Other Diablo 4 development challenges, according to The Post's sources, included a lack of 'vision' from Barriga and McCree-apparently a battle royale mode was planned at one point and then scrapped-and a loathed script by creative director Sebastian Stępień, which 'repeatedly mentioned the rape of a love interest,' and was ultimately revised. Alongside major layoffs, 'waves' of employees began leaving at that time, they said. Retaining talent was a problem for Blizzard even before the lawsuit: One ex-Blizzard employee who spoke to PC Gamer in 2021 said that they noticed serious attrition starting in 2019. According to sources at Blizzard who spoke to PC Gamer last year, the departure of former Blizzard co-lead Jen Oneal, who took half of former president J Allen Brack's role after he stepped down, was a significant blow to employee morale, as she had been seen as someone who could right the ship. Numerous other terminations and resignations followed in the wake of that suit, both among employees implicated by it and not. Diablo 4 director Luis Barriga and lead designer Jesse McCree both departed Blizzard in the summer of 2021 shortly after California's sexual harassment lawsuit rocked the company. The Diablo 4 team also had to adapt to sudden leadership changes last year.

As one example, a team of approximately 20 developers was roughly cut in half by attrition as employees left the company for better pay or work environments, two of the paper's sources said.

The current and former Blizzard staff interviewed by The Washington Post have mixed predictions for Diablo 4's reception.Īnother reason employees feel overtime is necessary, according to the report, is loss of talent over the past year.

The stock incentives are 'really just a way for the company to, without mandating crunch, make people want to work much, much longer hours, and stress themselves out, and burn themselves out to save the company money,' a Blizzard employee told The Washington Post.

Diablo 4 announced after stock drops