Blizzard Entertainment has experienced quite a few high-profile departures over the last few years, which includes its co-founder Mike Morhaime. Recently, news of Jeff Kaplan’s resignation shocked its community, particularly Overwatch players, resulting in an extensive IGN investigation to dig deeper into the departures.
According to several sources who spoke to the publication on condition of anonymity, a number of factors have contributed to developer exodus, including burnout and a lack of game releases that has impacted Blizzard’s profit-sharing scheme.
“Every year they’d be like, ‘Oh, you know, it’s just a down time. We’re not shipping anything,” said one employee. “But like, it’ll probably get better next year.’ And I was like, uh … but I can do the math. Like, we were years away from shipping anything [in 2018].”
Another source said that the company is “bleeding and taking punches,” and the only way to stop that from happening is releasing Diablo IV and Overwatch 2.
“We talk all the time about like, ‘We really kinda messed up long-term planning, you know? Our release slates and things like that,'” said the source. “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.”
Others say that Blizzard has been in trouble for the past few years, which have been marked by layoffs, budget cuts, and again, a lack of major game releases. Kaplan was apparently the “last big blow” … for now.
[Source: IGN]
