Activision Blizzard Lays Off Hundreds Despite "Record Year", A Far Cry From Nintendo's Caring Approach

Oh that Bobby. *tustles his hair

And here I was, actually looking forward to the CTR and Spyro remakes coming out on Switch. Crud.

Wow. Real slick guys. Way to be jerks >:[

Saw Diablo on sale in the eshop last night after reading this on Polygon and didn't pull the trigger as a result. Not saying I'm boycotting them, but it made me feel gross to think about giving them money while they're letting people go (needlessly depending on how you look at it).

That being said I'm sure this was the plan all along, (Crush out products, hit record numbers, lower overhead to keep all the cash while a 2019/2020 strategy gets figured out). Capitalism can be very ugly.

This is what happens when you put your investors first. I'm so tired of these big AAA publishers chasing trends and monetizing their games up the wazoo instead of truly trying to innovate and make products worth our time and money, pumping out soulless "live services" where the only goal is unlimited profit through microtransactions. People are finally realizing this isn't a sustainable business model and unchecked capitalism doesn't work because there's only so much money to be made before people start questioning why they're spending money on your product. I feel for the employees, but this is exactly what Activision Blizzard as a publisher deserved. From bad business decision (Diablo mobile) to bad business decision, AB and all of these other big publishers' stock is dropping faster than Soulja Boy consoles and it has been a long time coming.

Please support indie devs, folks. Support companies that care about their employees. Say what you will about how backwards Nintendo can be, but Iwata fell on his sword and cut his own pay to keep people employed.

Oh Activision...

That's the issue with AAA game companies - they're companies, not people. They're focused on their bottom line above all else, and if they have to crush hundreds of passionate employees' dreams to boost their profits, there's no reason to hesitate.

It's just another reason why Nintendo and indies are often the very best the industry has to offer nowadays, they cut out the corporate crap.

@Spudtendo Took the words out of my mouth!

Maybe I should have my own company and have the worst year ever. I would hire over 800 employees!

the mainstream AAA industry is dying an overdue death.
it's just a shame that working class folks in the business are being dragged along the way

Stuff like this is one of the main reasons I would NEVER work for a company or corporation. Would much rather close the doors on my business and start another than let some other person determine that I am essentially useless as a worker. I know many don't have the "stones" to strike out on their own but the evidence is there. These companies don't care about you, they will let you go in an instant. There really is no such thing as "job security" when you work for a company like this. Wish these folks the best and hope they find something else soon.

Last game I played by Activision was Pitfall! for the Atari 2600.

@ilikeike

It's sad. I wish I didn't have to cry doom and gloom all the time, but it sucks to see so many of my favorite companies tank because they shacked up with a rotten publisher. It happened to Bungie, it happened with Bioware, and now it's happening to Blizzard. Bungie got out while the getting was good, I hope Blizzard can save itself but things aren't looking great.

This is why I find it amusing that some people think I'm a fanboy for boycotting most AAA publishers (Activision, EA, Take Two, Bethesda, Ubisoft) and their games. I used to be big on a lot of franchises they own, but they're going downhill. Even singleplayer games are no longer free from in-game cash shops. Franchises and developers that used to be all about incredible singleplayer experiences like Fallout and Bioware have jumped on the live service bandwagon, and at worse they're terrible broken messes and at best just pretty okay Destiny clones.

Game devs need to unionize. This is just sickening.
Nintendo is far from perfect (it is a massive corporation, after all), but at least the executives took the fall when they were in trouble, instead of employees just doing their jobs.

Oh and by the way, before you deem Nintendo to be "caring" you should check out their glass door reviews. https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Nintendo-of-America-Reviews-E4173.htm

You should write that Article.

@Charlie_Girl
True dat. While I might have responded in a way less mature way during my school years, nowadays I can really relate a lot, being unemployed myself. It sucks for me to say as much, yet here we are. At times you just oughta feel something on your skin to relate.

Awful in the short term. May be good in the long term, as other competitors come in to fill the gap.
The smaller EA and Activision are the better imo.

Hmm think it has also to do with the mentality of a nation to be honest.

That's always sad to hear, really. But that's how these corporations roll. All they're doing, in Activision's case, is trying to pocket that success by laying people off in the process.

This is the unfortunate consequence of an overtly bloated industry. Honestly, I long for the days when gaming, as a whole, was a popular past time rather than a multi-billion dollar industry which has made mince meat out of many of my favorite companies: Konami, Squaresoft (say what you will, but Square Enix's current crop can't touch their 16-32 bit era output), Capcom, Sunsoft, Electronic Arts (remember when EA was an innovative company? I do!), etc. Honestly, the loss of the Konami I remember is what truly stings the most!

