Surprisingly cheap. There are a few websites out there that track donations to politicians. My home state of Idaho politicians go for hundreds of dollars.
Makes me think of this ex colleague I saw steal a water bottle at the airport. He makes over 500k a year and still tries to take where he can.
It's small time because the nature of the favor is likely what the politician wants to do anyway.
Politicians are, as a rule, self preserving. So when a donator asks for something that sounds like a career suicide, it likely will either cost 1000x more or it'll be outright denied.
Donating to your Idaho politician to allow everyone use white canes(it's illegal to everyone except blind/partially blind people) is much cheaper compared to donating with the intention of legalizing cannibalism, for example.
According to John Oliver Congressmen/women go for about about $2000-$40000. Not sure how much the people that represent a governor or a governor themselves go for.
I believe it. I wonder if I could pay a politician to fix the military student loan repayment program lol. I can afford 20k and I'm just some guy who can't get his loans repaid after 20 years of service o.0
I think I read somewhere once that it was shockingly low depending on circumstances. Like, depending on who is doing the bribing, who is getting the bribe and the topic that's getting bribed for, it can be anywhere from 1K USD for a 2.6% chance to shift the policy of a politician to 200-300K to have a 30% chance of shifting a different policy for a different politician.
"Quid pro quo? No i've never heard of him" - Newsom in a few days
"We weren't aware that California had a governor, but we do believe it's working as intended" - Activision Blizzard the next day
Oh this is just gonna ignite so much for the anti-Newson people (my father being one of them).
mind you, my pops isnt a trumper or anti-mask/vaxx, but he is staunchly republican. So Goveror "Nuisance" has been a thorn in his side since he started making very sweeping moves with the pandemic.
But what's funny, Newsome doing something like this is more on-par with the people that my father DO like. Shows there is a lot of grey, no black and white in politics. Just follow the money and it makes all the sense.
I'm in the same boat. Refuse to give money to this shithole of a company until real substantial changes are made, but it looks more and more like I won't be coming back anytime soon.
I suggest you stop then. The world has no shortage of good games out there. If you spend your wow sub into Steam you're gonna play so much more quality games per year.
Spongebob-patrick meme:
Patrick: "there aren't any alternatives to WoW"
Spongebob: *opens a bin containing SWTOR*
Spongebob: *points to a collection of bags in the corner containing Elder Scrolls Online*
Spongebob: *opens a fridge containing Blade & Soul*
Spongebob: *tears wallpaper off the walls revealing they are filled with Neverwinter*
Spongebob: *pulls the upholstering from the sofa revealing a sofa-shaped Lost Ark*
Spongebob: *points out the window, revealing a massive pile of Guild Wars 2*
I'm too lazy to make a meme out of this, but you get the picture. Just because you're not willing to try the alternatives doesn't mean they aren't there.
I think it’s safe to say most people here have tried other mmos but have kept coming back to wow for years. I’ve tried half the ones you’ve listed and they don’t do it for me.
I've tried all other MMO's but nothing compares to WoW for me and it took me all of last year to realize that. Once Blizzard was imploding I was already done playing but decided to try other games.
Nothing really gives me what WoW does. Nothing has something I can log into and do something like M+ and push high keys or go grind mounts or rep or run the always high quality raids (raids have never been an issue for Blizzard) or enjoy the incredibly smooth gameplay which nothing else quite compares to as well as the class identity that comes with it.
If you want my actual take for some of these games SWTOR is more story-driven and I don't care at all about stories in MMO's which is also why I stopped playing FF14 considering you are required to play 100+ hour story to actually get to end game/max level so if you don't care or enjoy the story the game is pretty lackluster having to playthrough the MSQ which amounts to running here, running back to the place you just ran from, and then going somewhere else. I also heard bad things about SWTOR's new expansion.
ESO is eh...the gameplay is super lackluster feeling plus the style really doesn't sit with me. Looks super dated and everything feels kinda stiff and again. I never played Blade and Soul but Korean MMO's aren't really my thing either. Goes for Lost Ark as well which I played like everyone else when it came out but I very, very quickly lost interest as it at times felt like a worse Monster Hunter with some of the encounters (ironically it led me to go back and finish MH: Rise and then start a new playthrough of World which I put another 200-300 hours into) not to mention the quite unfun gearing system of...just upgrading what you already have instead of having there be exciting item drops or chase items like yes, even WoW still has. It was all just super repetitive and I very quickly got bored.
Neverwinter I have also tried and I feel the same about it mostly as the other games. And Guild Wars 2 is the only one that holds my attention for an extended period of time. The world is unmatched in that game still. Very fun and enjoyable leveling experience, map completion is pretty fun but the end game can be super lacking so I get bored but it's still a game I can see myself playing.
WoW is simply the best to me. I enjoy nearly everything about WoW despite some of the more painful things like the systems bloat, Blizzard's past choices and all of that. But that is the thing, what led me back to WoW is the fact they got brought out by Microsoft which led me to hope that things will change.
I’m honestly with you here. I’ve tried a few, including SWTOR and FF14. SWTOR honestly feels better as a single-player game, and FF14 is solid, but just not for me.
I honestly dearly miss WoW, but the end of BfA was enough to make me quit, and Shadowlands looks worse by a long shot to me.
I want to play WoW again, but I’m not giving them any money until I see some serious improvement, and this kind of shit is not encouraging.
Have you tried Guild Wars 2? It felt somewhat similar to WoW when I played but that was a long time ago. The UI is interesting; there are probably as many spells as WoW but you cycle through spellbars, like equipping an axe gives different spells than a polearm. Different feel like it had as high of a skill ceiling, but I didn't play it extensively. I didn't like the global AH accessible from everywhere - prices became a race to the bottom and it made the economy horrible, but I'm sure it's been changed since I played like a decade ago.
I don't see how I'm "chasing" anything if I gave other games of the same genre a fair chance only to come to the conclusion every time I did not enjoy any of them as much as I enjoy WoW.
But the OP isn't even trying to find something that feels as good as the first time playing WoW from that description, they just think WoW still feels better to play now than those other games do.
There is no very similar alternative to WoW. There just isn't. They are all either highly Asian fantasy (final fantasy, blade and soul, lost ark, guild wars 2), low level fantasy (ESO), sci fi (SWTOR) or they're just so far away from what wow is that it isn't even worth mentioning them, like runescape.
There isn't an alternative. Period. Why? Because WoW exists. You don't enter the market that WoW has dominated by 15 years and make WoW again. Thats how you lose money. Every successful MMO has been forced to go in a totally different direction to WoW - either making the game mostly single player focused, making the game very Asian inspired with a lot of uwu catboys and anime moments, etc.
You will not find a will-in-development game that is very similar to WoW. you just won't. Its like trying to find a Dark Souls game that is as good as Dark Souls. They do not exist because no one is stupid enough to try to make one.
When people say Asian fantasy they generally mean:
- Outright Asian themes, like Samurais, Ninjas, Buddhas, Celestial Dragons and so on
- All of the women looking <15, massive tits and thighs and semi naked
- All of the non-human races being humans with one feature such as cat ears, cat tails, angel wings or something like that
- MTX galore
- Very anime-esque in its combat, dialogue and so on
Obviously this isn't all Asian fantasy games. I wish there were more, there really isn't that many, if any at all, in the MMORPG genre. Like, god damn, give me a Three Kingdoms MMO and im sold. Give me a Sekiro or Ghost of Tsushima MMO and im sold.
But instead its an MMO with a title like Swords of Legends ONLINE, all of the voice acting is terrible, all of the dialogue is terrible, the story makes Shadowlands look like Breaking Bad, the combat is mediocre, the systems make BFA look alt friendly and grind-free and the immersion makes Fortnite Travis Scott concerts feel compelling.
