After thousands of hours in World of Warcraft, Jez is boycotting Blizzard

Activision-Blizzard's silence over its mishandling of this week's China-censorship controversy speaks volumes about the company's ethics. It's not a company I want to support any longer.

Activision is a scummy company.

The reason it seems to avoid the same kind of ire as companies like EA probably stems from the fact its talented developers at studios like Treyarch, Infinity Ward, and Blizzard Entertainment make genuinely good games. Activision also employs some pretty underhanded tactics to avoid the same sort of controversy as some of its contemporaries, such as adding pay-to-win loot boxes to Call of Duty Black Ops IIII, long after reviews shipped.

Overwatch's Mei loves democracy.

These sorts of ethical questions can be considered subjective. The value of loot boxes certainly rests on the individual, and clearly people are buying them in droves or they wouldn't be included. That debate is entirely separate from what Activision-Blizzard did this week, however.

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