Update: PC Gamer's reveal has been moved to 6 hours after the reveal stream on Monday.
Blizzard has removed their remaining card reveals leading up to the reveal stream. This was somewhat expected considering we saw Blizzard's reveals yesterday removed due to ongoing public disappointment in the company following the California lawsuit against them for discrimination and sexual harassment in the workplace.
The removal of Blizzard's own reveals also comes with a few notable community members cancelling their planned reveals. Alliestrasza, Lt. Eddy, and Trump all cancelled their United in Stormwind card reveals after the news broke. This has caused disruption in the card reveal season and with that, more of a spotlight on the lawsuit within the community.
As of posting, there are 5 community card reveals still planned and the final reveal stream appears to be still taking place at the end, though it should be noted they have moved the stream up a day, it now takes place on Monday rather than Tuesday. You can follow along with the card reveal countdown updates over on our United in Stormwind Card Reveal Schedule.
Everyone, before you comment on the situation I'd like to remind you all that we need to keep things civil. I know I don't need to really need to make that comment because the community we've created here on Out of Cards is generally positive, but even we do occasionally have bad actors that appear and you've previously seen us ban folks with bad takes. While there are certainly some frustrations to be had, put things into perspective here; The community missing a few card reveals, delaying them until the card dump, is nothing compared to the discrimination and sexual harassment that has taken place at Activision Blizzard.
Comparing the two is disgusting behaviour and does not belong in our community on Out of Cards and certainly does not belong in the greater Hearthstone and gaming communities. Seeing disgusting comments made on the situation on other websites and seeing them not moderated is those owners continuing to support this hatred and is beyond awful to see.
There is no reason to harass anyone over the lawsuit. No one deserves to be harassed because they are continuing to work at Blizzard, creating content for Blizzard games, or continuing to enjoy Blizzard games. Anyone's continued practice of interacting with the company in any of does not equal standing with Blizzard. Not everyone is in a situation where they can afford to leave their positions purely based on principal and that does not make them a lesser person.
Listen to folks and let their stories by heard. Let the courts take care of Activision Blizzard.
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Comments
My biggest concern out of all of this is all the studios Blizzard veterans have created over the past few years. Maybe this decline in Blizzard that we've seen over the past 5 years (I know some feel its much longer than this, you're welcome to your opinions) involved a lot of what we've been reading and was a big prompt in them deciding to leave. In a world that has has rightfully started to tolerate this bullshit less, it may be that they were all good people that weren't participating in the alleged atrocities trying to get away from it and to use their experience in creating games in a better environment. We can't know that for sure though.
I sincerely hope they were all a part of the positive forces and in their new environments they will ensure that kind of harassment isn't ever going to be tolerated. It will certainly be easier if they all remain smaller studios, the more moving parts involved the more chance for problems to go unchecked, and being a new company in this age lets them start out with a better overall social outlook, or at least that's what I like to think.
I also hope Blizzard can reinvent itself. Get rid of all the gross people and get back to making good games and creating a good relationship with your communities.
I fear that's likely wishful thinking. While not all game companies are as bad as the WoW team seems to be, one thing that is pervasive in the games industry is that companies take advantage of the passion of developers for making games. Often this takes the form of "crunch": unpaid overtime for months on end. There are also other ways employees are treated unfairly, like companies withholding their names from the credits as retaliation. Blizzard in particular is known for paying salaries that aren't enough to cover the high cost of living in that area of California.
That said, I do have hope that some of the people starting new companies will try to improve the culture of game development, even if they were part of the bad old culture themselves for years.
I agree Flux. And to be honest, I am very scared that Blizz cannot do this.
The WoW-team seems to be the main problem. Above thr toxic culture, look at their game. They give a shit-mount if you have a 6 month subscription and thats it. They have your money and they dont care about the game. There are many developers who cant be who they want to be and actually contribute in improving the game.
If I look at HS, main developers spoke out and every time a icon of the team leaves some else steps up. Look at Liv Breeden now, she is so passionate and really wants to deliver a expansions she and the gamers should enjoy.
But the rest of Blizzard is just so corporate. Make 400m profit and fire the whole PR-departement. We have seen the results in every single scandal the media found, it is always a weak respons from Blizzard.
