HomAx

It's becoming increasingly obvious to me that no content creators are talking negatively about any aspects of Overwatch because they're essentially on a "legal" undisclosed payroll from Blizzard, using the exclusive Twitch Drops system as a loophole. Blizzard's exclusive OWCS co-streaming drops were given to 91 streamers and the rules say that "Co-streams will be monitored by the OWCS to ensure all guidelines are upheld, including maintaining a positive environment." Then right after it says "We reserve the right to remove co-streamers from the program at any time." Essentially they're saying "Maintain a positive enviroment when streaming our game or we will remove you from the program". Now the question becomes: why wouldn't they just give Drops to everyone if they're already going to give them to 91 people? Because they can add or remove you from that list at any time, for whatever reason they choose. When streaming with exclusive Drops, you can see a massive increase in viewers and as a result revenue. Potentially up to 10x your normal viewership. Blizzard doesn't necessarily have to directly pay a streamer or explicitly tell them to speak positively about the game, but they control access to something that can significantly increase a creator's revenue. At any point, Blizzard could take away your exclusive Drops access, and your viewership and revenue could plummet as a result. Even if Blizzard never explicitly threatens to do that, the incentive is still there. After not playing the game for a year or two, I came back and immediately noticed the blatant lack of quality, terrible ranked systems and scummy monetisation Blizzard has been pushing lately and yet I noticed almost no content creators talking negatively about it. I'm not calling out the content creators for this or saying they're purposefully glazing the game for money. The point is that there is an inherent bias created by this system, whether it's conscious or not. So when listening to or reading any content creator's opinion about Overwatch, do some research into whether they have access to these exclusive Drops. It doesn't automatically mean their opinion is dishonest, but it does mean there may be an undisclosed financial incentive and conflict of interest behind it.