Thread by @Mortiel

People never grasp what I mean when I say that, in order to understand a corporation like Activision-Blizzard and why they won't change their stance on China, you have to understand who their actual customers are.

Spoiler Alert: It isn't you, the gamers.

CC: @Slasher @Grummz

Public corporations live and die by their stocks, not their product/service sales. The product/service sales are just a means to sell stocks. Their customer is investors, not consumers.

So, when Act-Blizz sees this graph, you know they have been panicking for just over a year.

Activision-Blizzard, like EA before them, has lost massive stock value over the past year because, primarily, Blizzard games don't have an attractive profit margin anymore.

The fact is Act-Blizz has been trying to get into the Chinese market because they need stronger growth.

Thus enters in Call of Duty Mobile. Launching October 1st, it promised massive market growth, especially in China, leveraging Tencent as a distribution partner. Analysts were optimistic that ATVI stock would reach $65 per share.

As you can see from the graph, that didn't happen.

Thanks to names like @Slasher and @Grummz getting mainstream media coverage, the ATVI stocks never rallied.

However, instead of taking the hint, Act-Blizz is most likely trying to find ways to get in deeper into the Chinese market. China's market is 3X the size of the US market.

There is no easy answer here. Corporations are designed to be amoral and apolitical machines that create increasing profit for investors.

All each of us should do is decide if corp behaviour merits losing our business as a consumer and, possibly, contact your Congresspeople.

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