What could Blizzard employees possibly do? Who is really to blame for the things that upset you about Diablo 4? What if we try to see feedback as an opportunity to collaborate on making this game better? They wanted to work on this game for longer, it wasn’t their call. I hope this perspective helps some people have more empathy for the developers, who sacrificed a lot for this game.
In my mind this is the saddest fact about this launch. Meanwhile the hard working, passionate developers do all the work to miraculously have the game ready for launch, and eat all the hate from players who see a lot missing, or undercooked in the game. The higher-ups set an unrealistic release date, didn’t provide enough of a budget for staffing, causing a 6+ month, nightmarish developer crunch, and they got payed anyway. Could releasing the fastest selling game of all time drive up, or stabilize their valuation for the impending sale of the company? Would it make sense for them to release the game right before this sale, drive up 2023 revenue, and have little regard for the long term health of the game? Make a quick buck, leave Microsoft holding the bag, seems like a smart move. That combined with revenues dropping from 8.8 billion in 2021 to 7.5 billion in 2022 may have motivated them to push a big seller out the door in 2023. The anticipated acquisition of Activision by Microsoft was hitting legal roadblocks in December 2022, most notably being preemptively sued by the US FTC to block the deal. We don’t know what was cut from the game, or how many hours the developers worked to make this launch happen. There were also rumors the release date would have to be pushed back due to the game not coming together in the months before 6/6/23.
Who set the unrealistic launch date? Corporate. They left for game studios who payed more, and worked them less, and who can blame them? Who sets the budget for staffing? Corporate. Long hours, low pay, and mismanagement, caused massive employee churn (reportedly 50% in some departments) in the Diablo 4 team. There were numerous articles published ~6 months before launch featuring interviews with anonymous former Blizzard employees on the Diablo 4 team specifically, describing a failing management culture, and high employee turnover. Signs of corporate mismanagement pre-launch After ~230 hours I’ve done 88NM solo, currently farming 100keys. I personally think it was worth it, because I’ll be playing this game long term, but not everyone feels that way. Some of us are more upset than others, and questioning the value of a $75+ dollar game with tax.
The launch is missing a lot of seemingly basic features that has a lot of us scratching our heads.
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