Investor Reports give insight on numbers for Diablo and WoW

The 2019 ActiBlizz Annual Report:

For the year ended December 31, 2019, our top three franchises—Call of Duty, Candy Crush, and World of Warcraft—collectively accounted for 67% of our net revenues. No other franchise comprised 10% or more of our net revenues

The 2014 ActiBlizz AR:

Blizzard’s net revenues increased for 2014, as compared to 2013, primarily due to revenues from Diablo III: Reaper of Souls, which was released in March 2014 on the PC, and Diablo III: Reaper of Souls—Ultimate Evil Edition, which was released in August 2014 on certain consoles.

Diablo 3 numbers:

By May 2013, Diablo III had been played by 14.5 million unique players and had sold over 30 million copies worldwide by August 2015.

World of Warcraft numbers in that same time frame (official per ActiBlizz report):

At December 31, 2014, the global subscriber base for World of Warcraft was over 10 million, compared to approximately 7.4 million subscribers at September 30, 2014, and approximately 7.8 million subscribers at December 31, 2013. The increase is driven by the launch of the new expansion, World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor in November 2014.

So there it is in black and white folks. In 2014, even years after release, Diablo carried the headlines for all of Blizzard with ROS. When something solid was actually offered for purchase, D3 community bought it. Blizzard’s revenue is listed as being franchise-centric, detailing year-on-year gains or losses with the various big franchises like WoW, CoD, OW, Diablo, etc. Out of all of those, D3 ROS had the headlines in 2014.

As I’ve said elsewhere, don’t blame the developers, the creative staff, the community managers for D3 being on life support. If senior management hadn’t completely botched the revenue pipeline for D3 (RMAH and microtxns were pay2win dumpster fires), there would likely have been a larger support team with bigger updates and new features.

It’s been 6+ years since the last expansion, just bizarre when you look at 30 million copies sold by 2015. I would even bet the community would have paid for 2 expansions in that 6+ years if they were done right, as ROS showed in 2014.

Again, I would just ask Blizzard senior management to be creative with revenue models, avoid pay2win solutions, come up with something good, and let the community fund content and larger seasonal changes for these great games. Hopefully D4 has also learned from past mistakes.


EDIT - Adding data and sources for ROS numbers, and humerously had to edit title due to new 60 char limitations on forum title length:

Before the March 2014 ROS release, Diablo 3 total sales are ~ 15 million at start of 2014.
https://diablo.somepage.com/news/1785-diablo-iii-sales-break-15-million

After the ROS release, numbers for August 2014: Diablo 3 and ROS have combined sales of 20 million copies. 5 million additional copies sold in first half of 2014.
https://gamingbolt.com/diablo-3-sells-20-million-units-activision-blizzard-revenue-at-658-million-for-past-quarter

Further post-ROS numbers for June 30, 2015: Diablo III and Reaper of Souls have combined sales of 30 million copies. This is 10 million more than a year ago and ~15 million additional copies sold since start of 2014, roughly doubling the overall D3 numbers after ROS release.
https://www.diabloii.net/blog/comments/diablo-iii-30-million-copies-sold

Numbers Summary:

  • D3V launch through start of 2014: 15 million.

  • Post-ROS: 15 million additional for total 30 million by mid-2015.


EDIT #2 - From May 2021 Q1 Investor Call Transcript:

Diablo IV development is progressing very well with a significant extended team focused on not only launching an epic new experience, but also following this up with robust in-game content to sustain community.

It was great to see that wording on sustaining the community for D4 - multiple expansions are expected.

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It’s quite simple: 1/3rd of that revenue come from King (Candy Crush), which requires little to no development in contrast to its huge gains.

That’s what they’re interested in, and that’s why they announced a completely new division dedicated to develop mobile games.
Diablo requires too much money to develop so it’s not that good of an option to present to the share holders.

Don’t you guys have phones?

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Keep in mind those franchises that are their highest earning ones are all jam packed full of micro-transactions. World of Warcraft, at least, has ones that are not purely cosmetic as well.

These days in terms of revenue, copies sold is but a fraction compared to the insanely lucrative micro-transaction market.

So if you wanted them to continue development on Diablo 3 what you would have gotten is a bunch of mtx. Probably more class DLC packs like the Necromancer, as well.

Is this an out of season April fools joke?.. wait, tis the season

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I just really dislike this approach so much tbh… The “profit first” is the exact bane and virus of today’s games… It feels like it’s easier for companies to release an uncompleted/sh*tty (pardon my French) game and then release and “exp” with fixes rather than release a good/well-experimented/well-analyzed game in the first place

Which IMO is a huge problem, a huge downside… It ALSO gives the company (and anyone involved in general) an excuse to “see, we did this and that and that and you still don’t like it”, it’s not just a matter of taste, it’s quality of gameplay… Yes, the market is greater than ever, and there are many titles (arguably on monthly basis) but everyone knows to recognize the Blizzard brand, so they better not screw it again

At least hope so won’t happen, don’t care about revenue, just make the game a well-developed/well-analysed and well-tested (In depth, not in sound/visual effects) gameplay… People will get “addicted” and word spread (IF it deserves to be), a good product doesn’t need advertisement, especially when the producer is a brand, people will recognise a well made product when they see it by “consuming” it more than a few months in effect

And hope, just again, HOPE, that’s the mindset behind the D4 development, which kinda feels partially like that (partially, not in entirety but still promising), hope stays/continues that way

We don’t need another “release fiasco” “saga” like D3 (a game with so much controversion and unfinished features at release stage that the expansion didn’t even have time to think proper development but rather focus on “whitewashing”/reverting the previously-done damage) :thinking:

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That’s because customers are gullible.