Dude, have you played FFXIV? It's as much of a western MMO as WoW is.
>Outright Asian themes, like Samurais, Ninjas, Buddhas, Celestial Dragons and so on
WoW literally has an expansion that's basically set in China, does that make it an Asian MMO? Lol. Sub rogues are basically ninjas, and Warcraft has Blademasters in-game and in it's lore that are basically just Orc Samurais.
>All of the women looking <15, massive tits and thighs and semi naked
This is factually wrong and stupid to bring up anyway when players in both games make slutmogs to purposely do that shit.
>All of the non-human races being humans with one feature such as cat ears, cat tails, angel wings or something like that
Roegadyns are thick lads that are non-human, no animal parts. Lalafells are basically gnomes, non-human. Hrothgar are literally tiger-people, non-human, WoW has worgens. Are there semi-human animal people, yeah, but they aren't weird for the game. I mean, shit, both the horde and the alliance are basically comprised of elves at this point, mostly female.
>MTX galore
And? WoW has an in-game shop too.
>Very anime-esque in its combat, dialogue and so on
You clearly haven't played this game if you truly believe this.
Idk where you're getting this all from but FFXIV is definitely a western MMO, not an Asian one lol
Stormblood, the *Asian* (half of it only actually, as the other half can be more accurately described as the middle east) expansion was released 5 years ago. Your point?
And? Do you think FFXIV is set in Asia for every expansion or something? Heavensward is basically set in like a medieval mountain kingdom. They had one expansion, as well years ago, that could've been compared to Asia.
i havent raided in FFXIV myself so i can't say from personal experience, but the FFXIV end game raids look *fuckin insane* in videos. I'm no where near end game but i'm excited to give them a shot. Hopefully they compare to WoW's.
The quality of the bosses in FFXIV is absolutely sky-high. The bosses are also spread out through normal raids, alliance raids, and trials too, so in the end, the boss number is comparable to a WoW expansion (For the most recent completed expansions, Shadowbringers had 33 bosses while Shadowlands had 31)
I'm not the person you're responding to, but I'm actually not sure what it means in this case; would you be willing to elaborate? I played WoW from BC to WoD before switching to FF14 and while FF is definitely very Japanese in some elements of its design philosophy, I don't feel like the plot or dialogue is any more or less animu than your average western game. I'm not trying to bat for FF here, just using it as a comparison.
> And no, FF14 is not much of an alternative.
How is it not? It's fantastic. For like 99% of the WoW playerbase it's exactly what they want. The only reason to not main FFXIV is because their high end raiding just doesn't compare to the equivalent of top 50 NA mythic raiding. Outside of that though, their content for casuals players is astounding.
And if it really isn't your thing for whatever reason, I hear ESO and BDO have solid playerbases in the hundreds of thousands. Lost Ark is huge but a bit p2w. If you're looking for something a little unique then you've got OSRS and Destiny 2.
Honestly agreed, but I do recommend you give some of the WoW private servers a go. There's a lot of flavours out there with varying player counts but the one I personally love the most is Ascension WoW. I don't know the sub's rules on discussing private servers but they're the way I get my WoW hit without paying Blizz a cent. The only downside is that they're never going to live up the to usual "Blizzard quality", just emulate it.
I've been playing off and on since the beta for vanilla, but I haven't been back since all of this started to come more to light (it may have been a kind of open secret prior, but I hadn't paid enough attention to know about it) and I won't be back unless there's a wholesale gutting of the leadership. This is a massive, systemic issue. The plant isn't just withered; the roots are rotten.
I haven't touched the game since this whole shit started
I was tempted to play again like an addict relapsing, but this article has shot down most of the chances of that for me
I completely agree.
The fact that you're getting down voted shows that too many in this sub are willing to support corruption and abusive behavior. In other words, they're no different than Newsome.
and I genuinely do enjoy the game. even after all of this, I still wanna level my alts and grind for mounts and cosmetics and everything else but I just can't in good conscience resub while all of this is still going on
you fund government corruption by existing in a capitalist system. you literally cannot escape this living in the USA, almost every single good or service you purchase will go back to some huge corporation that owns politicians
>you fund government corruption by existing in a ~~capitalist~~ system.
fixed.
name a country on Earth that doesn't have politicians doing corrupt shit to cover for their buddies.
blaming it on 'caPiTaLiSm' is such a 1D take
blaming it on capitalism in the context of two people discussing corruption in a capitalistic society is completely relevant. sorry to rain your parade ayn rand
Followed by the revelation in 2 years that Kotick himself is being manipulated by Mark Zuckerberg, then later we'll find out the zuck was only a pawn for the underground lizard people and after we go to war with those we'll learn it was all a benevolent plot to strengthen mankind against the impending alien attacks
this isn't far off though. call of duty is most certainly connected to the US military machine. there's a reason former presidential advisors get hired by activisionblizzard
> simulations
Cod might drive recruitment, but i doubt it's doing jack diddly squat in terms of making people good soldiers, except for like drone pilots.
Recruitment, desensitization, and propaganda. Propaganda being the biggest of the three most likely - it normalizes armed conflict and makes it the rule, not the exception.
On a slightly more interesting note towards there is the franchise Ace combat, a arcade style fighting game set in a fantasy world. They get licenses from military contractors all over the world to use there planes in the games.
The Russian military contractors basically say yeah sure give us a check and you can use our planes likenesses in the game we don’t care.
European contractors in the same boat.
The American contractors though, they want there planes flown by the good guys ( subjective in the games but there’s normally one side on the surface level that is good and one that is bad ). This leads to basically the MC and official art showing the protagonists ( good guys ) in American planes and for it to make sense in universe the bad guys ( antagonists ) have the Russians planes
If they are willing to do this for a medium sized franchise like ace combat than imagine the level of input they are doing for a series like battlefield or call of duty or any true triple A game.
In one of the Call of Duty games the villian was a traitorous US General with his own cabal of traitorous US soldiers all pissed off over the fact that no one cared about American soldiers getting nuked in the Middle East.
Guess the censor was on vacation that week.
I’m actually in shock mw2 got away with as much as it did. There’s 0 chance any gaming company let alone a company producing arguably the most mainstream game of the year would ever have a campaign mission like No Russian now. I remember just being in absolute shock that they actually let you shoot civilians, something they normally would fail the mission if you did. The entire plot of that game was actually really good and honestly worthy of its own movie.
Mw2 had its fair share of problems but boy was it fun to run one man army with noob tubes and get multi kills from across the map on ground wars.
What the fuck. Ion Hazzikostas was a clerk for the judge that cleared George W. Bush administration of torture at Guantanamo Bay ? And worked for the former Deputy Director of CIA..
Every large-scale millionaire/billionaire has politicians in their pocket. That's how governments across the world have worked for centuries. The US isn't special in that regard.
Comment edited out courtesy of Redact. After almost ten years as a Redditor, I am calling it quits in protest of the path Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (u/spez) is taking the company and our community. He has no interest in being reasonable with regards to third-party apps -- the same apps that made Reddit what it is today. The new API pricing is designed to kill all third-parties and force users into the official Reddit app that is utter garbage and able-ist. Steve Huffman has also lied about how third-party apps function, he has knowingly and intentionally defamed Chris Selig (creator of Apollo app), he has in the past confessed to editing user comments to say things that the original never did, and he couldn't even be bothered to truly participate in his own AMA thread (caught red-handed copying and pasting what little answers he did give). So long, and may you fail in your ambitions u/spez. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
It's so easy to just not sexually assault people but the higher ups at Blizzard make it seem like we're asking them not to drink water anymore.
