Activision-Blizzard employee shills on forums and social media are real

Community General Discussion
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A quote from this Reddit thread: The Shills Are Real

"Let me be clear on this, I am an ex-Activision/Blizzard employee. I was a Social Media Manager. You can check my twitter at AntiFlav, which used to be ATVIFlav (ATVI for Activision) and look at my post history from a few years ago that shows I was posting for Activision.

I don’t mind posting this because I don’t plan on working in the game industry again, but the shills are real. They aren’t who you think they are though. There aren’t “special shills” that get paid by the company to professionally shill. They are usually Customer Support Reps, Social Media Managers, PR, and other employees on personal accounts. They are not “required” but “encouraged” to post pro-company messages when things like BlitzChung happen. This way it’s “not” the company itself, and it seems like it is members of the general gaming public backing the company.

We did things like this for Call of Duty, and other games, when the gaming public would start to freak out. Since it wasn’t the company directly batting away the accusations, the “flames weren’t fanned” and were expected to die down after just a few days of outrage. The shills are your salaried and hourly paid employees, though you will have some diehard fans protecting the company as well. We were encouraged to push those posts to the top and argue with and bat down any negative posts.

I’m just tired of the companies doing things like this and getting away with it. I’m tired of people bringing doubt that shills exist, we know they exist. I know they exist. I was a shill myself."

So next time you voice good criticism of the game and its company on these forums, what won’t help is these Activision-Blizzard employees in these forums, that try their best to weave a message that goes against good criticism. Then they’ll like the posts that favour Activision-Blizzard’s goals and image.

Shills by game companies in the game industry is very real, you’ll find awareness on this all over the internet and not just the game industry. Posing as normal people in forums, message boards, comment sections etc.

I thought awareness on this topic is important as it helps mental health; with awareness of gaslighting and thus supports the real customers, who aren’t incentivised by a wage of said company.

(note: sadly the post being 5 years ago, the twitter account in the quote seems expired/banned but the reddit posts at the time show no challenge to the OP at the time over the material of the twitter account. Yes it could be anyone pretending to be the said Activision employee of said twitter account, but I do believe their account.)

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While this is nothing new, or suprising, if Blizzard does indeed have any such people (I don’t know if they do), I don’t expect this topic to live very long.

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Nor do I, but I can’t stand fake grass root movements and I rather people know. Shilling is a massive industry, not many people care to research it. But the chances are very high this is the case. I believe that Redditor and the reddit posts don’t challenge it, I suspect the twitter account at the time looked legit seeing as no reddit comment challenged the OP on it at the time, I can’t see it now, it was 5 years ago, banned/expired whatever. Yes it could be anyone claiming a legit twitter account of Activision’s employees, but I believe it.

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Elon Musk doesnt like it when you deadname his website despite him deadnaming his kid

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So liking something/being positive about WoW = you are a Blizzard employee undercover.

Ok.

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Why do you pull up a 5 years old reddit post in 2024?

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Because WoW is dead and current expansion™️ is the worst expansion ever.™️™️™️

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If someone says only positives about the game, or says the negatives are unimportant, they’re a shill.

If someone says positives but still pushes for changes and provides suggestions, they’re just an enthusiastic player.

If someone only says positives in negative threads and generally argues, they’re a troll and a contrarian.

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Id imagine they are the exception and get drowned out in the noise.

But well played internet sleuth, a 5 year old anonymous post on reddit is indeed a smoking gun that dodgy stuff sometimes happens in big companies.

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Why does it matter? I bet whatever they say won’t change your mind anyways.

Besides, I have been accused of this, and then it kind of ends up like the poster above said: If you are positive about the game, you are a Blizzard employee undercover.

(and I still don’t see why it matters).

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Pretty much every title Blizzard Entertainment have developed is failing (and failed with Heroes of the Storm after they stopped its development) and has for well over a decade. I’m not sure who makes the executive decisions that makes almost every Blizzard game or expansion so microtransaction/profit-focused or generally poorly made. If it’s Activision-Blizzard or Blizzard Entertainment themselves is the question.

But the fact remains that greed in the videogame industry must have an end at a near future, before enough people will lose faith in their ideas, and publishers/developers credability.

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The way you talk about furry, just gives off how much you can’t stand it. Perhaps phrase those dislikes in a more sensible way, and your posts might actually avoid deletion. The deleted posts were likely not very civil, sorry(not saying you wrote them all - just saying I doubt it is a simple as you state it is).

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I dont think every game is failling from blizzard. Look at wow - D4 they are not failling if u think that D4 failed think again. For u maybe but thats for a certain % of people not for everyone.

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It’s hard for a game to fail for a decade and still be in active development, so I’d challenge that, also, has HoTS actually stopped, I see patches from August on the HoTS homepage.

I would like see Starcraft 3, rather than more ads for call of duty on the launcher though, I’ve never played it!

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I said nothing that was even mildly offensive. I simply said they need to focus on certain other things before they start adding furry stuff. It wasn’t meant to insult.

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Nah, a huge amount of ppl stopped playing D4, else they wouldn’t rework the end-game every season so much. It’s not dead though, but I think many quit after campaign and never came back. If it was fine, they’d just have done borrowed power stuff in s4+5, but that wasn’t the case. I think wow is really Blizzard’s jewel as of now. I think wow is also the game that basically balances out all their fails, such as warcraft rumble or first 3 d4 seasons

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About rumble, I really think they need to stop with the mobile games, they are a PC (and to an extent console) developer first and foremost, they know that industry really well, let’s make it great for 2025!

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I think it’s partly because Blizzard have locked themselves in this Live Service business. All their games are effectively Live Service games these days. So their focus has shifted from making new games to sustaining these existing business streams, which leaves them with a portfolio of games that are all pretty old and heavily monetized.

And it’s difficult to get out of that focus on increasing revenue from those Live Service games, because if you click on the Credits for any of them, they are a mile long and take an hour to go through. Blizzard as a company is absolutely huge. So it’s super dependent on those revenue streams to support its operations.

And it’s really hard to shift focus to a new game and putting muscle behind it, because Blizzard gains nothing from making a cute little game that’s enjoyable and fun and you play and finish. That does nothing for them. They need games that captivate huge audiences and have business models that can rake in a constant stream of money. Juggernaut games like WoW, basically.

And they don’t seem to know how to make such games. The talent they used to have is not there anymore, and the employees they have now, well their main experience lies in making skins and battlepasses, not driving triple A game development to completion.

So yeah.

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I don’t understand the intent of this post, I mean what are people supposed to do? Go on a ‘Shill hunt’?

I understand you wanting to share your thoughts on this, but if it is the case that there are paid Blizzard employees who shill on the forums/Twitter (whatever platform), why would that stop you making valid criticisms on systems/features of the game?

If a game is bad then you will see a lot of criticism, we see a lot of threads now criticising the game, how many Shills would they have to hire to negate this?

I am not trying to be negative or controversial, I just personally think that Blizzard lost a lot of loyalty over recent years, people are not stupid and they don’t forget. No amount of Shills will make it better if Blizzard mess up hard, as there will be those that no longer have that loyalty to blizz and are not only willing, but eager to voice their criticisms.