The end my too long argument. Blizzard wants rainbowscolors and free speech, but at this moment they just dont deliver every single time they have the chance to show their support with their own community. And that hurts. It hurts us and it hurts the developers who truely believe in the good cause.
Yo Flux, poor phrasing my dude. This is definitely not your biggest concern. It is certainly a high one though.
Great website with good management. 👌
I do understand the influencers trying to distance themselves from the situation but from Blizzard's standpoint, what's the difference in releasing cards now and continuing to promote the game and waiting until Monday? I imagine the stream chat (if enabled) will be pretty toxic. Now if they canceled the stream altogether, and just did a card dump, i would understand that.
I highly anticipate this to happen, probably just release everything on the Hearthstone card library.
OoC: The best website there is for the Card games community.
Sincerely tho, this site is the only one sensible enough to approach this subject objectively and I'm really proud of being a member of this community.
Ok, whatever they think is appropiate.
I get why some community member "boycott" the reveals, but why Blizzard the Hearthstone team? What reason could they possibly have to not upload their reveal video?
Not everyone in Blizzard participated in the horrible practices mentioned in the lawsuit.
Maybe, the team/people that decided to cancel the reveals are among the 'good ones' and want to show their solidarity to their victimized fellow employees. See, showing support is not limited to community members, Blizzard employees can do this too. But that is just my guess.
Blizzard is under heat right now and anything they post is going to be filled with negative comments.
If I were to tweet something negative at the Hearthstone Twitter account right now, not many would see it. That changes if they make a fresh tweet and a large amount of people respond to it.
When you interact with the tweet, you're going to see replies and those replies have a very high chance of being critical of the company and not "on topic". That makes the reveals for them somewhat pointless.
However, I don't see this as damage control. It might be, higher ups may have put a freeze on everything to do damage control, I like to think its good folks that are there protesting internally against the bad - an act that shows they stand with their coworkers against the abuse. We'll never know for certain the exact reasoning behind it, but I do like to try and see good before the bad.
It looks like 100% damage control to me. Cards revealed by blizzard are very unlikely dependent on a single person like the cards given to the community. In truth these "boycotts" by the community are killing the hype for the expansion and bringing more awareness to the lawsuit, so they just shut everything down so we won't have a new youtuber tweet out they are not revealing their card either every day for the next few days.
makes sense. I guess they could disable the youtube comments, but that would probably do more harm than good.
Because they'd likely be bombarded with comments on the lawsuit. That can also happen to independent creators, but nowhere near the same level.
That's what I always said on Hearthpwn! And I've been warned twice that if I keep saying these things I'll be banned. Hearthpwn and other Hearthstone communities put posts and comments supporting the victims of this issue, but in the end they keep accepting the same behavior that lead to all this incident. Hearthstone communities (and gaming community in general) are misogynistic, racist and toxic, and the moderators and admins seem to accept it. That's probably because in the bottom end THEY AGREE with that behavior, but don't have the guts to stand for it.
I'm glad that you guys don't! Thanks for that, it's really appreciated. This game is awesome, we're also responsible for making it better for everyone.
Yeah Hearthpwn is a cesspit now. Deleting my account today.
I know right? It’s even noticeable on peoples comments on decks. Posted the same deck here (a meme with the new boar) and got positive comments. Posted it on Hearthpwn and one asshole was saying “it could be done better” and when I asked how he said I was being defensive and talked bullshit but never actually said how he would do it lol.
I bet those kind of users in Hearthpwn are the same assholes that rope even when they have 0 mana and spam emotes.
See, I didn't even have to name drop and someone immediately knew who was the dumpster fire!
So fucking gross. And to think that the people that own the company that owns the site, I used to work for. Though, these are the same people that said we shouldn't spotlight content from IGN because they didn't like the site "but if we really need to then make their link back to the content not obvious or really small". Well, not that they even really own the site anymore since they've started the process in selling it off to Mobafire for that sweet multi-million dollar cash-in. Good to see Mobafire is acquiring more toxic nonsense.
I'll add in that while I don't know if any of those folks in charge of that place necessarily agree with Blizzard's corporate take on the lawsuit, I do know for a fact that none of them care at all about anything that goes on their sites as long as they still bring in revenue. Until they see a drop in revenue, they wouldn't bother moderating negativity.
And not caring about stuff until it hurts the bank is just as fucking gross.