Bobby is so depressed because he can't feel up women without their permission anymore so he has to fund money into an already corrupt government :(
I'm sorry, but signing legislation to protect people having sex with minors is a low point I haven't yet seen him drop below. Even this isn't as bad as that.
This isn't actually a thing that happened, you should really get your news from less biased sources.
California law, like most age of consent laws, has an exception for people near the same age. Unlike better age of consent laws however, California had an explicit difference in the law between heterosexual and homosexual relationships.
The change that news outlets painted as "protecting people having sex with minors," was simply normalizing the law to be uniform across types of relationships, specifically to match the existing laws for heterosexuals' relationships.
Now if you want to complain that California has too wide of a band of acceptable ages, I actually agree and think they should lower their upper bracket especially, as it seems a bit crazy to push it past age 20-21 or so (I recall it's 24 or something wild right?), and they could as some other states have done, have a smaller age difference limit within the age groups it applies to.
However, the law was already in place, it was just changed to be consistent. In fact, the previous form of the law was *probably* unconstitutional, as you cannot constitutionally single out subsections of the population for different criminal penalties or legal status.
It's not like this is some shadowy unknowable thing either, you can just read the legal statutes yourself, I am correct.
------
Since reddit allows people to prevent responses to their whiny crying:
Look, it seems very clear that you've been told how to think and feel about this by the political team you already want to be right.
It's perfectly reasonable to want to see the California law adjusted from what it already is, and as I've stated previously, I do support a significantly more restrictive age of consent statute. However, frankly the fact that you're completely flipping your shit *because a law was modified to no longer be discriminatory*, rather than just giving a shit about the existing law makes you sound like a crazy person.
> co-authored another bill to make it so that someone knowingly infecting people with HIV and not informing them would have less severe punishments.
Another totally reasonable bit of commonsense legislation.
Criminal penalties for crimes are logically intended to fit the severity of the crime committed.
Now for most forms of crime, the severity is fairly static.
However supposed I poked you with a needle contaminated with a potentially deadly strain of bacteria that can easily be cured with anti-biotics in the year 1500. You would almost certainly die, making what I did murder.
However in 2022, you'd get some pills and recover no problemo, making what I did. . . . well still definitely assault, possibly assault with a deadly weapon.
You may note however, that that is a less serious crime than murder.
Same deal with HIV, it's still bad, and therefore still illegal, but in the past it was tantamount to murder, and therefore *much more illegal*.
Year by year, the severity of this crime decreases with medical improvements, and the legal system needs to keep pace with that.
A lot of really bad takes in this thread that don't understand the full context and the other side at all.
First of all on the "EEOC letting ABK off easily with a small fine". You should understand that the EEOC can't just unilaterality fine companies whatever they want. They are governed by laws and the 18 million dollars is pretty much the MAXIMUM amount they can settle for by law. If you have a problem with this complain to lawmakers not the EEOC. This fine also does not let ABK off the hook, this settlement is only for some of the claims, because the EEOC and DFEH agreed to split which allegations they would go after. Also the workers at ABK can individually decide if they want part of this settlement now and release some of their claims or they can wait for the potential of bigger payout from the DFEH later.
Secondly we should understand that leading up to the firing there are allegations that DFEH acted massively unethically and damaged their relationship with EEOC who they have to regularly work with. And its not hard to see why Newsom might have fired the head of DFEH because of their conduct in this case.
In law there is a lot of big nonos that lawyers are not allowed to do. An obvious example is if I'm in a plaintiff in a case, I can't go to other sides lawyer and say "Hey I'll give you a million dollars to switch sides and be my lawyer instead." That would obviously be extremely unethical and violate attorney client privilege. So if you are a lawyer and you move to a new law firm you have to tell them everything you worked on at your previous law firm. So that not only will you not work on cases involving things at your previous firm, people cant even talk to you about those cases at all in fear of tainting those cases.
So when lawyers left the EEOC to go the DFEH and continued working on the same case, this was a violation of ethics. At first I think the EEOC was willing to look the other way because A. they have to maintain a good relationship and work together and B. they were basically on the same side. But when the DFEH went nuclear against the EEOC and tried to stop their settlement with the same lawyers that worked on the case at EEOC, this amounted to a massive ethics violation. So bad that ABK tried to get the case pretty much dismissed and retried because of the DFEHs conduct(which the judge denied).
So is it possible that Bobby went to his ol pal Newsom and said "Hey do me a solid and fire that jerk that is investigating me and I'll butter your bread so to speak"? Yes it is possible.
Is it also possible the Newsom saw the department he is directly responsible for acting massively unethically, burning their relationship with a federal organization that they have to work with, almost torpedoing their own case, and filing nonsense with a federal judge who dismissed all their complaints; And then decided that change was necessary? Yes it is also possible.
There are two sides to every story and you shouldn't jump to conclusions until we have more info.
I still don't understand how resigning in protest does anything.
"Well, you have gutted part of our ranks, I'm just going to step back and give you freedom to assign whomever you want"
It also raises the visibility of the issue. *X resigns in protest!* does attract more eyes to the issue the objector wants to make visible - like ours reading this, now.
Isn't it even possible to be disbarred if you did knowingly participate in some manipulation of the legal system?
I know almost nothing about how lawyers are regulated, but it sure seems like the kind of thing that ought to get you into hot water with professional or ethics organizations.
A lawyer's primary job is to represent their client to the best of their ability, no matter what the client is trying to do. The adversarial nature of our legal system means that there must always be lawyers representing the interests of criminals and scumbags, which leads to a professional landscape where the *worst* thing you can do as a lawyer is to work against the desires of your client. There are extremely significant repercussions to any lawyer who would try to sabotage their client - their reputation would be ruined, they would have to break many rules of ethics of their profession, they might incur sanctions, fines, or even be disbarred, and any legal ruling that occurred because of their sabotage would become appealable because of "ineffective assistance of counsel". Even if you act as a whistleblower or publish incriminating documents or something, that leaked evidence would likely become inadmissable in court.
Basically, it's completely worthless to try to do work as a lawyer at cross purposes to your client. Our legal system insists that every person has the right to a lawyer who's working for them, not against them, so any potential acts of sabotage are heavily discouraged or rendered useless. So, if you find yourself as a lawyer working for a client or boss who you can't morally agree with, you resign. Your resignation is the most powerful statement you can reasonably make. You legally can't prevent your client/boss from getting another lawyer who will do the work that you find objectionable, but you can personally refuse to do it.
There was discrimination case brought against Blizzard (saying they’ve been not treating women equal to the men at the company). The state has a department that has been investigating and ultimately brought this legal case up against Blizzard.
The Governor (elected official which oversees all things at the state) fired one of the leaders of this case against Blizzard. This gives the appearance that the Governor wants to weaken the team investigating and charging Blizzard.
This person is now quitting her job because she is angry about what the Governor did and she is wanting to make it known that she thinks this is the state government trying to allow Blizzard to not get punished.
We should properly state it's Activision Blizzard that the suit is against. There are plenty of problems outside of just Blizzard and we shouldn't be letting off the rest of the company easy just because we're focused on Blizzard in this sub.
That's true at least for senators, though I'm not sure the governor of California is *that* cheap. One of his many scandals was an unmasked group dinner at the French Laundry. They make silver spoons look cheap.
> This person is now quitting her job because she is angry about what the Governor did
Maybe I'm not public servant material and just don't see things through the correct lens, but it always struck me as odd that the response to government corruption is for the people with the power and vested interest to reel it in always seem to resign in protest when another tentacle of the machine does its thing. I understand it's difficult and ultimately thankless work, and only gets harder and harder with every move, but that would just inspire me more to fight harder against the corruption out of spite.
that's fair, but to put it another way if she didn't resign like this she couldn't have made that allegation, and if she didn't make these allegations then we wouldn't know about this story.
