New Report Sheds Light on Blizzard's High-Profile Departures | MMORPG.com

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New Report Sheds Light on Blizzard's High-Profile Departures | MMORPG.com

A recent report from IGN has shed additional insight into the string of high profile departures from Blizzard over recent years. The report points to a feeling of decline, layoff, and lack of major releases.

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Slapshot1188

IMHO Blizzard long ago lost what made it special. The fact that their hopes are pinned on sequels and not new IP really summarizes everything. No need to look further than that.

yonpachi

"This resulted in employees wondering how such a hire lined up with Blizzard’s own values. It sounds likle the one thing Blizzard employees are pinning their hopes on is new releases. This means Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4. According to IGN’s source,"

So they have no hopes in their Diablo Immoral?

Big.Daddy.Samedi

yonpachi said:

"This resulted in employees wondering how such a hire lined up with Blizzard’s own values. It sounds likle the one thing Blizzard employees are pinning their hopes on is new releases. This means Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4. According to IGN’s source,"

So they have no hopes in their Diablo Immoral?

Actually they do have hopes for Diablo Immortal, which by the way has had some good feedback. However Diablo Immortal is being developed by a third party studio not Blizzard employees.

IceAge

Big.Daddy.Samedi said:

yonpachi said:

"This resulted in employees wondering how such a hire lined up with Blizzard’s own values. It sounds likle the one thing Blizzard employees are pinning their hopes on is new releases. This means Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4. According to IGN’s source,"



So they have no hopes in their Diablo Immoral?

Actually they do have hopes for Diablo Immortal, which by the way has had some good feedback. However Diablo Immortal is being developed by a third party studio not Blizzard employees.

Diablo Immortal is not developed by third party studio. If anything, they are in collaboration, but I heard very little info lately about that Chinese company. I think Blizzard took the entire development of D:I into their hands.

About the article, all I can say is that I'm glad Blizzard is in this mess. Starting from 2018, their actions and games ( x-pacs ) have been very sub-bar to .. "Blizzard Standards".

As of now, they have 2 choices : 1) Go back to their .. roots and fix their huge mistakes & 2) Keep going like this and Activision will take full control over Blizzard ( if isn't the case yet ).

If they keep going with this .. "route", in 5 years Blizzard will be just another studio within another studio within another studio, milked to death.

Wizardry

Blizzard has had major people leave for MANY years and not just recently,several upstart new studios by former Blizzard people.

IMO there are two pictures to be painted.One they were making less money now and felt they could easily make more doing it alone.I also feel past departures saw just how easy the Blizzard games are to make and likely felt a lot of wasted overhead so wanted to strike it alone and do it cheaper.

A huge spike in the coffin i am sure was the reduction in bonuses but that would only lean towards them not really being there to make great games but to make lot's of money.

Kotick's insane salary plus perks is a VERY good reason why Activision needed to grab the reins on the very sketchy spending by Blizzard.It was EASY to fill your pockets with money when lots is coming in but then this raises questions....red flags.

Ok so then WHY are we hearing of higher profit numbers?WHY did they lay off so many and yet were heading into a payout that would net Kotick close to 200 million?So has Blizzard been lying about the numbers,i mean huge corps like this have ways to move numbers around in the books even with watchdogs looking over their shoulders.

my best input would be based off of Hearthstone a game i played since beta and right on through.A VERY greedy operation looking for more ways to manipulate cash shops/monetization than putting effort into the games quality.They aded an insane amount of new monetization with modes and various card pack sales and buying hero pictures etc etc.The game has NO tournament UI,how sad is that for a game that has made hundreds of millions?

WOW another game that brought in hundreds of millions to have no housing is again VERY sad.How do the ywant to launch the new Diablo game after a lot of controversy with D3,well let's announce a MOBILE game because you know we can make loads of money off that.So their premise was to make money and not a higher quality game.

Dharkarai49

And here we go, D4 and OW2 are gonna get rushed and flop..... D4 is not gonna survive especially with POE 2 coming. There's even an 8 bit ARPG on steam that has more depth than what D4 has currently. Unfortunately I feel like this company is gonna fall even farther after they push out these two games but that's my personal opinion.

Sandmanjw

All I get out of these type stories are boohoo we are part of the worst of gaming giants now....but what does about every gaming company that ever once was do once they strike it big with a game?

Sell out for as much as they can to the same gaming giants they claim are the worst thing ever...

So who are the ones that caused the problems? Who jumped into bed with the giants for a pay day? Trying to come off like victims after getting a payday...ya I am gonna cry a tear for them....

All that and not to mention that the company seems to keep making more and more cash....get railed on, pointed at, kicked in the gnads, and backstabbed by those sellouts...and yet the shareholders keep laughing all the way to the bank....

Scot

So one person in your life says you as a bully, that's just taken as true and no one should ever employ you again? I find IGN's report political in that they point that out but does not even think the fact he had no background in gaming is of relevance. Surely that is the more important factor? Gaming is a huge industry these days, getting executives in who at least have some experience of working in the industry should not be an issue.

Slapshot1188

Scot said:

So one person in your life says you as a bully, that's just taken as true and no one should ever employ you again? I find IGN's report political in that they point that out but does not even think the fact he had no background in gaming is of relevance. Surely that is the more important factor? Gaming is a huge industry these days, getting executives in who at least have some experience of working in the industry should not be an issue.

Actually he seems to be a perfect fit for his main role: "Bulatao has specifically been hired to oversee the Call of Duty Endowment, a non-profit foundation co-founded by Kotick that helps former service members in the United States and UK transition to civilian careers."

Then he is also going to be responsible for some "key administrative functions". So I do not see any relevance to having gaming industry experience.

Theocritus

Slapshot1188 said:

IMHO Blizzard long ago lost what made it special. The fact that their hopes are pinned on sequels and not new IP really summarizes everything. No need to look further than that.

I came to WoW from Everquest1........YOu could see that all WoW did was take EQ, dumb it way down, and put it into Warcrat lore.......THe ease of it appealed to a whole new line of gamers, and you could run it on a kitchen appliance, so that made ease of entry more simple......I give them credit for what they did with WoW, but once the copying of EQ was done and they had to go on their own, the game was not the same.

Scot

Slapshot1188 said:

Scot said:

So one person in your life says you as a bully, that's just taken as true and no one should ever employ you again? I find IGN's report political in that they point that out but does not even think the fact he had no background in gaming is of relevance. Surely that is the more important factor? Gaming is a huge industry these days, getting executives in who at least have some experience of working in the industry should not be an issue.

Actually he seems to be a perfect fit for his main role: "Bulatao has specifically been hired to oversee the Call of Duty Endowment, a non-profit foundation co-founded by Kotick that helps former service members in the United States and UK transition to civilian careers."

Then he is also going to be responsible for some "key administrative functions". So I do not see any relevance to having gaming industry experience.

I must admit I thought this was a game side administrative chief, you are spot on, just the sort of guy you would get.