Alright y’all it’s time to cancel Activision.

Thats the diference between Japanese business culture and American... And one of the reasons I prefer to buy Japanese. Don't change Japan!

This is straight up disgusting.

Like if they barely managed an almost nonexistent profit or lost money I get it but literally the best results in company history for a company that generally makes good profits and you go “Hmm boss gets 15 Million and let’s fire 800 people”

@Borngis

Unions can't do much to stop people getting fired for economic reasons.

Typical fire the employees but the not the CEO and management that screwed up management and wasted money. This will not go down well for them. Doing what they are doing is lining their pockets at expense of hard working staff that wants to develop good games. This will come out sooner or later that it had nothing to do with anything but GREED from management to enrich themselves at expense of employees and consumers.

@RandomNerds

3.6/5 is a solid score.

So, you'd think they would fire the guy who said "Don't you guys have phones?" and the upper management who promoted that out-of-touch attitude...instead, those guys all get bonuses and they fire the poor hard working people on the bottom. Sheesh....

While Nintendo do have a more admirable philosophy, you do need to bear in mind that the executives taking a pay cut is largely symbolic rather than economic.
Iwata wasn't on that large a salary anyway, in comparison to the EA and Activision types. His pay cut wouldn't have paid that many people's salaries at all.
It's mostly just signalling a kind of "we're all in this together" attitude. Which I think IS worth doing, but we should be clear that's what it actually is. It's NOT the CEOs getting paid at the expense of a large number of staff.

@Lone_Beagle and others — That's why I got out back in 2002. I was at Midway and when they allowed middle management, leaders (supervisors and their boss) to let the programming monkeys goof off for months and fail to meet deadlines guess who got punished? Test lab, console tech standards people, test leads, other lower tier operational folks. Unless you committed working 7 days a week at least 8-12 hours, which meant on your day off or rarer 8 hour day not helping another team, you were on a quiet list. Did not matter how accurate, fast, good of a person you were, they kept those who basically sucked up to supervisors around and fired (laid off) the rest. Much of the industry has been this way since things went 3D 20 years ago, so what Activision did here is nothing new. They jump from one level of ineptness (slacking, blowing your boss) to another (microtransaction abuse, lofty impossible goals) and screw the hardest working types.

it drove me out and into the game media for 4 years, and when that started to get all parasitic and similar with the back biting, sucking up, and slacking off work on others — I quit.

Investors. Companies used to be greedy enough before having to post more profit each year to be viable.

Oh, Activision...
And to think you could have made SO much money by porting some of your older Call of Duty's to the Switch...

@Pikachupwnage Eh, it could be better maybe ok for a huge company, but you should read the actual reviews, seems to be a pretty old school boys club mentality which isn't surprising. Don't get me wrong I love Nintendo and think they are a great company but they aren't a perfect shining example of how to grow a healthy company culture.

No wonder why Mike stepped down as CEO it probably killed him to go to work every day knowing this was going to happen. This is the kind of thing a CEO would know potentially a year in advance too.

This is the problem with western companies and governments: They think only on the big heads, not the small people, that do the hard job. Someone said capitalism, Japan is a capitalist country, yet, their philosophy differs greatly from western companies and governments. [removed] Activision, I won't get anything from them from now on, let's see how they do if this is their worst year financially. Let's speak with our wallets people.

@RandomNerds that seems to be specific to Nintendo of America though. Of all the major branches they actually seem to be the most "traditionally corporate" so to speak.

I recall when the Switch was getting big, a lot of major indies noted they had to go through Nintendo of Europe or Nintendo of Japan directly to get on the eshop since at the time NoA only wanted to deal with bug fish AAA third party publishers which give me the feeling the rush of indies titles on Switch was no way their personal idea and perhaps even a change they were initially opposed to.

@RandomNerds
yeah, there's no such thing as a caring for-profit corporation.

Coming from experience myself working for a corporation, this is typical stuff. When some corporations report high profit, they "could" spread that around to everyone, or just toss some peoples' livelihoods for more money straight to the top brass' pockets. Another sad tale that I wish would end.

@Edu23XWiiU tbh Japanese corporate culture can be it's own kind of crazy but with examples like Nintendo I get the feeling than in some case it's at least one whose expectations are applied more evenly to all echelons.

