The Activision group announced the postponement of the two most anticipated games of the Blizzard studios. Advanced causes: the renewal of staff due to accusations of harassment and discrimination.
Le Monde
The Activision Blizzard video game publisher announced on Tuesday 2 November, the postponement of the two most anticipated video games of the Blizzard studios: Overwatch 2, a multiplayer shooting game online, and Diablo IV, a game role and combat. Originally planned for the year 2022, they should not be published before 2023.
The need for a “larger” development time to [Games] their full potential “was mentioned by Daniel Alegre, the group number two. But he also argued that this postponement was linked to the scandals caused by the group’s challenge in cases of harassment and discrimination, after a complaint filed before a Californian court in July. At the presentation conference Results of the third quarter of the group Tuesday, it has explained that the production times were linked to the renewals of staff at the head of Blizzard and within the creative teams responsible for developing the games.
Output In 2016, the Overwatch multiplayer game is one of the flagship titles of Activision Blizzard and gave rise to the creation of a competitive scene within the Overwatch League. As for Diablo, it is a series located in a world of “Dark Fantasy” launched in 1997, today become worship, and whose second episode knew a remake in September 2021 entitled Diablo Resurreed.
An unstable situation
The situation does not seem to stabilize within the Blizzard studios. Tuesday, the company’s co-director, Jen Oneal, said she would leave the studio at the end of the year when she took office than in August. Named in Tandem with Mike Ybarra, she had replaced former President J. Allen Brack, Veteran Studios Blizzard.
Ala mid-October, the video game publisher had revealed that “more than 20 people” had left the company in the light of the reports and charges, and that more than 20 employees had been the subject of measures Disciplinary while remaining employed by Activision.
Other illustration of the difficulties of Blizzard: The ad, Tuesday, October 26, of the cancellation of the Blizzcon 2022 , the annual agreement devoted to the announcements of the novelties of the studio and which originally had to take place in February 2022. Again, it is the scandals caused by The accusations of harassment and domestic discrimination that led to pause an event that has been held for sixteen years.
The postponement of the Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV outputs has had a negative impact on the markets, since Mr. Alegre acknowledged that the exit gap was “postponing the financial effect” that the company anticipated for the next year. An announcement that has strongly displeased investors, the title Activision Blizzard losses 10% at the fence of Wall Street.