Blizzard delays Diablo IV, Overwatch 2 amid exec departure

CEO says staff is seeing "increased competition... and higher voluntary turnover."

Read the whole story

 

[Deleted member 221201]

"I am doing this not because I am without hope for Blizzard, quite the opposite—I’m inspired by the passion of everyone here, working towards meaningful, lasting change with their whole hearts,"

Translation

"I'm heading East .... more loot boxes on the other side of the country"




Frankly, I hope all devs get a better opportunity & more money for doing something they love.

 

[andrewb610]

Gee, I wonder where I've heard that (awful) excuse before?...

I should clarify: it's awful in that it's entirely preventable if the company cared about its employees even 10% as much as it does profit.

 

[U-99]

There are so many great games coming out across the industry that Blizzard titles have gone from "must buy" to "let's see" to "whatever." The company has also lost their crushing advantage of having *the* popular title for each genre they competed in, drawing you to their releases to play with friends.

I'm not excluding Blizzard from consideration - all of these big gaming companies were full of bad behavior - but they need to "wow" players a lot more today than they did in 2000.

 

[leonwid]

I honestly cannot imagine how people can feel safe and heard without replacing most of middle and all of top management. Not that all these managers are evil, but culture is really hard to change and all these managers have a history.

I wish the people working for Blizzard well, but I think there may be better opportunities elsewhere.

 

[cardboardtarget]

So what specific event(s) happened that was so bad, or what about the internal situation is so dire that Blactivision paid substantial "We're totally separating on amical grounds." hush money to a non-profit that the departing employee sits on the board of? Jen, I don't think anyone believes you when you say the best days are ahead of Blizzard, least of all I suspect, you.

Edit: I haven't really followed this story, I was just struck and moved to comment by how transparently PR speak the statement from Ms Oneal is.

 

[Nowicki]

We cant delay a game release based on the product being incomplete, or non-functional, but we lost a CEO so lets slow our roll.

You would think they would want to release a game to divert the subject of conversation around their company, and generate revenue. Perhaps it wasnt really complete, and this would compound the bad coverage if it was at this point in time.

 

[Adreaver]

I wonder if Oneal leaving has anything to do with Vicarious Visions being wholly absorbed into Blizzard. She was the head of Vicarious Vision before they were bought out by ABK to serve as a support studio.

 

[jamesb2147]

I really feel like there's a story here, yet to be unearthed.

Individual contributors I can see joining a place and leaving a few months later for various reasons. With leadership hires, there's generally a lot more vetting, on both sides.

 

[aeolist]

overwatch 1 has been hung out to dry for 2 years now, will be at least 3 by the time ow2 comes out

i've put over 1000 hours into the first game and i honestly think the sequel is going to be dead on arrival

 

[H2O Rip]

Kotick also highlighted a pay equity study that he said showed "women on average earned slightly more than men for comparable work in 2020

Oh I'm really curious how they managed to come up with this number and why on earth they phrased it that way. Saying "internal and external audits have ensured we have eliminated pay disparity" isn't a bad thing by default (though 'for comparable work' is doing a lot of heavy lifting), but the way this is phrased is just..... weird.

 

[Roguish]

"in certain instances relating to workplace culture, we should have done a better job ensuring our values were embraced across all parts of the company."

Meaning you didn't snuff out enough resistance to keep accusations from reaching the point of legal action?

Seriously, though, isn't that something that a CEO should be responsible for? That's the role that can dictate policy for the company as a whole. So why does Bobby Kotick still have a job in light of this massive failure that will negatively impact shareholders for years to come?

 

[Rick Rumble]

"Look at us! We've got a woman to _colead the company, that terrible history is behind us!"

Aaand she's gone, sure sounds like the issues still exist, and perhaps it's tinfoil hat time but she never said anything about meaningful change in Activion itself.

 

[Xavin]

We cant delay a game release based on the product being incomplete, or non-functional, but we lost a CEO so lets slow our roll.

You would think they would want to release a game to divert the subject of conversation around their company, and generate revenue. Perhaps it wasnt really complete, and this would compound the bad coverage if it was at this point in time.

I guarantee the CEO leaving won't impact timelines in any way. Unless they are named Musk or are in a really small company CEOs have very little impact on day to day operations. This is just an excuse.