@Charlie_Girl People who work in the video game industry are hardly "working class", unless you're talking about the cleaning staff. As I understand "working class" is the low income low-skill labour, like builders, street cleaners, factory workers etc. Not people with degrees in management or marketing.

Still sucks to be fired though, middle-class is hardly living in palaces as well. It's a good thing the big corporations are marking loss in stock value at least; their business model cannot last forever and sooner or later it has to fail.

It's great that they cannot snuff out indie devs, like it happens in other corporate-run industries. Good luck creating your own internet providing service in the States!

Aw, boo-hoo, Activision didn't get their "full potential" so they gave their employees the boot. This is facepalm-worthy!

The problem is that gaming has become mainstream. Hear me out for a second...

Gaming is now considered a normal form of entertainment, just like music, movies and others. And like those, games simply started becoming "products" like any others. To the people running Activision, games don't matter. They could be selling vaccum cleaners, investors wouldn't care. To them. it's a product like any other. "Games" is simply a label to descibe the products they are making.

Truth is, most big companies out there are run like this. Shareholders don't care about what the company is producing. They care about their return on investment, about their shares going up, and not much else. They pay people like little Bobby here to make as much money as the company can, and if Bobby think they can make even more money than they did in their record year by laying off more people, then that's what going to happen.

Activision aren't making games anymore. They make commercial products like any other, that just happen to be games.

Exactly like most top 40 radio music is engineered and all sound the same. Exactly like most Hollywood movies out there that are made to mostly drive people to the theatre with spectacular CG and focus-group-voted happy endings.

You want real music that feels like music? You want a movie made with passion? You want games that were made by talented people who want to make the best game, not the best "commercial product"? You simply need to step out of the mainstream and look elsewhere.

It's just sad (and ironic) to see an icon like Activision, that was founded by disgruntled Atari programmers who wanted to be respected by their employer, turning out exactly like what the original founders were protesting against.

Copy & paste from Sister site Pushsquare, not worried about overlap.

Translation - we need to fire people now to have more money for stock buybacks and paying more in dividends to our shareholders.

https://www.streetinsider.com/Dividend+Hike/Activision+Blizzard+%28ATVI%29+Raises+Annual+Dividend+8.8%25+to+%240.37%3B+%241.5B+Buyback/15116958.html

Edit: Sorry, last link was paywalled, this one is the full article with the numbers at the end.

"The company also revealed that it is increasing its dividend by 9%, to 37 cents a share, and that the board approved a two-year, $1.5 billion stock-repurchase plan."

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/activision-blizzard-earnings-and-forecast-come-up-short-of-expectations-amid-layoffs-2019-02-12

One point five billion with a B dollars. How many employee salaries would that cover? 1,500 employees, if they were getting paid $1 mil per year.

Look, I'm not defending the gross bonuses to the higher-ups, but I don't think it's that difficult to understand how a business can be successful while still having some unsuccessful money-dumps that need pruning. We'll have to see how these layoffs play out.

@Realnoize I think gaming has been "main stream" since at least the late 90's with the Playstation, GameCube and Dreamcast, but it really exploded in the early 2000's when PS2 sold 150m consoles and Xbox had the marketing of MS behind it, telling the masses to buy 100m Wii and 80m X360 and PS3. That's 240m consoles in 1 generation that ended 6 years ago.

The problem now is the rich have won and they don't need to hide their disdain for the working man anymore. No more Illuminate boogey man in the dark, Davos meetings are right out in the open telling everyone greed is good, embrace the masters. Fox News tells people "fairness" is wrong and we should stop teaching it to our children. Tax codes are written by the rich, for the rich, to get richer, they barely even bother with lip service any more.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/rasing-taxes-on-the-rich-fox-news-host-blames-the-idea-of-fairness-2019-02-05

So yes, gaming is main stream, but that's not why it's all about the money at the cost of the workers, the workers have lost, that's why. No unions, no pensions, no power, no money, no jobs. Just $1.5B in stock buybacks. That's where the money goes, from one group of rich guys to the other group of rich guys. That's the new meaning of "share the wealth". 😝

@RandomNerds I've known 2 people that worked at NoA actually, and both loved the job I can say at least. Neither works there anymore though.

@SmaggTheSmug there is no middle class in late stage capitalism

Best financial results in history, still lay off people - Activision

Well, what i can expect from the company that killed Heroes of the Storm development and was sad that "only made $500 million" during BO4 first week (which was more than Avengers Infinity War).

