Blizzard needs to get its act together, which is why Activision, the other half of Activision Blizzard, is trying to shape this side.

During this weekend, we already discussed how Blizzard doesn’t plan just to develop Diablo IV, Overwatch 2, and the mobile title Diablo Immortal (and let’s not forget Diablo II: Resurrected either). There are more to come from the studio. IGN’s article however has more to discuss to see what is happening behind the scenes.

„It feels like the company is just bleeding and taking punches, and realistically, the only thing that is gonna stop that is shipping Diablo IV or Overwatch 2,” an anonymous developer told IGN. By bleeding out, we need to think of people that have departed Blizzard in the previous years, such as ex-Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan, or the two co-founders Mike Morhaime and Frank Pearce. The departures make the situation even harder within the company, and it’s easy to make others leave for greener pastures if the narrative sets up Blizzard as a place going downhill.

The last significant Blizzard release happened in 2016 when Overwatch released on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC (Battle.net; it also launched in October 2019 on the Nintendo Switch). Since then, a few projects got ditched altogether, the drop in player figures resulted in slashed bonuses for the developers, and this brought more uncertainty into the studio, painting their tone bleak.

„We talk all the time about like, ‘We kinda messed up long-term planning, you know? Our release slates and things like that.’ If you look at how long the games take to make, and Diablo IV and Overwatch are probably shaping up to ship roughly around the same time or in successive years, it is hard to imagine this not happening again to Blizzard,” the source told IGN.

Indeed: a lack of morale ruins the results, and if there’s a lack of inspiration, motivation or rewards for the employee, they will get tired and bored.

Source: Gamasutra