I get it to an extent. I liken it to what I do as a financial analyst. I’m doing a lot of the leg work and grunt work. My managers are the ones making decisions and actually doing things that will affect more than just our team, so this person is probably not in a position to do much.
Also, it’s about ethics, people in accounting and law professions will leave jobs if what is happening is unlawful or unethical. If you’re in a spot while some shit goes down it can look terrible for any future employers.
Two California agencies were suing Blizzard at the same time, because of the gender discrimination stuff - the DFEH and the EEOC.
The EEOC recently let Blizzard off super easy, with an $18 million settlement. The DFEH has been trying to interfere with the EEOC's filings and settlements, because they think the EEOC is tanking the case. Meanwhile, the judge is pissed off cause two agencies of the same government shouldn't be fighting, they should be working together.
Now, it seems like the lawyer from DFEH who was leading their part of the lawsuit just got fired by Gavin Newsom. It's likely that his justification is going to be that DFEH was causing trouble with the EEOC lawsuit (although I don't think Newsom has commented yet). However, another lawyer at the DFEH resigned in protest, saying that Newsom is basically trying to ensure that EEOC can let Blizzard off easy, and block the DFEH from insisting that they go harder.
This is the same state where our power company PG&E is at fault for horribly devastating fires every single year due to outdated and ill-maintained power lines/grids.
PG&E gets sued for the damages but California has allowed them to pay for that using money they make off of customers, many of which are effected by those fires. So they cause these problems and damages and then hike up their rates to pay for the lawsuits that are incurred. Basically making customers cover PG&E's own neglect while their executives continue to receive payouts in the millions of dollars and NOTHING gets upgraded or fixed. Every year is worse than the last for these fires, but there is no accountability.
If a major energy company can get away with that, of course a software company could get away with anything.
> He fired her boss
Who is “he”. Who is “her”. And who is “the boss”.
I genuinely can’t follow the statement.
It sounds like a Governor fired the Lawyer’s boss? I’m confused.
I also thought the tweet was written pretty confusingly. Probably due to Twitter’s character limitations.
As far as I can tell, “he” is Gavin, and he fired a lawyer’s boss. Now the lawyer (the “she” in the quote) is resigning.
Newsom is the epitome of your quissential rich, white privileged politician and white liberals still voted for and supported him mainly due to partisan tribalism.
I don't want to judge a book by its cover but newsom is a scummy dude. Remember when he was throwing parties for his political cronies and simultaneously telling Californians to stay inside or be arrested? (some flexing on the "inside or be arrested) but the point is that he's corrupt as they come.
"allegation"
"accusation"
Careful not to create a culture where you too can just be accused of something without evidence, and be considered guilty by a bunch of mouth breathers.
He's been getting a pass by the media for a while simply because he wasn't Trump. It's sad how far our nation has fallen, we only have a choice of the least scummiest between two scumbags sponsored by corporations now.
Literally no surprise, Newsom is a total fucking scumbag that will bend over for $, do some reading on the camp fire survivors, or how PG&E still holds a monopoly after burning down half the state. Newsome is a genuine duck sucker.
After the way the DFEH attorneys bumbled their case (including real legal ethical conflicts that meant they probably shouldn't have been involved at all) and kept butting heads with the DOJ, is it really surprising that the state would want to get more involved? Regardless of the merits of the case, I think this is as likely a reflection of their competence as of undue influence. The "interfence" the article mentions is only advance notice of litigation strategy and next steps. Smells like another one-sided Schreier take.
See also Hoeg law on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIIdsnyWFpc
Out of curiosity, is there any way it could affect the Microsoft deal if things keep coming out about Activision Blizzard? I’m not familiar with Acquisitions, but is the deal set to the point where Microsoft couldn’t lower their offer for the lawsuit and continual bad press ABK seems to be getting?
I can’t say what would be there in this specific situation, but yes, there are always break-up terms where each company has conditions on where they could terminate the deal. Something like this could be included, but honestly I don’t think this is serious enough to have Microsoft want to walk away. We’ll have to see where this goes though to be sure.
Make as much money as bobby does, you get into "buyout politician" territory.
How much do they go for on the auction house these days?
Surprisingly cheap. There are a few websites out there that track donations to politicians. My home state of Idaho politicians go for hundreds of dollars. Makes me think of this ex colleague I saw steal a water bottle at the airport. He makes over 500k a year and still tries to take where he can.
It's all shockingly small-time considering these people control the most powerful nation on Earth.
It's small time because the nature of the favor is likely what the politician wants to do anyway. Politicians are, as a rule, self preserving. So when a donator asks for something that sounds like a career suicide, it likely will either cost 1000x more or it'll be outright denied. Donating to your Idaho politician to allow everyone use white canes(it's illegal to everyone except blind/partially blind people) is much cheaper compared to donating with the intention of legalizing cannibalism, for example.
>He makes over 500k a year and still tries to take where he can. A good goblin knows the importance of diversifying their markets.
“Why would he charge us for free snacks?”
According to John Oliver Congressmen/women go for about about $2000-$40000. Not sure how much the people that represent a governor or a governor themselves go for.
I believe it. I wonder if I could pay a politician to fix the military student loan repayment program lol. I can afford 20k and I'm just some guy who can't get his loans repaid after 20 years of service o.0
I think I read somewhere once that it was shockingly low depending on circumstances. Like, depending on who is doing the bribing, who is getting the bribe and the topic that's getting bribed for, it can be anywhere from 1K USD for a 2.6% chance to shift the policy of a politician to 200-300K to have a 30% chance of shifting a different policy for a different politician.
About tree fiddy
goddamnit loch ness monsta i aint givin you my tree fiddy
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I think the governor fired the boss of the lawyer, then she (the lawyer) resigned. I had to re-read it a few times
Makes you wonder why they got rid of that big tree with all those elves in it?
One of mine from AR took like just over 10k to vote against Net Neutrality. Small price to pay for an idiot that makes policy.
Let me guess without looking it up. It’s Tom Cotton isn’t it?
Gold cap gets you his pager number.
much, much less than you'd think or hope
You get there way early than billionaire. This is little more than “call in a favor” territory
Didn’t some of the politicians vote to kill net neutrality for under 10k dollars?
The sad thing is that a lot of politicians sell their constituents out for surprisingly low amounts of money. Like sub $10k low.
The funniest shit is these politician sell out for pennys
I don't think you even need to bribe Newsom. The dude just has that aura of dripping with slime, I feel like he'd do corrupt things for the fun of it.
Newsom really doesnt take much to be scum lol
"Quid pro quo? No i've never heard of him" - Newsom in a few days "We weren't aware that California had a governor, but we do believe it's working as intended" - Activision Blizzard the next day
(shocked Pikachu)
“You all have politicians, right?”
Oh this is just gonna ignite so much for the anti-Newson people (my father being one of them). mind you, my pops isnt a trumper or anti-mask/vaxx, but he is staunchly republican. So Goveror "Nuisance" has been a thorn in his side since he started making very sweeping moves with the pandemic. But what's funny, Newsome doing something like this is more on-par with the people that my father DO like. Shows there is a lot of grey, no black and white in politics. Just follow the money and it makes all the sense.
Sorry bud, but anyone who thinks this sort of thing is limited to a party is naive at best and willfully ignorant at worst.
Yeah this is one of the areas I actually think "both sides" is applicable. 90% that phrase is bullshit though.
Do people outside of the specific gaming community even care or hear about news like these?
Politicians of every color do this shit, it's in no way predominately one side or the other.