@Charlie_Girl Then we must be far from it since middle class has been pretty much growing for the last 50 or more years. Even socialist countries like China had middle class emerge as a consequence of adopting a more capitalist approach.

@RandomNerds I checked it out... and their glass doors reviews are actually pretty good. Keeping in mind that people who are upset are far more likely to post on there, and the scores I've seen for other companies...? I'm not sure what your point is.

Is it wrong that I hope these big "AAA" companies collapse in a crash? I can't help but feel they've sucked the soul out of gaming.

@WiltonRoots I feel like most of them have. Ubisoft has... sort of gone back to getting what gaming is about (most of the time), Sega and Capcom and Bandai-Namco have been heading back to their roots, even Squeenix is mostly doing far better these days than a decade ago.

It's mostly EA and A-B that still seem to be heading in that direction and well... there might be enough space in the market for just those two to go at it.

This definitely is devastating for affected employees. I took over a Blockbuster store with terrible shrink and in 3 months time got it perming third in the region before the company went out later. So I can relate a bit.
Did everyone else read the part about it coming mostly from esports and publishing departments? In other words, not the folks making the games that some of you will now ‘boycott’?

I've always wondered why businesses do this.

I have worked for a big global corp before and just because they made record profits doesn't mean that every division is profitable. It's still very hard to hear - why not focus on ironing out the issues?

Activision are obviously very bad at shutting studios down. A family member of mine worked at a studio that Activision closed and apparently it was a mess at the end. They knew it was coming because no one was really working on anything, except helping out on COD

Nintendo's focus on employees is great but I'm sure there are issues there too. Japanese working culture isn't known for being amazing, and Nintendo do have a habit of making very odd business decisions

Wow, talk about one sided reporting. What is happening NL?

It is a "record year" but they lost Bungie and they had an entire division working on support for Destiny they have zero need for. Forecast for 2019 is down.

Also, everyone At Blizzard gets 2 Bonuses a year depending on the profit for that quarter. So they have profit sharing with the artist that make games. They actually hiring more Game Designers and Digital Artist.

And back in 2014 they did layoff people - they just kicked EU workers out, and saved face in Japan

https://kotaku.com/nintendo-of-europe-will-lay-off-320-people-this-month-1627924242

I always thought Activision Blizzard was a subsidiary of Activision, not the other way around.

@RandomNerds That is only looking at Nintendo of America only though.

@Agramonte I was expecting the corporate apologists to come sooner, thanks for showing up to defend your buddy Bobby. Also, we're in 2019, not 2014, might need to update your calendar

Those 800 people could have been put to use in a new department for the company exploring anything from innovation to continuous improvement. Waste of talent.

@gortsi

"As you may remember, back in 2014 following disappointing financial results...."

You might want to read the article. But yeah, I was expecting the corporate apologists to come sooner - with their selective memory.

I get the feeling Activision is not as healthy as they try to pretend with "record earnings." They've bee taking some desperate measures, they lost Bungie and Destiny, let alone that they seemed worried that their second flagship game underperformed, when it didn't. They seem kind of panicky. And a large scale stock buy-back smacks in the face as full-scale alarm. Companies projecting growth don't buy back stocks. Companies trying to wrest control while they expect free-fall do.

More telling, if the layoffs are largely from eSports and publishing, that means they're not trying to produce a reduction in game content, but rather they expect to be publishing less games, and being less involved with competitive events....leaving.....what exactly out of their already thinned portfolio? Activision does not sound healthy at all right now.

@rjejr Glad you're as dismally lost in despair as I!

@Pres_Shinra It's not really Japanese vs. American business. It's Japanese vs. Global business. Japanese companies remain nationalist (except Sony), the rest are just "global corporations"....I.E. they're effectively their own private counties with no loyalty to anyone but themselves and those who pay their way. "Global" is a cute way of saying "stateless serfdom." Once upon a time they called it "an empire." Now it's "globalism."

@link3710 I guess I don't have one. #shame #shame #shame

@Agramonte nobody defended Nintendo for firing people, unlike Bob Cottick's lap dogs here and on other sites

Sigh. Honestly, its almost ironic whats happening. The company was founded by a bunch of angry atari employees who wanted more respect from their bosses. Times sure do change, don't they?

@ilikeike even though Nintendo still is one of the AAA publishers. But their Japanese background makes them a lot better than most of the American publishers.

@gortsi No they just wrote 4 paragraphs on "Nintendo's 'employee-first' approach" in 2014... and "forgot" to mention they did the exact same thing during the time they talking about.

