I am devastated. The impact this guy’s work had on my one life was immense.

My own username is a phonetic adaptation I came up with when I was a kid and adapted into my first email and did so because I loved Dragon Ball Z.

One of the first RPGs I ever experienced as a kid was Chrono Trigger - which he was the lead artist for, and I remember seeing his work for the first time reading Nintendo Power reading about Dragon Quest and how it stood out from all other illustrations I’d seen.

In school I would endlessly doodle character illustrations both from his work, and of my own creation but obviously based off his unique illustrative style.

As an adult, I’ve done everything from trying to make my own fan version of the “Rock the Dragon” early dub opening reminiscent of my own memory of watching it both on Saturday mornings and Toonami… to recently somewhat randomly animating a funny audio recording of my own wife’s sometimes inaccurate (sometimes not!) descriptions of Dragon Ball.

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Usually consolidation is done by expensive buy outs (which this one was). And if the company is public, the CEO’s next goal (since it now has valuable IP and has eliminated a competitor), is to make that money back and do so fast (see Disney with Marvel, Star Wars, etc.). This means exploiting its newest IP, farting out something that a known audience / fanbase will show up for (again - unfortunately - see Disney).

This doesn’t necessarily guarantee shitty outcomes (see Andor in the case of Star Wars being bought by Disney, see Overwatch after Activision bought Blizzard), but usually it comes with the territory of new bosses eventually trying to squeeze more value out of the IPs and team resources they purchased (see “Secret Invasion” by Marvel under Disney, and see “Overwatch 2” by Blizzard under Activision).

Depending on the company, they’ll also do MASS layoffs to “eliminate redundancies” - which in theory means firing people whose jobs encompass the exact same practice, but in reality means a bunch of people are about to have their work load doubled.

The people at the very top of the bought out company will get HUGE piles of cash, plus some requirements they stay on board usually for some amount of time… and then most of them will probably bail the moment their stock “vests” - allowing them to start up new companies and begin the cycle of “make stuff, then get bought out by big company” all over again.

Rarely a key person stays on board for some time (see Carmack with Facebook / Oculus for example), but eventually even the most passionate dev sees that their new bosses will never fully get behind them in the way they were able to do when they were not owned by said parent company.

From a broader “industry-wide” perspective, it’s probably not great either, because the mass layoffs at a gigantic well-regarded company means more workers competing across a mostly non-unionized industry for less jobs (and if you’re just starting, now you’ve got to compete with someone who has “Blizzard” on their resume).

Worse still - because the video game industry is already pretty exploitative of its workers, since it (like VFX) mostly came into being after the Reagan era completely destroyed the public perception of unions, the jobs everyone will be competing for will just have even worse conditions since soooooo many (younger folks especially) dream of working on video games (until they get their first industry job, get a few years under their belt, and been there for more than one studio closure and decide that - if they ever want to enjoy having time with their family, owning a home, and living somewhere for more than 5 years, they probably should change jobs to some relevant field in software dev that pays better, has less hours, and is overall more stable).

TL;DR - Probably bad.

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Let’s re-examine your statement by switching out a couple of words that keep the idea of “why should they get <x>?” to show how it would sound with any other context.

I <had to lose my eye to a car wreck> - why should we force <carmakers to build vehicles with seatbelts> for what is already the most entitled generation ever?

They <want to drive> - they can <drive in a car without a seatbelt just like I did>. Otherwise where does it stop? Are they going to <mandate airbags in cars> next?

Why not? It’s the same principle.

Do you understand now? If not, try changing what’s in the <x> to being related to “cancer treatment” or “the 40 hour work week” or “social security.”

Just because something before was bad and we made it better, doesn’t mean we should not do it just because it won’t help everyone.

Framing here’s a bit off. You shouldn’t have to go to school - sure… as a requirement… but the big thing that’s completely being missed (as we have been taught that college is for “fancy” jobs) is that in other decent countries… there is no cost to it.

Advanced educated populaces are seen by non - “authoritarian-run-shit-holes” as something that makes a country more economically competitive in an increasingly global job market.

Whether it’s being paid to learn on the job training with a welding apprenticeship subsidized by taxes, or being able to go to medical school via tax-subsidized funds that don’t create artificial barriers to entry for the poor for no other reason - it’s a good thing for advanced education (and pre-school and every other form of education) to be publicly funded.