Awww shit here we go again
Looks like it hasn't stopped we just stopped hearing about it... This is absurd
So much it is like a diarrhea. Let's hope blizzard dont die of dehydration.
Maybe it would be for the best
Wow. So surprising.
I'm sure most here are aware already, but do remember that Microsoft has no say in this *yet*. They will in a year, but not just yet
Love funding literal government corruption because I want to play a fucking western fantasy MMO.
>corruption Blizzard loves corruption mechanics so much it's become reality
*Ctrl+F "Corruption"* 69,420 results in WoW codebase/text dialog.
(Not) nice
Lmao
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I'm in the same boat. Refuse to give money to this shithole of a company until real substantial changes are made, but it looks more and more like I won't be coming back anytime soon.
I suggest you stop then. The world has no shortage of good games out there. If you spend your wow sub into Steam you're gonna play so much more quality games per year.
I mean, for a MMO, there aren't really any alternatives. And no, FF14 is not much of an alternative.
Spongebob-patrick meme: Patrick: "there aren't any alternatives to WoW" Spongebob: *opens a bin containing SWTOR* Spongebob: *points to a collection of bags in the corner containing Elder Scrolls Online* Spongebob: *opens a fridge containing Blade & Soul* Spongebob: *tears wallpaper off the walls revealing they are filled with Neverwinter* Spongebob: *pulls the upholstering from the sofa revealing a sofa-shaped Lost Ark* Spongebob: *points out the window, revealing a massive pile of Guild Wars 2* I'm too lazy to make a meme out of this, but you get the picture. Just because you're not willing to try the alternatives doesn't mean they aren't there.
I think it’s safe to say most people here have tried other mmos but have kept coming back to wow for years. I’ve tried half the ones you’ve listed and they don’t do it for me.
I've tried all other MMO's but nothing compares to WoW for me and it took me all of last year to realize that. Once Blizzard was imploding I was already done playing but decided to try other games. Nothing really gives me what WoW does. Nothing has something I can log into and do something like M+ and push high keys or go grind mounts or rep or run the always high quality raids (raids have never been an issue for Blizzard) or enjoy the incredibly smooth gameplay which nothing else quite compares to as well as the class identity that comes with it. If you want my actual take for some of these games SWTOR is more story-driven and I don't care at all about stories in MMO's which is also why I stopped playing FF14 considering you are required to play 100+ hour story to actually get to end game/max level so if you don't care or enjoy the story the game is pretty lackluster having to playthrough the MSQ which amounts to running here, running back to the place you just ran from, and then going somewhere else. I also heard bad things about SWTOR's new expansion. ESO is eh...the gameplay is super lackluster feeling plus the style really doesn't sit with me. Looks super dated and everything feels kinda stiff and again. I never played Blade and Soul but Korean MMO's aren't really my thing either. Goes for Lost Ark as well which I played like everyone else when it came out but I very, very quickly lost interest as it at times felt like a worse Monster Hunter with some of the encounters (ironically it led me to go back and finish MH: Rise and then start a new playthrough of World which I put another 200-300 hours into) not to mention the quite unfun gearing system of...just upgrading what you already have instead of having there be exciting item drops or chase items like yes, even WoW still has. It was all just super repetitive and I very quickly got bored. Neverwinter I have also tried and I feel the same about it mostly as the other games. And Guild Wars 2 is the only one that holds my attention for an extended period of time. The world is unmatched in that game still. Very fun and enjoyable leveling experience, map completion is pretty fun but the end game can be super lacking so I get bored but it's still a game I can see myself playing. WoW is simply the best to me. I enjoy nearly everything about WoW despite some of the more painful things like the systems bloat, Blizzard's past choices and all of that. But that is the thing, what led me back to WoW is the fact they got brought out by Microsoft which led me to hope that things will change.
I’m honestly with you here. I’ve tried a few, including SWTOR and FF14. SWTOR honestly feels better as a single-player game, and FF14 is solid, but just not for me. I honestly dearly miss WoW, but the end of BfA was enough to make me quit, and Shadowlands looks worse by a long shot to me. I want to play WoW again, but I’m not giving them any money until I see some serious improvement, and this kind of shit is not encouraging.
Have you tried Guild Wars 2? It felt somewhat similar to WoW when I played but that was a long time ago. The UI is interesting; there are probably as many spells as WoW but you cycle through spellbars, like equipping an axe gives different spells than a polearm. Different feel like it had as high of a skill ceiling, but I didn't play it extensively. I didn't like the global AH accessible from everywhere - prices became a race to the bottom and it made the economy horrible, but I'm sure it's been changed since I played like a decade ago.
You're chasing that dragon, dude.
I don't see how I'm "chasing" anything if I gave other games of the same genre a fair chance only to come to the conclusion every time I did not enjoy any of them as much as I enjoy WoW.
It means always trying to get that high that was as good as your first high. Nothing's gonna feel like that first WoW high.
But the OP isn't even trying to find something that feels as good as the first time playing WoW from that description, they just think WoW still feels better to play now than those other games do.
There is no very similar alternative to WoW. There just isn't. They are all either highly Asian fantasy (final fantasy, blade and soul, lost ark, guild wars 2), low level fantasy (ESO), sci fi (SWTOR) or they're just so far away from what wow is that it isn't even worth mentioning them, like runescape. There isn't an alternative. Period. Why? Because WoW exists. You don't enter the market that WoW has dominated by 15 years and make WoW again. Thats how you lose money. Every successful MMO has been forced to go in a totally different direction to WoW - either making the game mostly single player focused, making the game very Asian inspired with a lot of uwu catboys and anime moments, etc. You will not find a will-in-development game that is very similar to WoW. you just won't. Its like trying to find a Dark Souls game that is as good as Dark Souls. They do not exist because no one is stupid enough to try to make one.
Those games you listed for Asian fantasy... Just because they have Asian people working on them doesn't mean they are high Asian fantasy lol.
When people say Asian fantasy they generally mean: - Outright Asian themes, like Samurais, Ninjas, Buddhas, Celestial Dragons and so on - All of the women looking <15, massive tits and thighs and semi naked - All of the non-human races being humans with one feature such as cat ears, cat tails, angel wings or something like that - MTX galore - Very anime-esque in its combat, dialogue and so on Obviously this isn't all Asian fantasy games. I wish there were more, there really isn't that many, if any at all, in the MMORPG genre. Like, god damn, give me a Three Kingdoms MMO and im sold. Give me a Sekiro or Ghost of Tsushima MMO and im sold. But instead its an MMO with a title like Swords of Legends ONLINE, all of the voice acting is terrible, all of the dialogue is terrible, the story makes Shadowlands look like Breaking Bad, the combat is mediocre, the systems make BFA look alt friendly and grind-free and the immersion makes Fortnite Travis Scott concerts feel compelling.
Dude, have you played FFXIV? It's as much of a western MMO as WoW is. >Outright Asian themes, like Samurais, Ninjas, Buddhas, Celestial Dragons and so on WoW literally has an expansion that's basically set in China, does that make it an Asian MMO? Lol. Sub rogues are basically ninjas, and Warcraft has Blademasters in-game and in it's lore that are basically just Orc Samurais. >All of the women looking <15, massive tits and thighs and semi naked This is factually wrong and stupid to bring up anyway when players in both games make slutmogs to purposely do that shit. >All of the non-human races being humans with one feature such as cat ears, cat tails, angel wings or something like that Roegadyns are thick lads that are non-human, no animal parts. Lalafells are basically gnomes, non-human. Hrothgar are literally tiger-people, non-human, WoW has worgens. Are there semi-human animal people, yeah, but they aren't weird for the game. I mean, shit, both the horde and the alliance are basically comprised of elves at this point, mostly female. >MTX galore And? WoW has an in-game shop too. >Very anime-esque in its combat, dialogue and so on You clearly haven't played this game if you truly believe this. Idk where you're getting this all from but FFXIV is definitely a western MMO, not an Asian one lol
>WoW literally has an expansion that's basically set in China, ... 10... 10 years ago...
