotic is a dick.

This.

The last third of the game is so obviously rushed, it's would be amazing to find out what Troika could have done if they weren't rushed to compete with Half-Life Fucking 2.

 

[ThriKreen]

Here's a list of games and series that Activision either abandoned, killed, or nearly killed.

Ghostbusters (dropped by Activision, picked up by Atari)
Brutal Legend (dropped by Activision, picked up by EA)
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (nearly killed by Activision, due to "Ride" and "Shred")
Guitar Hero (possibly killed by Activision due to oversaturation)

Also add Sleeping Dogs (Formerly True Crime: Hong Kong) from United Front Games to that list. Activision thought it wouldn't sell many and dropped it much like what they did for DoubleFine, and that loss would have resulted in UFG being closed if they hadn't gotten picked up by Square Enix.

Also, Harmonix ported Guitar Hero into Rock Band and got picked up by EA.

Oh hey, Good Guy Publisher EA on two counts there.

 

[Twilight_guy]

Umm... ugh... Oh, the parent company own Blizzard! People hate blizzard right now right, right? right? Ah, screw it. I don't hate any company. If you don't have any reason to hate them, then don't and be happy that your life hasn't devolved to saying terrible things about game companies.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Here's a list of games and series that Activision either abandoned, killed, or nearly killed.

Ghostbusters (dropped by Activision, picked up by Atari)
Brutal Legend (dropped by Activision, picked up by EA)
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (nearly killed by Activision, due to "Ride" and "Shred")
Guitar Hero (possibly killed by Activision due to oversaturation)

Also add Sleeping Dogs (Formerly True Crime: Hong Kong) from United Front Games to that list. Activision thought it wouldn't sell many and dropped it much like what they did for DoubleFine, and that loss would have resulted in UFG being closed if they hadn't gotten picked up by Square Enix.

Also, Harmonix ported Guitar Hero into Rock Band and got picked up by EA.

Oh hey, Good Guy Publisher EA on two counts there.

Thank you, missed that one. And it is rather funny that the much maligned EA is the savior of two of those games, isn't it?

 

[ThriKreen]

Thank you, missed that one. And it is rather funny that the much maligned EA is the savior of two of those games, isn't it?

Well, a lot of people tend to jump into the EA is evil bandwagon, and lack any proper objectivity on the subject and talk more with their feelings than logic - "I loved and shut them down, therefore they are evil!" while ignoring any other aspects that did that could have contributed to poor performance resulting in said closure.

What I should do is make a spreadsheet listing various gaming "atrocities" and see what publishers and developers fall into it and tally the count at the end. i.e. Always on DRM: +1 Evil Points to Ubisoft, Origin (EA), Steam (Valve). But then GoG, Impulse and Origin and Steam gets a -1 Evil Point for allowing offline mode.

Probably wouldn't bother with assigning a weight to the various issues, gets really subjective so better to just stick with giving or removing a point.

Studio closures would be on a per publisher basis obviously, but it might be hard to say in cases like the fore mentioned DF/UFG/HMX cases, if the title had not been picked up again, would the studio have survived? Probably make a separate section for dropped titles.

Actually that's a good idea... lemmie make that Google Docs page...

Edit: Here [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkrUFSKV22FGdDM2dHZGRVBVck5mQy1RdjVQUDNENnc].

People should have access to edit the Queue page, and I'll sort and merge them into the main list as to avoid it becoming a mess if the main list was totally editable.

 

[unstabLized]

Here's a list of games and series that Activision either abandoned, killed, or nearly killed.

Ghostbusters (dropped by Activision, picked up by Atari)
Brutal Legend (dropped by Activision, picked up by EA)
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (nearly killed by Activision, due to "Ride" and "Shred")
Guitar Hero (possibly killed by Activision due to oversaturation)

And now, a list of studios they've closed down.

Gray Matter Interactive (Call of Duty 2), merged into Treyarch
Luxoflux (True Crime), closed down
Shaba Games (Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 and Project 8), closed down
RedOctane (original Guitar Hero games), closed down
Sierra Entertainment (King's Quest series, Space Quest series), closed down
Underground Development (Dave Mirra Freestyle BMX, Guitar Hero: Van Halen), closed down
Budcat Creations (later Guitar Hero games), shut down
Bizarre Creations (Blur, The Club), shut down
Radical Entertainment (Prototype), shut down

This. All of this. Also got rid of True Crime: Hong Kong, but thank god Square Enix picked that up, and turned it into a pretty damn good game. F*** Bobby Kotick.