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Blizzard apologizes for anti-gay slurs at BlizzCon
During BlizzCon last week, the lead singer of Cannibal Corpse, affectionately known as George "Corpsegrinder" Fisher, was shown in a video explaining just how much he hates Alliance players in World of Warcraft. Although the video was censored and edited from its original version for the live crowd, the video is notorious for being filled with anti-gay slurs used to describe his hatred of the Alliance. Taking quick action to apologize for the lapse in judgment, Blizzard's president, Mike Morhaime, issued a written statement to GayGamer.net taking personal responsibility for airing the video, which you can read in its entirety after the cut.
This Week in MMO: Honestly EVE edition
The life expectancy of subscriptions -- and the enormous discussion swirling around it -- is at the forefront of Gamebreaker.TV's This Week in MMO. Massively's own Rubi Bayer joins the crew as they analyze Mark Jacobs' comments on subscriptions vs. free-to-play. Jacobs' blunt labeling that most F2P games are "crap" is incendiary, although it's hard to deny there are a lot of shoddy titles out there. The roundtable goes on to talk about CCP's apology to EVE Online players and what's being done to repair faith, trust, and ship-spinning in the game. It seems that frank apologies from higher-ups to customers is en vogue these days, from Netflix to Square-Enix, although it's debatable how much face is saved from such actions. Hit the jump to watch the full episode!
The Daily Grind: Are you mollified by developer apologies?
If you're playing Final Fantasy XIV or just following news about the game, you've been witness to developers repeatedly eating crow for any and all flaws with the game. In the eyes of some players, of course, the damage has been done, and no amount of apologizing will help. For others, however, a simple apology makes things more palatable. Whatever flaws the game might have are made more bearable when you know the people in charge are working on cleaning them up. There are a lot of times when development teams have been forced to take public blame, putting out letters and dispatches to assuage player concerns.. The real question is, does it make a difference? If you get a heartfelt apology from the development team and a promise to fix things up, do you feel placated? Or do you just wonder why the problems that prompted the apology weren't addressed in the first place? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
Hon Hai completely drops suit against "iPod City" journos
After folding under public (and perhaps governmental) pressure and reducing the damages it was seeking against two Chinese journalists from 30 million yuan ($3.77 million) to just 1 yuan (12 cents), Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry has now wised up and dropped the libel suit altogether. As a quick review (though we doubt that you need one), Hon Hai took legal action against China Business News' Wang You and Weng Boa following their report on the much-publicized working conditions at the Foxconn plant lovingly dubbed "iPod City," asking for compensation amounting to many times the reporters' annual salaries and convincing a court to temporarily freeze their assets. The PR nightmare ended on Sunday when Hon Hai chose not to pursue the case any further, according to China's official Xinhua news agency, and was capped off with a mutual apology between the firm and newspaper for all the trouble that the lawsuit had caused. In an encouraging sign that this method of dispute settlement may actually be gaining ground elsewhere in the world, TiVo followed the announcement by sending a bouquet of flowers to Echostar, NTP decided to return the $612 million it won from RIM inside a Hallmark greeting card, and Shannon Derrik and Stephanie Eick (the iPod lawsuit girls) realized after a mediated tea party that they wanted to forgo the legal silliness and go back to being BFFs.