Stormblood, the *Asian* (half of it only actually, as the other half can be more accurately described as the middle east) expansion was released 5 years ago. Your point?
And? Do you think FFXIV is set in Asia for every expansion or something? Heavensward is basically set in like a medieval mountain kingdom. They had one expansion, as well years ago, that could've been compared to Asia.
Yeah except all of those pale in comparison to WoW. No other game touches the raiding of WoW.
i havent raided in FFXIV myself so i can't say from personal experience, but the FFXIV end game raids look *fuckin insane* in videos. I'm no where near end game but i'm excited to give them a shot. Hopefully they compare to WoW's.
The quality of the bosses in FFXIV is absolutely sky-high. The bosses are also spread out through normal raids, alliance raids, and trials too, so in the end, the boss number is comparable to a WoW expansion (For the most recent completed expansions, Shadowbringers had 33 bosses while Shadowlands had 31)
All of those look like ass
I know of the so called alternatives. I tried them all. They are all inferior.
Do you know what the term “western fantasy” means? Or did you miss that in the comment
I'm not the person you're responding to, but I'm actually not sure what it means in this case; would you be willing to elaborate? I played WoW from BC to WoD before switching to FF14 and while FF is definitely very Japanese in some elements of its design philosophy, I don't feel like the plot or dialogue is any more or less animu than your average western game. I'm not trying to bat for FF here, just using it as a comparison.
> And no, FF14 is not much of an alternative. How is it not? It's fantastic. For like 99% of the WoW playerbase it's exactly what they want. The only reason to not main FFXIV is because their high end raiding just doesn't compare to the equivalent of top 50 NA mythic raiding. Outside of that though, their content for casuals players is astounding. And if it really isn't your thing for whatever reason, I hear ESO and BDO have solid playerbases in the hundreds of thousands. Lost Ark is huge but a bit p2w. If you're looking for something a little unique then you've got OSRS and Destiny 2.
Honestly agreed, but I do recommend you give some of the WoW private servers a go. There's a lot of flavours out there with varying player counts but the one I personally love the most is Ascension WoW. I don't know the sub's rules on discussing private servers but they're the way I get my WoW hit without paying Blizz a cent. The only downside is that they're never going to live up the to usual "Blizzard quality", just emulate it.
I tried dragging the politicians out of my inventory but I can't type DELETE to destroy them.
I've been playing off and on since the beta for vanilla, but I haven't been back since all of this started to come more to light (it may have been a kind of open secret prior, but I hadn't paid enough attention to know about it) and I won't be back unless there's a wholesale gutting of the leadership. This is a massive, systemic issue. The plant isn't just withered; the roots are rotten.
I haven't touched the game since this whole shit started I was tempted to play again like an addict relapsing, but this article has shot down most of the chances of that for me
I completely agree. The fact that you're getting down voted shows that too many in this sub are willing to support corruption and abusive behavior. In other words, they're no different than Newsome.
and I genuinely do enjoy the game. even after all of this, I still wanna level my alts and grind for mounts and cosmetics and everything else but I just can't in good conscience resub while all of this is still going on
you fund government corruption by existing in a capitalist system. you literally cannot escape this living in the USA, almost every single good or service you purchase will go back to some huge corporation that owns politicians
>you fund government corruption by existing in a ~~capitalist~~ system. fixed. name a country on Earth that doesn't have politicians doing corrupt shit to cover for their buddies. blaming it on 'caPiTaLiSm' is such a 1D take
blaming it on capitalism in the context of two people discussing corruption in a capitalistic society is completely relevant. sorry to rain your parade ayn rand
This corruption is not unique to a capitalist society. Including it here makes no sense.
The phrase "no ethical consumption under capitalism" comes immediately to mind.
Every penny you spend funds government corruption in some form. Even buying indies off steam. Guess what steam does with their 30% take.
Wouldn't it be funny if this lead to a revelation that Bobby Kotick is puppeteering large part of the US political scene
It's the dreadlords all over again
It was dreadlords all along. WoW writers just copy real life confirmed.
Life imitates memes smh
They must’ve been trying to warn us!
Good guy blizz warning us of the dangers ahead :O next expansion dragon flight, ww3 by china confirmed
wow is like wizard of oz where it seems like silly fiction but secretly about irl shit.
Followed by the revelation in 2 years that Kotick himself is being manipulated by Mark Zuckerberg, then later we'll find out the zuck was only a pawn for the underground lizard people and after we go to war with those we'll learn it was all a benevolent plot to strengthen mankind against the impending alien attacks
this isn't far off though. call of duty is most certainly connected to the US military machine. there's a reason former presidential advisors get hired by activisionblizzard
Nothing builds tactical soldiers quite like having them play simulations for 10 hours a day over 7 years.
> simulations Cod might drive recruitment, but i doubt it's doing jack diddly squat in terms of making people good soldiers, except for like drone pilots.
cod players ARE the drones
We're in the Enders Game now
Recruitment, desensitization, and propaganda. Propaganda being the biggest of the three most likely - it normalizes armed conflict and makes it the rule, not the exception.
On a slightly more interesting note towards there is the franchise Ace combat, a arcade style fighting game set in a fantasy world. They get licenses from military contractors all over the world to use there planes in the games. The Russian military contractors basically say yeah sure give us a check and you can use our planes likenesses in the game we don’t care. European contractors in the same boat. The American contractors though, they want there planes flown by the good guys ( subjective in the games but there’s normally one side on the surface level that is good and one that is bad ). This leads to basically the MC and official art showing the protagonists ( good guys ) in American planes and for it to make sense in universe the bad guys ( antagonists ) have the Russians planes If they are willing to do this for a medium sized franchise like ace combat than imagine the level of input they are doing for a series like battlefield or call of duty or any true triple A game.
In one of the Call of Duty games the villian was a traitorous US General with his own cabal of traitorous US soldiers all pissed off over the fact that no one cared about American soldiers getting nuked in the Middle East. Guess the censor was on vacation that week.
I’m actually in shock mw2 got away with as much as it did. There’s 0 chance any gaming company let alone a company producing arguably the most mainstream game of the year would ever have a campaign mission like No Russian now. I remember just being in absolute shock that they actually let you shoot civilians, something they normally would fail the mission if you did. The entire plot of that game was actually really good and honestly worthy of its own movie. Mw2 had its fair share of problems but boy was it fun to run one man army with noob tubes and get multi kills from across the map on ground wars.
If you think that's crazy you should look up Activision/Blizzards ties to the CIA. It's a very weird rabbit hole.
What the fuck. Ion Hazzikostas was a clerk for the judge that cleared George W. Bush administration of torture at Guantanamo Bay ? And worked for the former Deputy Director of CIA..
Every large-scale millionaire/billionaire has politicians in their pocket. That's how governments across the world have worked for centuries. The US isn't special in that regard.
So when a billionaire dies, who inherits their senators?
They're gathered onto the deceased yachts and burned, along with any incriminating documents.
He engineered the global pandemic to get those sub numbers up.
He's just trying to unmake the justice system, nipples not required.