And pointing out the self serving half-truths in an article is not "defending" anything. It is pointing out self serving half-truths 🙃

Shame this happened, but to be honest there were plenty of warning signs in plain sight that should've had people looking elsewhere for jobs long before this was announced.

@Agramonte "It is a "record year" but they lost Bungie and they had an entire division working on support for Destiny they have zero need for. Forecast for 2019 is down.

Also, everyone At Blizzard gets 2 Bonuses a year depending on the profit for that quarter. So they have profit sharing with the artist that make games. They actually hiring more Game Designers and Digital Artist"

Bobby couldn't have said it better, you should ask him to hire you for PR, you'd be great.

Sick the way companies do this to make more money for its stock holders and get those bonuses. I will never buy another activision game again. If this is how you treat people. I treat you the same. Way to screw up some lives. Enjoy that mountain of money your sitting on. One day it will be a pit.

@sanderev Of course. Obviously Nintendo isn't perfect - I know some people who worked for NoA and I'll just say that the environment definitely isn't as fun and friendly as the Mushroom Kingdom. However, given the abject cruelty that some western AAA devs have shown, Nintendo seems pretty great in comparison.

This happens because investors are eager to make INSANE returns — like, unrealistic returns each year.....

So if a company doesn't deliver the moon, investors are immediately disappointed and start jumping ship. But instead of doing what Satoru did in 2014, most company execs won't even consider taking a cut — even if their income is still insanely healthy after said cut.

After all, why make $1 million per year when one can make $1.3 million instead? That's the exec mentality, and it's sickening. Everyone is at fault here, from investors to company execs.

It's dead Jim...

Sad to see such an epic developer like Blizzard fall so far.

This is poor corporate communications from a big company - this would never happen where I work.

It actually sounds like a restructure - the gaming department is killing it - but the eSports side has badly failed, and is being cut back.

Gaming is mainly not affected.

Like I said above ... Poor corporate communications. Maybe there is more detail this site is glossing over.

@Charlie_Girl late stage capitalism? Everyone should make the same wage and everything is supposed to be free right? Or if they are unwilling to work that’s ok too. Here’s some money. 🙄

Definitely time to boycott Activision.

I live in a neighborhood of LA where Activision has offices and I see the COD folks all the time at Starbucks getting coffee. It’s sad to think some may lose their job. With the US unemployment rate being well below 5%, they should be able to rebound quickly. I wish them the best. Bobby Kotick on the other hand...

@gortsi

NL "shared the news that the company had once again achieved record results in 2018" (pointed out the "rest" of the bad news they also "shared" about 2019)

NL "earlier this year, Activision Blizzard granted awards to its new CFO" (Blizzard give 2 cash bonus to artist also)

And you conveniently left out the 2014 one.

All 3 point had to do with how this article was written. You just do not like "Fact Checking" when not convenient 🙃

@Agramonte NL is not obliged to reproduce an entire financial briefing or press release, you want those, go to Activision's website. Number 2 (the cash bonus) might as well be an urban legend as you keep repeating it yet with no sources. I didn't leave out 2014, but that happened 5 years ago. This is happening now. Stop being a corporate apologist, you aren't making any money out of it

While I'd love to eventually get into game development for some famous AAA titles, things like this are one of the reasons why I'm content to work for a smaller (albeit growing) company.

My best wishes go out to all who are affected by these layoffs. I'm as confounded by this news as everyone else.

@Edu23XWiiU @Steel76 Please mind your language!

@gortsi

Errrr... It is in the Kotaku article NL sourced for this one - the link is in the article you commenting on.

"as profit-sharing bonuses for the previous year to those who are being laid off at Blizzard. (Blizzard employees receive twice yearly bonuses based on how the company performed financially)

And again, The article is not just about "what is happening now" - They have quotes from 5 years ago in it. So yes, anyone can fact-check it what happened in 2014.

Just gotta hope those people getting the sack end up finding better opportunities working somewhere else. Like or hate Activision, they still have some seriously talented people.

Unfortunately, big business doesn't exist to keep people in employment. Heck, no kind of business exists for that purpose. Yes, it's sad people are losing their jobs, but hundreds of thousands lose and gain jobs every day. A company can decide they have too many people for what they need. From most articles, it's not actual game developers that are being let go, but roles like PR and marketing.

Now they can tag eachother instead of #metoo
Its #Activisionsucks

Japanese are different...

