Microsoft closes $69 billion Activision Blizzard deal after Britain's nod
Xbox maker Microsoft closed its $69 billion deal for Activision Blizzard on Friday, swelling its heft in the video-gaming market with best-selling titles including "Call of Duty" to better compete with industry leader Sony .
Will enshitification accelerate with even more monopolistic behavior?
You know you are well within your rights to never play any Blizzard/Activision/Microsoft/EA games....right?
Vote with your wallet
Someone on reddit put this perfectly in my opinion. Saving you the trip:
You know how it goes: Some video game developer or publisher does something uncool - release a singleplayer game with predatory microtransactions, make a new game that is just a copy-pasted version of the last installment, lay off hundreds of employees for thinly disguised reasons, use some draconian DRM, get called out by an insider report for abhorrent labor conditions, etc. - and the forums and subreddits are full of comments like:
"They get away with that because you keep on buying their games!" "Hit them where it hurts: Vote with your wallet!" "They will continue to do so as long as the games sell!" “Just don't give them your money!” And I think this sentiment is utterly, totally and hopelessly naïve. Publishers don't care about your 60 bucks. They don't care about the 20 people you might convince to not make a purchase. They don't care about the loss of 1000 consumers that won't play a game because of some unpopular decision. All this is but a tiny drop compared to the sheer uninformed and uninterested masses that make up the bulk of consumers and their revenue.
The "vote with your wallet"-mantra is indicative of a culture that puts the burden of action on the individual instead of the collective. It banishes the obligation to act to the private sphere instead of the public or the political one. It's indicative of a mindset that every problem should be solved the capitalist way, i.e. by using or not using money.
I would even go one step further and say that it is actually harmful to achieving change. The political theorist Chantal Mouffe points out the importance of affects in politics: passion and emotions are strong motivator for calling for change and participating in collective movements. A person that cannels his emotions into the decision not to buy something will feel like they have done their part. This hinders their will to participate in other maybe more effective ways of problem-solving (lobbying for political regulation, exercising public pressure, initiating coordinated campaigns (petitions, shitstorms, etc.), take part in a union, etc.). […]
Why does the article make it sound like Britian is a roman emperor watching a figh in a coliseum and giving a fighter the go ahead to kill his opponent.
Maybe it is symptomatic on roughly what kind of age we live in.