The real subtext there is that no good devs want to get hired there right now, and enough key people have left that it's affecting timelines.

 

[Sivilius]

Oneal's sudden departure came just before Blizzard announced it is "planning for a later launch... than originally envisaged" for two of its most anticipated games: Diablo IV and Overwatch 2. Neither title will be released in 2022, the company said, though Blizzard is "still planning to deliver a substantial amount of content... next year."

But I suppose doing "a substanial amount of content" for games like StarCraft 2, Heroes of the Storm & Diablo III would be asking too much of Blizzard...right?

.....right??

 

[stevegula]

Kotick also highlighted a pay equity study that he said showed "women on average earned slightly more than men for comparable work in 2020

Oh I'm really curious how they managed to come up with this number and why on earth they phrased it that way. Saying "internal and external audits have ensured we have eliminated pay disparity" isn't a bad thing by default (though 'for comparable work' is doing a lot of heavy lifting), but the way this is phrased is just..... weird.

I don't think there's anything worded weird about it. It just feels weird because that's not the expected outcome. Like when Google's pay study came out and showed they were under paying white and asian males.

 

[aikouka]

"Additionally, we have seen increased competition in the market for our talent and higher voluntary turnover that has partly offset our success in hiring."

It seems like people have realized that the whole "Blizzard Magic" mantra hasn't really been a thing for years now, and that they're tired of working the same job for lower wages compared to other studios.

 

[DarthSlack]

I wonder if Oneal leaving has anything to do with Vicarious Visions being wholly absorbed into Blizzard. She was the head of Vicarious Vision before they were bought out by ABK to serve as a support studio.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were some milestone payments to Oneal that either kicked in or were accelerated. It's not uncommon for corporate officers to have incentives to stick around after a buy-out but once those payments have happened, a lot of time they don't stick around.

 

[itfa]

It's kind of sad how far blizzard has fallen.

 

[LuDux]

Kotick also highlighted a pay equity study that he said showed "women on average earned slightly more than men for comparable work in 2020

Oh I'm really curious how they managed to come up with this number and why on earth they phrased it that way. Saying "internal and external audits have ensured we have eliminated pay disparity" isn't a bad thing by default (though 'for comparable work' is doing a lot of heavy lifting), but the way this is phrased is just..... weird.

I don't think there's anything worded weird about it. It just feels weird because that's not the expected outcome. Like when Google's pay study came out and showed they were under paying white and asian males.

Conflict of interest; a company studying itself and saying 'no in fact we are saints above reproach' is always suspect. If it's not an independent third party study it is marketing at best.

 

[orangpelupa]

"I am doing this not because I am without hope for Blizzard, quite the opposite—I’m inspired by the passion of everyone here, working towards meaningful, lasting change with their whole hearts,"

Translation

"I'm heading East .... more loot boxes on the other side of the country"




Frankly, I hope all devs get a better opportunity & more money for doing something they love.

And with this

Alongside Oneal's departure, Activision Blizzard announced a donation of $1 million to Women in Games International, a nonprofit where Oneal serves on the board. "

Maybe it was some kind of wink wink nod nod to ensure she didn't say anything bad after she depart from blizzard?

 

[GMBigKev]

That's a shame.

 

[Urist]

Kotick also highlighted a pay equity study that he said showed "women on average earned slightly more than men for comparable work in 2020

Oh I'm really curious how they managed to come up with this number and why on earth they phrased it that way. Saying "internal and external audits have ensured we have eliminated pay disparity" isn't a bad thing by default (though 'for comparable work' is doing a lot of heavy lifting), but the way this is phrased is just..... weird.

I read this as Kotick trying to save face, and say: "See! See! We pay women more! How can we be a misogynistic company?!" I am willing to bet that it is due to Blizzard having less women in lower paying, entry level positions in the company, rather than women actually being payed more than men in the same positions.

 

[Adreaver]

I really feel like there's a story here, yet to be unearthed.

Individual contributors I can see joining a place and leaving a few months later for various reasons. With leadership hires, there's generally a lot more vetting, on both sides.

She was head of Vicarious Visions, a recently-acquired outside studio brought in as support for remasters. Executive level experience, and 100% free of the taint from the main corporate leadership structure.

