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Long overdue letter to Activision



Activision is not getting a lot of favorable press lately. I do not know enough about the accusations to be able to say whether they are justified or not. It certainly does not sound good for Activision and there seems to be a lot of people that have shared some compelling stories about the culture within the company and it does not look good.

However, I have an entirely different issue with Activision that should also concern the stakeholders of Activison.

Activision just reported 1.92 billion in revenue and .91 cents in earnings per share. With numbers like those, you would think that they could fix the neverending glitches and issues with their flagship product “Call of Duty Modern Warfare and Black Ops” I am a huge COD fan and love to play with my buddies online. It is a ton of fun when we can all get into a game together and play without someone getting kicked. The reality is we spend more time trying to get into a game than playing.

Getting kicked from the server is not a new problem; neither is updating nearly ten times a day. I would feel differently be different if the updates We have had issues with COD since the beginning. What is hugely frustrating the problems are getting worse and occurring more frequently than ever worse, not better. My favorite glitch is when my friends and I play a full game without losing anyone (which is a miracle in itself and worthy of a festival), and we achieve victory in Warzone. Just as the celebration is about to begin and the credits start to scroll across the screen> I get the dreaded “Black Screen”!

That means I will not get credit for the win, and I will not celebrate with my friends. I will instead be trying to get back into the game after I shut my XBOX off and restart it. Then I can spend an easy 15 20 minutes just trying to get all of us in the same lobby.
Maybe you have never had these issues. You may be thinking it has to be my internet or my wifi. I felt that as well. I will admit I have spent a lot of money playing this game, and I still think it is one of the cheapest forms of entertainment out there. I used to feel like you got the bang for your buck when the game performs smoothly. So I boosted my internet to Gigablast, and I went and bought the latest and greatest 400 dollar Netgear router and modem. I hardwired my Xbox with a Cat 6 ethernet cable, and guess what?

It is worse than it has ever been. It is so bad that I just left my two buddies to play so I could go into my office and write this long-overdue letter. It is shameful that a company of this size making that kind of money can not seem to get its act together and either upgrade its servers or get rid of the crossplay. Don’t even get me started on all the PC gamers and the cheaters. I don’t have enough time to go through all the frustrating problems that my friends and I encounter on a routine basis.

If you are a shareholder of Activision, you have done very well over the years. It may be time to lock the profits and walks away. at the very least you may want to consider reducing your exposure. You do not have to sell all of your shares. Now this is only my opinion but mark my words, if ANY other gaming company comes out with a comparable game, you will see a MASS EXODUS from COD. HALO has a real shot of making this exodus occur.

I suppose, if the executives played their game and listened to what people say about how “BROKEN” their game is. They would be shocked. If they experienced the same issues day after day and they keep getting worse. The game is no longer the place I can go to relieve the stresses of my day and get lost in a world where I have experienced entertainment for hours on end. The aggravation of trying to get into a game becomes so overwhelming you don’t even want to try. I think a day of reckoning is not far off in the future for Activision. I believe management is out of touch with how dissatisfied their end-user is.

My friends and I are patiently waiting for the opportunity to leave COD behind and embark on a new journey with a new game and never look back. I wonder how many others out there feel the same way? If you do, please comment, share your horror stories, and send a message to Activision. Who knows, maybe they will get off their rumps, spend some of those earnings to fix the problems we are all experiencing, and make the game fun again before it is too late.