Former Blizzard chief creative officer Rob Pardo used the closing moments of the GDC 2026 keynote to deliver a message to industry executives: if a team has already proven itself with a successful game, keeping them together is more valuable than the game they made.
Rob Pardo – lead designer on Starcraft: Brood War and Warcraft 3, former Blizzard chief creative officer, and today founder of Bonfire Studios – spent his hour-long keynote arguing that even the most experienced developers cannot predict with certainty what will make a hit. He used Warcraft 3‘s development as a key example: the original concept was far more focused on heroes and small-scale conflict, but the team eventually had to acknowledge it wasn’t working. By discarding what failed while preserving the hero, leveling, and item systems that did work, the team arrived at the iconic final product.
Pardo argued that every successful development cycle is built on a foundation of inevitable setbacks, well-intentioned mistakes, and necessity-driven pivots – and it is precisely that accumulated experience that makes a team genuinely valuable. “All of the mistakes, the learning, and the north stars that led the team to the final product are long buried,” he said. There is no guarantee that replacement hires, if any, will be capable of replicating the same result.
His closing message was directed squarely at executives: “If you’re fortunate enough to launch one of those games, the rewards can be extraordinary. But in my experience, if you built a game like that, you also built an incredible team. And personally, I think the game team is more valuable than the game itself.” He added: “Treasure that team, nurture that team, give them the autonomy to keep taking care of the players – because the thing that made the game special in the first place is the people who built it.”
The remarks come in the wake of EA laying off developers from the Battlefield 6 team despite the game selling 7 million copies in three days and being one of the most-played releases of 2025.
Source: PC Gamer