Her other co-leader, Mike Ybarra, was previously head of the Battle.net division, and oversaw massive improvements in both output quality and culture during his tenure there. Division-level executive experience, and again, 100% free of the taint.

The WoW, Diablo, and Overwatch teams were rife with the harassment that is the subject of the lawsuit. The StarCraft team is essentially a skeleton crew at this point, since SC2 is on maintenance mode without a game director since the departure of David Kim (AFAIK). HotS is in the same boat. No idea what's going on with Hearthstone since the lawsuit came out, I haven't heard anything about internal workings on that team. Seems to me like Brack had to go, as soon as humanly possible, and Ybarra and Oneal were the two people with proven history of leadership and ethics who could step into that role on a moment's notice.

I doubt this was a vetting issue, I expect Oneal never wanted the position in the first place, but took it as a favor to the company and the people who work there and need to keep putting food on the table. I hope Ybarra sticks around for a good while longer, his track record of turning around a train headed for derailment speaks for itself.

 

[Little-Zen]

Oneal's sudden departure came just before Blizzard announced it is "planning for a later launch... than originally envisaged" for two of its most anticipated games: Diablo IV and Overwatch 2. Neither title will be released in 2022, the company said, though Blizzard is "still planning to deliver a substantial amount of content... next year."

But I suppose doing "a substanial amount of content" for games like StarCraft 2, Heroes of the Storm & Diablo III would be asking too much of Blizzard...right?

.....right??

Was just thinking this. If the new games they’re working on have been delayed, but there’s still a substantial amount of stuff in the works… where’s it going?

 

[Resolute]

I wonder if Oneal leaving has anything to do with Vicarious Visions being wholly absorbed into Blizzard. She was the head of Vicarious Vision before they were bought out by ABK to serve as a support studio.

Vicarious Visions has been Activision owned for longer than Blizzard has, actually.

I saw the story about VV staff being "blindsided" by having the studio rolled into Blizzard entirely. Frankly though, I put little credence into that. They were put under the Blizzard banner, then given control over development of Blizzard's biggest properties. They were already rolled in in every way but name, and anyone internally had to realize that this was going to be the last step of that integration. Especially given Activision's history.

Hell, it's probably only a matter of time before Kotick simply closes Blizzard itself and rolls the staff into the Activision banner.


As far as what's going on inside Blizzard, if Amy Dunham's resignation screed is any indication, more of the same. She had written this on Twitter before she took her account private:

"Look at who a company puts in a decision making capacity over it's core business. For a brief period in 2020, there were three women in leadership of game dev teams at Blizzard (>= Director roles). They were Julia, Jen, and me.

And all three of us were the first women to ever serve in our specific roles, and we were also the most senior woman in the company for our respective disciplines. All left this year.

Before you make commitments to recruit more woman (usually at entry level, where people have less choice to turn down opportunities), figure out and fix why all of your senior women choose to leave."

 

[ChickenLegs]

"Blizzard’s best days are ahead. I truly believe that."

Is there seriously anyone here that believes this is true?

I cannot think of another single gaming company that I respected more than the Blizzard of about 5+ years ago. Diablo. WoW. Starcraft. Warcraft. Overwatch. Hearthstone to a degree. Basically all games that were best in class (to me). Blizzard will survive the knocks they've taken recently, but I don't think they'll ever be the pillar of gaming that they once were. At least, not to me. I'm not sure any company will become what Blizzard was to me in the past. There were long periods in which my PC was basically just a blizzard-game-machine.

 

[UnnDunn]

"I am doing this not because I am without hope for Blizzard, quite the opposite—I’m inspired by the passion of everyone here, working towards meaningful, lasting change with their whole hearts,"

"This energy has inspired me to step out and explore how I can do more to have games and diversity intersect, and hopefully make a broader industry impact...

"planning for a later launch... than originally envisaged"

"As we have worked with new leadership in Blizzard and within the franchises themselves, particularly in certain key creative roles, it has become apparent that some of the Blizzard content planned for next year will benefit from more development time to reach its full potential,"

"In recent months, we have taken actions that resulted in the departure of a number of individuals across the company," he said. "Additionally, we have seen increased competition in the market for our talent and higher voluntary turnover that has partly offset our success in hiring."

Jesus christ, is everyone at Activision/Blizzard required to adopt "execu-speak" as their first language or something?