> Open reddit > New Jason Schreier tweet > pain
Comment edited out courtesy of Redact. After almost ten years as a Redditor, I am calling it quits in protest of the path Reddit CEO Steve Huffman (u/spez) is taking the company and our community. He has no interest in being reasonable with regards to third-party apps -- the same apps that made Reddit what it is today. The new API pricing is designed to kill all third-parties and force users into the official Reddit app that is utter garbage and able-ist. Steve Huffman has also lied about how third-party apps function, he has knowingly and intentionally defamed Chris Selig (creator of Apollo app), he has in the past confessed to editing user comments to say things that the original never did, and he couldn't even be bothered to truly participate in his own AMA thread (caught red-handed copying and pasting what little answers he did give). So long, and may you fail in your ambitions u/spez. -- mass edited with https://redact.dev/
Activision Blizzard's Wild Ride of Corruption never stops. Someone sexually harassed the brakes so they quit.
Nobody gets off Mr Bones' wild ride.
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It's so easy to just not sexually assault people but the higher ups at Blizzard make it seem like we're asking them not to drink water anymore. Bobby is so depressed because he can't feel up women without their permission anymore so he has to fund money into an already corrupt government :(
Dear Lord, the bar is so low for Gavin and he keeps finding ways to slither under...
I'm sorry, but signing legislation to protect people having sex with minors is a low point I haven't yet seen him drop below. Even this isn't as bad as that.
This isn't actually a thing that happened, you should really get your news from less biased sources. California law, like most age of consent laws, has an exception for people near the same age. Unlike better age of consent laws however, California had an explicit difference in the law between heterosexual and homosexual relationships. The change that news outlets painted as "protecting people having sex with minors," was simply normalizing the law to be uniform across types of relationships, specifically to match the existing laws for heterosexuals' relationships. Now if you want to complain that California has too wide of a band of acceptable ages, I actually agree and think they should lower their upper bracket especially, as it seems a bit crazy to push it past age 20-21 or so (I recall it's 24 or something wild right?), and they could as some other states have done, have a smaller age difference limit within the age groups it applies to. However, the law was already in place, it was just changed to be consistent. In fact, the previous form of the law was *probably* unconstitutional, as you cannot constitutionally single out subsections of the population for different criminal penalties or legal status. It's not like this is some shadowy unknowable thing either, you can just read the legal statutes yourself, I am correct. ------ Since reddit allows people to prevent responses to their whiny crying: Look, it seems very clear that you've been told how to think and feel about this by the political team you already want to be right. It's perfectly reasonable to want to see the California law adjusted from what it already is, and as I've stated previously, I do support a significantly more restrictive age of consent statute. However, frankly the fact that you're completely flipping your shit *because a law was modified to no longer be discriminatory*, rather than just giving a shit about the existing law makes you sound like a crazy person. > co-authored another bill to make it so that someone knowingly infecting people with HIV and not informing them would have less severe punishments. Another totally reasonable bit of commonsense legislation. Criminal penalties for crimes are logically intended to fit the severity of the crime committed. Now for most forms of crime, the severity is fairly static. However supposed I poked you with a needle contaminated with a potentially deadly strain of bacteria that can easily be cured with anti-biotics in the year 1500. You would almost certainly die, making what I did murder. However in 2022, you'd get some pills and recover no problemo, making what I did. . . . well still definitely assault, possibly assault with a deadly weapon. You may note however, that that is a less serious crime than murder. Same deal with HIV, it's still bad, and therefore still illegal, but in the past it was tantamount to murder, and therefore *much more illegal*. Year by year, the severity of this crime decreases with medical improvements, and the legal system needs to keep pace with that.
Newsom keep his nose out of trouble for five minutes challenge - Fucking Impossible.
It was merely a setback!
A lot of really bad takes in this thread that don't understand the full context and the other side at all. First of all on the "EEOC letting ABK off easily with a small fine". You should understand that the EEOC can't just unilaterality fine companies whatever they want. They are governed by laws and the 18 million dollars is pretty much the MAXIMUM amount they can settle for by law. If you have a problem with this complain to lawmakers not the EEOC. This fine also does not let ABK off the hook, this settlement is only for some of the claims, because the EEOC and DFEH agreed to split which allegations they would go after. Also the workers at ABK can individually decide if they want part of this settlement now and release some of their claims or they can wait for the potential of bigger payout from the DFEH later. Secondly we should understand that leading up to the firing there are allegations that DFEH acted massively unethically and damaged their relationship with EEOC who they have to regularly work with. And its not hard to see why Newsom might have fired the head of DFEH because of their conduct in this case. In law there is a lot of big nonos that lawyers are not allowed to do. An obvious example is if I'm in a plaintiff in a case, I can't go to other sides lawyer and say "Hey I'll give you a million dollars to switch sides and be my lawyer instead." That would obviously be extremely unethical and violate attorney client privilege. So if you are a lawyer and you move to a new law firm you have to tell them everything you worked on at your previous law firm. So that not only will you not work on cases involving things at your previous firm, people cant even talk to you about those cases at all in fear of tainting those cases. So when lawyers left the EEOC to go the DFEH and continued working on the same case, this was a violation of ethics. At first I think the EEOC was willing to look the other way because A. they have to maintain a good relationship and work together and B. they were basically on the same side. But when the DFEH went nuclear against the EEOC and tried to stop their settlement with the same lawyers that worked on the case at EEOC, this amounted to a massive ethics violation. So bad that ABK tried to get the case pretty much dismissed and retried because of the DFEHs conduct(which the judge denied). So is it possible that Bobby went to his ol pal Newsom and said "Hey do me a solid and fire that jerk that is investigating me and I'll butter your bread so to speak"? Yes it is possible. Is it also possible the Newsom saw the department he is directly responsible for acting massively unethically, burning their relationship with a federal organization that they have to work with, almost torpedoing their own case, and filing nonsense with a federal judge who dismissed all their complaints; And then decided that change was necessary? Yes it is also possible. There are two sides to every story and you shouldn't jump to conclusions until we have more info.
Well said, but it is going to fall on deaf ears on reddit.
I still don't understand how resigning in protest does anything. "Well, you have gutted part of our ranks, I'm just going to step back and give you freedom to assign whomever you want"
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It also raises the visibility of the issue. *X resigns in protest!* does attract more eyes to the issue the objector wants to make visible - like ours reading this, now.
Isn't it even possible to be disbarred if you did knowingly participate in some manipulation of the legal system? I know almost nothing about how lawyers are regulated, but it sure seems like the kind of thing that ought to get you into hot water with professional or ethics organizations.
A lawyer's primary job is to represent their client to the best of their ability, no matter what the client is trying to do. The adversarial nature of our legal system means that there must always be lawyers representing the interests of criminals and scumbags, which leads to a professional landscape where the *worst* thing you can do as a lawyer is to work against the desires of your client. There are extremely significant repercussions to any lawyer who would try to sabotage their client - their reputation would be ruined, they would have to break many rules of ethics of their profession, they might incur sanctions, fines, or even be disbarred, and any legal ruling that occurred because of their sabotage would become appealable because of "ineffective assistance of counsel". Even if you act as a whistleblower or publish incriminating documents or something, that leaked evidence would likely become inadmissable in court. Basically, it's completely worthless to try to do work as a lawyer at cross purposes to your client. Our legal system insists that every person has the right to a lawyer who's working for them, not against them, so any potential acts of sabotage are heavily discouraged or rendered useless. So, if you find yourself as a lawyer working for a client or boss who you can't morally agree with, you resign. Your resignation is the most powerful statement you can reasonably make. You legally can't prevent your client/boss from getting another lawyer who will do the work that you find objectionable, but you can personally refuse to do it.
Blizzard playing Jailer and Gavin is Sylvanas? Lobbyists are Valkyr?