This is not surprising as the infiltration of interchangeable corporate drones have removed the real developers and industry veterans from positions of importance. What we will see next is history repeating itself in a slightly different way wherein the industry contracts after repeatedly scamming the consumer in the pursuit of profits. As examples I give you streaming video games, loot boxes and fake "free to play" games where the consumer is lured into overspending.It really is greed at its core.

That’s insane to hear!! That’s just about Enron level type greed right there!! Good luck to all those laid off! All to aid those that already are well off or millionaires! Smh 🤦‍♂️

@NEStalgia "dismally lost in despair"

That's not my despair voice, that's my viva la revolucion voice.
Though it may be a little rusty, haven't used it for 30 years.

They milk the life out of their franchises and have ignored the Switch for the most part. It feels like Activision have been heading for a fall for some time.

@NEStalgia I kinda agree, but I think that European companis are not so savage as American ones

@rjejr I am now picturing you in a Che beret. It ain't pretty.

@Pres_Shinra Maybe true in some cases where European companies are a bit more nationalistic, particularly with more "large family owned" companies there still than here (though they're dwindling under the onslaught of the multinational), but in general the problem is with the publicly traded global companies, there is no such thing as European or American companies. There's the sovereign corporation and they plant their flag wherever the tax benefit is to their advantage. Whoever controls the board controls the company, and generally, through one laundering subsidiary or another it's the same funds and banks that control most companies' boards.

The irony is that getting away from the central banks and their total control of all things was one of the primary reasons the colonists here revolted against the parent countries there.....and we ended up in the slightly worse spot under their boots anyway!

@cappa yeah, they have reduced their portfolio to the quick, banking on infinite sales at peak in a handful of brands. Now that that's inevitably faltering, I think they're in a really rough spot.

@NEStalgia I may have a photo of me in my Ceasar as Che t-shirt for ya but I never did own a beret myself.

Oh, Ceasar in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, not the Roman.

@NEStalgia You gotta fight the power.

https://www.dualshockers.com/petition-to-fire-activision-ceo-bobby-kotick/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

I guess there cash cow COD finally has burst its bubble for Activision.

@rjejr the problem is that he doesn't work for the employees. He works for the investors. And he's going a grade A+ job and surpassing expectations of his responsibilities. He deserves a raise.

Therein is the real problem. The stock market. Business isn't evil at all. Investors are and force business to work against it's own interests and for the investors. So long as there's a stock market, there's no free market at all... Stock markets are paradoxically anti capitalist and pro hegemony, inevitably tilting toward fascism and then communism (which was never about sharing wealth with workers)

@NEStalgia Except the stock market has been around for over 100 years. And for most of those years the businesses told the investors what was what. So you can't just simply blame the stock market or we would have been doomed 100 years ago.

I think - just wild conjecture on my part at this point - is that when you had a stock market in a world where most people had the same amount of money - owners made $50k, workers $5k - and just a few small robber baron families like the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts - for the most part the businesses ran themselves. But now, after 40 years of consolidating money at the top via illegal trading, offshore deposits, probably a lot of insider trader and other criminal activity, and dropping the top tax bracket from 90% to 37%, you have way more rich people who have taken it upon themselves - "activist investors" - flexing their new found wealth.

And really, is it even the stock markets fault at all, or the investors fault at all, or are they just all knowingly in cahoots together, blaming each other and the system and the laws when they all know very well what they are doing, making each other rich, pretending to be adversaries while working together to screw us and enrich themselves.

No, stock markets have been around for hundreds of years in many countries, I don't think it's inherently the system. I think here in the US we just have a lot of smart rich folk who have figured out how to game the system to their liking. I'm sure you've followed all the 2008 crash stuff - those guys were making up words to make money - derivatives of derivatives of collectives of notes - that only like 1 person on earth understood. A stock market in a fair world would probably be just fine, but our world stopped being fair awhile ago.

So, if you do mean the current day stock market is lending itself to corrupt individuals making matters worse, ok, but that's not the systems fault, it's lax oversite. And really, even when you take the stock market out of the equation companies still go bankrupt, private equity hedge funds milk them dry.

https://www.retaildive.com/news/the-road-to-bankruptcy/540617/

So the argument probably could be made that the stock market is actually keeping companies afloat, b/c the alternative is a slow death march at the hands of Mitt Romney. Now obviously keeping a company alive is different than keeping people employed - my wife once worked at a company w/ over 3000 employees, they have 50 now, shell of their former selves - so the stock market may lead to that, but again, market is just a tool, not a functioning living creature. I think they all know exactly what they are doing. Taking whatever they can for themselves, rest of us can rot.