 

[Adreaver]

"I am doing this not because I am without hope for Blizzard, quite the opposite—I’m inspired by the passion of everyone here, working towards meaningful, lasting change with their whole hearts,"

"This energy has inspired me to step out and explore how I can do more to have games and diversity intersect, and hopefully make a broader industry impact...

"planning for a later launch... than originally envisaged"

"As we have worked with new leadership in Blizzard and within the franchises themselves, particularly in certain key creative roles, it has become apparent that some of the Blizzard content planned for next year will benefit from more development time to reach its full potential,"

"In recent months, we have taken actions that resulted in the departure of a number of individuals across the company," he said. "Additionally, we have seen increased competition in the market for our talent and higher voluntary turnover that has partly offset our success in hiring."

Jesus christ, is everyone at Activision/Blizzard required to adopt "execu-speak" as their first language or something?

I mean, the first two quotes are "I'm quitting but it's not final for a couple months and I'd like to collect my severance and keep the charitable donation that I arranged on track", and the last three are literally the CEO on an earnings call.

Not at all unexpected verbiage in either case.

 

[O/Siris]

It's kind of sad how far blizzard has fallen.

The sad truth is that for companies like ABK, and for Electronic Arts, and too many others, they haven't fallen. It's just that they couldn't hide the behaviors any longer. This stuff didn't just start happening. It's just that people stopped being silent about it.

That's the part which, for me, makes the PR speak slimy.

Executives cannot fail at something that was never on the agenda in the first place.

 

[IntergalacticWalrus]

overwatch 1 has been hung out to dry for 2 years now, will be at least 3 by the time ow2 comes out

i've put over 1000 hours into the first game and i honestly think the sequel is going to be dead on arrival

Making a sequel to a GaaS game never made sense to me to begin with. You only end up fracturing your online player population, hurting your game's long-term profitability for some short-term surge of money.

 

[thelee]

Kotick also highlighted a pay equity study that he said showed "women on average earned slightly more than men for comparable work in 2020

Oh I'm really curious how they managed to come up with this number and why on earth they phrased it that way. Saying "internal and external audits have ensured we have eliminated pay disparity" isn't a bad thing by default (though 'for comparable work' is doing a lot of heavy lifting), but the way this is phrased is just..... weird.

i know there's going to be some dispute on how this is measured, but if the problem is that women aren't getting the same advancement opportunities or are having higher turnover and so won't get to higher positions, or are only being hired and down-slotted below their capabilities then "for comparable work" (e.g. same spot on the job ladder) makes all of that invisible.

they (and all companies that do a similar reporting) should also surface mean and median wages by gender. if there's a huge gap between that than the "comparable work" metric, you have a constructive place to say: what's driving that gap (not hiring enough women in higher pay positions, not enough women are getting promo-ed, etc.) and how do you address it?


edit: early on at my job there was a similar deep dive and some folks found that women get promoted at equal success rates as men, but women go up for promo less often (and it's a self-initiated process), which results in an overall skew even if the "comparable work" metric would be fine. a simple early tweak was just coaching and reminding women to go up for promo. i don't know how much of an impact that ended up making, but that's kind of the constructive solutions you can start angling around, instead of just patting yourself on the back saying "comparable works get comparable pay."

 

[aerogems]

I would be more impressed if the CEOs comments weren't phrased in a bunch of highly specific legalese. "In some instances" and "on average" and other phrases that are intended to provide legal cover when people start digging and find the truth isn't nearly as rosy as he's trying to paint it.

Just once, I'd like to see a CEO own up to the dysfunction going on in his/her company instead of always trying to pass the buck and make it seem like things aren't as bad as they seem. Just once, someone would say, "As CEO the buck ultimately stops with me and I take full responsibility for these shortcomings. I have already taken steps X, Y, and Z in an attempt to address this, and will be taking further steps in the near future." And the steps taken are something concrete, not just "I will go on a 'listening tour' and ask employees their opinions."

And instead of another Diablo, how about StarCraft 3? This time maybe make it a bit less blah like StarCraft 2. Better a shorter campaign that is really good than a much longer campaign made up of little more than boring filler. And I know Games Workshop has a reputation for being difficult to work with, but a Blizzard made Warhammer 40K RTS game would probably be something for the ages.