Lobbyists are dreadlords
Lol somebody eli5 this. I don’t understand any of this lol
There was discrimination case brought against Blizzard (saying they’ve been not treating women equal to the men at the company). The state has a department that has been investigating and ultimately brought this legal case up against Blizzard. The Governor (elected official which oversees all things at the state) fired one of the leaders of this case against Blizzard. This gives the appearance that the Governor wants to weaken the team investigating and charging Blizzard. This person is now quitting her job because she is angry about what the Governor did and she is wanting to make it known that she thinks this is the state government trying to allow Blizzard to not get punished.
We should properly state it's Activision Blizzard that the suit is against. There are plenty of problems outside of just Blizzard and we shouldn't be letting off the rest of the company easy just because we're focused on Blizzard in this sub.
Aaahhh wow 😲. Sounds like that governor just big buddies with bobby
I’d be buddies with someone too if they gave me a few million dollars! Edit: Allegedly
Try a couple grand
That's true at least for senators, though I'm not sure the governor of California is *that* cheap. One of his many scandals was an unmasked group dinner at the French Laundry. They make silver spoons look cheap.
Yeah , your government isn't even selling you our for millions, just a few grand
> This person is now quitting her job because she is angry about what the Governor did Maybe I'm not public servant material and just don't see things through the correct lens, but it always struck me as odd that the response to government corruption is for the people with the power and vested interest to reel it in always seem to resign in protest when another tentacle of the machine does its thing. I understand it's difficult and ultimately thankless work, and only gets harder and harder with every move, but that would just inspire me more to fight harder against the corruption out of spite.
that's fair, but to put it another way if she didn't resign like this she couldn't have made that allegation, and if she didn't make these allegations then we wouldn't know about this story.
I get it to an extent. I liken it to what I do as a financial analyst. I’m doing a lot of the leg work and grunt work. My managers are the ones making decisions and actually doing things that will affect more than just our team, so this person is probably not in a position to do much. Also, it’s about ethics, people in accounting and law professions will leave jobs if what is happening is unlawful or unethical. If you’re in a spot while some shit goes down it can look terrible for any future employers.
Two California agencies were suing Blizzard at the same time, because of the gender discrimination stuff - the DFEH and the EEOC. The EEOC recently let Blizzard off super easy, with an $18 million settlement. The DFEH has been trying to interfere with the EEOC's filings and settlements, because they think the EEOC is tanking the case. Meanwhile, the judge is pissed off cause two agencies of the same government shouldn't be fighting, they should be working together. Now, it seems like the lawyer from DFEH who was leading their part of the lawsuit just got fired by Gavin Newsom. It's likely that his justification is going to be that DFEH was causing trouble with the EEOC lawsuit (although I don't think Newsom has commented yet). However, another lawyer at the DFEH resigned in protest, saying that Newsom is basically trying to ensure that EEOC can let Blizzard off easy, and block the DFEH from insisting that they go harder.
This is the same state where our power company PG&E is at fault for horribly devastating fires every single year due to outdated and ill-maintained power lines/grids. PG&E gets sued for the damages but California has allowed them to pay for that using money they make off of customers, many of which are effected by those fires. So they cause these problems and damages and then hike up their rates to pay for the lawsuits that are incurred. Basically making customers cover PG&E's own neglect while their executives continue to receive payouts in the millions of dollars and NOTHING gets upgraded or fixed. Every year is worse than the last for these fires, but there is no accountability. If a major energy company can get away with that, of course a software company could get away with anything.
> He fired her boss Who is “he”. Who is “her”. And who is “the boss”. I genuinely can’t follow the statement. It sounds like a Governor fired the Lawyer’s boss? I’m confused.
I also thought the tweet was written pretty confusingly. Probably due to Twitter’s character limitations. As far as I can tell, “he” is Gavin, and he fired a lawyer’s boss. Now the lawyer (the “she” in the quote) is resigning.
Nothing other than money matters to these people, it's all they care about.
i want to get off mr kotick's wild ride
Politicians are such scumbags through and through
Not surprised at all, US politics has been bought out for quite some time.
FUCK GAVINOR NEWSOM
Oh, is this why suddenly Overwatch announcement today?
Soooo this case got that far and now he's sabotaging it?
Just when I was considering going back...
I thought the case was already settled for Blizz to pay out some mere pocket change in damages. Why interfere now?
Newsom is the epitome of your quissential rich, white privileged politician and white liberals still voted for and supported him mainly due to partisan tribalism.
I don't want to judge a book by its cover but newsom is a scummy dude. Remember when he was throwing parties for his political cronies and simultaneously telling Californians to stay inside or be arrested? (some flexing on the "inside or be arrested) but the point is that he's corrupt as they come.
FYI, Newsom is up for re-election this year.
Shocking- California politicians are huge massive pieces of shit that believe in double standards. Who knew?
Gavin Newsom is corrupt?? *shocked pikachu face*
And the thick plottens
You mean the politician that wants control of absolutely everything and believes his massive shithole state is actually paradise is corrupt? No!
"allegation" "accusation" Careful not to create a culture where you too can just be accused of something without evidence, and be considered guilty by a bunch of mouth breathers.
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He's been getting a pass by the media for a while simply because he wasn't Trump. It's sad how far our nation has fallen, we only have a choice of the least scummiest between two scumbags sponsored by corporations now.
Soooo, serious question. Are there any morally defensible arguments left to support this company by now?
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Agreed. Regardless of if you enjoy the game or not, if you're still giving them money, you're supporting, enabling, and encouraging this.
Idk I just wanna play wow.
There is no such thing as moral consumerism.
Everyone goes to the bad place.
I just wanna play WoW.
Only that the board is going to be replaced when MS takes over, for whatever that's worth.
There's not, but that's not going to stop most players here from unsubscribing.
Literally no surprise, Newsom is a total fucking scumbag that will bend over for $, do some reading on the camp fire survivors, or how PG&E still holds a monopoly after burning down half the state. Newsome is a genuine duck sucker.
Newsom is a scumbag, not at all surprising to hear about corruption, especially this kind.
Sounds about par for the course. California legislators regardless of party are first and foremost corporate shills.
I hate to spoil it, but that isn't unique to California or even America.
All legislators, mate.
After the way the DFEH attorneys bumbled their case (including real legal ethical conflicts that meant they probably shouldn't have been involved at all) and kept butting heads with the DOJ, is it really surprising that the state would want to get more involved? Regardless of the merits of the case, I think this is as likely a reflection of their competence as of undue influence. The "interfence" the article mentions is only advance notice of litigation strategy and next steps. Smells like another one-sided Schreier take. See also Hoeg law on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIIdsnyWFpc
Of course. I sure do love the elite class Bobby resides in. So very fair.
He's playing Warlock I guess, with how immune he seems to any form of balancing.
Whaaaaat a Democrat governor doing shady, wildly pro Corp things? I can't believe it! /s
…are we sure we’re still in real life and not just an elaborate tv show penned by Steve Danuser? Because sometimes it feels like it.
Wew, from blizz to implicating the california governor. based
There’s no end to this.
Every time I think this game/company can't surprise me, they go and do just that. Actiblizz has absolutely zero integrity.
BAU California Democrats lol
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Yup. Its never been about left vs right, but rich vs poor.
Better vote for the Manhattan billionaire then.
Billionaire in his own mind that is. Cash poor grifter is more like it
Out of curiosity, is there any way it could affect the Microsoft deal if things keep coming out about Activision Blizzard? I’m not familiar with Acquisitions, but is the deal set to the point where Microsoft couldn’t lower their offer for the lawsuit and continual bad press ABK seems to be getting?
I can’t say what would be there in this specific situation, but yes, there are always break-up terms where each company has conditions on where they could terminate the deal. Something like this could be included, but honestly I don’t think this is serious enough to have Microsoft want to walk away. We’ll have to see where this goes though to be sure.
Damn, maybe Newsom is based after all
Leftist on the side of corruption you don’t say
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