In Spite of Their Own Guilt, Blizzard Makes Fun of EA

Games have a long and usually terrible relationship with marketing. Developers complain that marketers promise too much, while marketers are usually desperate for ideas on how to actually sell what developers are offering to a largely apathetic public. And I get it: it’s hard to be clever and fun, and when you see a low-hanging fruit, it can be easy to take a swing or two at it.

But when Blizzard decided to take to Twitter to make fun of EA and Battlefront 2, maybe they should take the time to glance at the mirror and notice how the pot, just like the kettle, is black.

Okay so here’s the story: as we reported earlier, Starcraft 2 is now more-or-less free to play, and that’s neat. Sure. But on top of advertising this change on standard channels, they also decided to talk about it over on Twitter, which led to this series of tweets:

Number of hours it takes to earn the full StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty Campaign: 0
Number of hours before you can play ANY Co-op Commander in StarCraft II: 0
Number of pay-to-win mechanics in StarCraft II: 0

There’s even a video attached to that last one, which we can embed below:



And look, I’m not saying it’s not topical or worth a chuckle, but Blizzard is seriously the last company to be bragging about this. Not only did Overwatch kick off the whole “loot box” craze (which Blizzard assumes, incorrectly, they shouldn’t be blamed for), but their very own Hearthstone falls into the exact same trap: it was recently estimated that you’d need to shell out nearly $1000 a year to get every Hearthstone card.

So yeah. Take your jabs, Blizzard. But don’t forget you’re part of the problem. Not that your fans would ever tell you that...