 

[Fabermetrics]

Blizzard is over. Good riddance. Shit games, Shit culture. Shit brand.
$10 says D4 content gets ported to D3, they sell WoW off to Tencent and we never hear from Overwatch again.

 

[sword_9mm]

There are so many great games coming out across the industry that Blizzard titles have gone from "must buy" to "let's see" to "whatever." The company has also lost their crushing advantage of having *the* popular title for each genre they competed in, drawing you to their releases to play with friends.

I'm not excluding Blizzard from consideration - all of these big gaming companies were full of bad behavior - but they need to "wow" players a lot more today than they did in 2000.

D4 is still going to be a 'must buy' imo but i'm fine with them pushing it back.

Probably won't be able to upgrade/buy a new PC for a while so no rush from me.

 

[Resolute]

overwatch 1 has been hung out to dry for 2 years now, will be at least 3 by the time ow2 comes out

i've put over 1000 hours into the first game and i honestly think the sequel is going to be dead on arrival

Making a sequel to a GaaS game never made sense to me to begin with. You only end up fracturing your online player population, hurting its long-term profitability for some short-term surge of money.

OW2 is really just oversized DLC for OW1. All of the PVP will still be fully playable even if an OW1 owner doesn't buy the new game. They just won't get access to the PVE and co-op stuff.

 

[IceStorm]

Blizzard will be under Kotick directly by the end of the year.

Ybarra's been selling WoW raid boosts:
https://techraptor.net/gaming/news/bliz ... ate-on-rmt

And thus ends the Blizzard part of Activision-Blizzard.

 

[Mongo McMongo]

Kotick complained that the company "expect that we'll continue to face challenging and negative media attention regardless of our progress."

Or more briefly: lying sack of shit whines that nobody trusts him.

 

[Adreaver]

I wonder if Oneal leaving has anything to do with Vicarious Visions being wholly absorbed into Blizzard. She was the head of Vicarious Vision before they were bought out by ABK to serve as a support studio.

Vicarious Visions has been Activision owned for longer than Blizzard has, actually.

I saw the story about VV staff being "blindsided" by having the studio rolled into Blizzard entirely. Frankly though, I put little credence into that. They were put under the Blizzard banner, then given control over development of Blizzard's biggest properties. They were already rolled in in every way but name, and anyone internally had to realize that this was going to be the last step of that integration. Especially given Activision's history.

I may have misunderstood, but my impression was that VV was previously a semi-independent support studio for Activision, and they were being shifted to a semi-independent support studio for Blizzard. The later change (to drop the name and make them Blizzard Albany or whatever they are going to be called) seemed more like Blizzard leadership asserting direct control - which is fine if it's the former director of VV doing the controlling, less fine if it's a big corporate takeover and elimination of any pseudo-independence. I expect all these moves are related.

Hell, it's probably only a matter of time before Kotick simply closes Blizzard itself and rolls the staff into the Activision banner.

I sincerely hope not. I'd rather they sell off the IP to somebody else who is capable of making better games. I highly doubt any of those franchises will continue in any recognizable fashion with Activision directly at the helm.

As far as what's going on inside Blizzard, if Amy Dunham's resignation screed is any indication, more of the same. She had written this on Twitter before she took her account private:

"Look at who a company puts in a decision making capacity over it's core business. For a brief period in 2020, there were three women in leadership of game dev teams at Blizzard (>= Director roles). They were Julia, Jen, and me.

And all three of us were the first women to ever serve in our specific roles, and we were also the most senior woman in the company for our respective disciplines. All left this year.

Before you make commitments to recruit more woman (usually at entry level, where people have less choice to turn down opportunities), figure out and fix why all of your senior women choose to leave."

That's a incredibly telling statement. Utterly savage.

 

[IntergalacticWalrus]

overwatch 1 has been hung out to dry for 2 years now, will be at least 3 by the time ow2 comes out

i've put over 1000 hours into the first game and i honestly think the sequel is going to be dead on arrival

Making a sequel to a GaaS game never made sense to me to begin with. You only end up fracturing your online player population, hurting its long-term profitability for some short-term surge of money.

OW2 is really just oversized DLC for OW1. All of the PVP will still be fully playable even if an OW1 owner doesn't buy the new game. They just won't get access to the PVE and co-op stuff.

Phrasing it that way does not change anything to what I said.