Blizzard’s president Mike Ybarra summarized the company’s state in his year-end blog post.

According to Ybarra, 2022 was an excellent year for Blizzard, whose games were played 12 billion hours last year. Meanwhile, they’re also working on their as-yet-unnamed survival game, which has a team twice the size of a year ago. He pointed out that it will be the company’s first new IP since Overwatch. The project is led by Dan Hay, who came over from Ubisoft (where he was the executive producer of the Far Cry games). Not much else is known about it. All we know for sure is that it’s coming to PC, and according to a job posting this year, it’s set in a location full of heroes we’ve never met, with untold stories and adventures yet to be had.

Ybarra added that BlizzCon, which has had a troubled last few years and not just because of the pandemic, will be brought back in 2023. The idea was scrapped in 2020 due to the pandemic, but there was supposed to be a replacement in 2021 (BlizzConline). Still, Blizzard eventually shelved the plans as their reputation quickly deteriorated due to discrimination and sexual harassment within the company. The company will announce more about the return of BlizzCon earlier this year and already has a new executive producer in April McKee.

As for Blizzard’s work culture, Ybarra reiterated that the company had added several new hires, with Jessica Martinez as the “brand new VP of culture” and Makaiya Brown as head of diversity, equality, and inclusion. According to Blizzard’s president, culture is not the work of one person, and the company has “convened a culture team consisting of a wide array of functions across Blizzard who are helping us improve how we work.” Blizzard “took a deep look at the mission, vision, and values upon which Blizzard was built; this is a project that our employees, as well as players, will see the results of in the new year.”

However, as part of Activision Blizzard, Blizzard is also involved in harassment and sexism…

Source: PCGamer