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Yeah, in 2014, RMAH was shut down. In 2015, realizing they needed a new revenue stream, they floated microtransactions without engaging the community. They had pay2win mtx XP boosts, all kinds of ill-fated items, and it failed miserably here in the states and Europe etc.

They never replaced the revenue model - they just abandoned ship. Kind of a ridiculous situation.

If they had engaged community, asking for feedback on what revenue models or content would work, it might have gone quite differently.

6 years of pretty paltry seasonal changes and that necro pack - all peanuts compared to what other franchises do with much larger content updates and changes.

And when I look at kickstarter projects on the outside, there are often community-based projects that get funded to insane levels. They engage the community to develop some really compelling games and content etc.

Blizzard needs to get creative imo.

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Well, you can’t “borrow” a game for a couple of months and see if you buy it, and if there are such things the prices are usually super high you might as well give extra 15$ or so and buy the whole thing :stuck_out_tongue: :smiley:

And to be frank streamers are also a part of the problem, they are either extremely biased/narrowminded on criticisms often, or simply don’t care as long as there’s something “going”… Like, a few handful of them give a nice/broad insight with reasoning and all, rest are just “army, this game sucks, assemble” :P, and frankly part of that is internet being internet at it’s finest as well :smiley:

Well my point is that those other franchises getting all the updates have been monetized to hell and back with things like mtx.

World of Warcraft has level boosts, pets, mounts, in-game gold, race change, and more all as things you can buy directly from Blizzard for real money. It’s how all of Blizzard’s games that they’re actively developing work now, save for their remasters of old games.

Even then Classic WoW is being monetized as well with TBC Classic which is getting a once per account level boost and a mount/pet(though admittedly this is more like a collector’s edition thing).

and the reason they do it has nothing to do with a lack of creativity. It’s because it makes them a ton of money.

The kickstarter thing happens because people are willing to throw more than $60 USD at something if it can mean the difference between the game being made or not. Even for stuff like Star Citizen which is way beyond that, people throw thousands of dollars at the game with the mentality of “they will use this to add more content to the game and make it better”.

I can’t see people going in for Activision doing that, since they ought to be able to fund their own projects.

and “We’ll use that money to make our games better” is a bit of a hard sell when your CEO is getting $200M bonuses(I know a lot of that is stock options, but the optics of that whole scenario is just not good).

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The kickstarter analogy was more that Blizz didn’t tend to engage the community on what was wanted for D3 changes. From the beginning, for some reason, it felt like more of a take it or leave it attitude compared to other teams.

I think D4 team has been much more proactive on engaging the community as example. They ask for feedback. They have quarterly updates. They’re more transparent. The community feels more involved etc.

That type of thing I think was needed for D3 back in 2014, 2015 to get their revenue model right and keep the game thriving. Engage the community to get it right.

Just seems like so much potential was wasted in these past 6 years.

There’s also the element that people blame developers and creatives for the state of affairs on D3 balancing or seasonal changes when it’s really more of a resource problem - they just don’t have the resources or people to do that much more and revenue can solve that problem.

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200 million dollars can buy a hell of a lot of development.

Yeah, if we took that 2015 30 million number and multiplied it by a round number like $50 it would be $1.5 billion very rough estimate. With intern salaries being $2 billion per year, you only get an intern for about 9 months.

What was it I read the other day, the average dev at Blizzard makes under 45k a year? In CA that’s like McDonalds wages. I’m sure it’s the Murlocks. They eat a lot and keeping them fed is quite the chore. 2Billion barely covers that. :grimacing:

Exactly. And the Kotick yacht tax - 90% of all revenue is skimmed off the top for new Kotick yachts.

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The communication is nice, but we’re still going to get the micro-transactions. The revenue model for Diablo 4 is largely non-negotiable. They’ve confirmed there will be micro-transactions.

The communication is more about the underlying mechanics of the game, to keep players engaged with the game(and thus buying more mtx).

People can blame them all they want, the issue is that the higher ups don’t want to put up the resources to the Diablo development team to be able to address those things.

Reportedly what happened is that after the launch response to Diablo 3 the powers that be lost confidence in Diablo 3 and decided to abandon the game almost before RoS was even out.

One of the devs commented: “What they told the team was, “˜You’ve finished Reaper of Souls , it’s really good. But we think the best thing for the IP is to move to Diablo IV in whatever form that’ll be. The overall sense on the team, at least in my impression, was that there was a vote of no confidence from the executives. They thought Diablo III was a giant ****-up”.

What happened with Diablo 3 is less an issue of not having the resources and more an issue of the people who decide what to do with the resources didn’t think Diablo 3 was worth it.

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I did see Joe Shelly say that D4 will not have pay2win mtx though - cosmetic mtx being vastly preferable to having pay2win mtx like XP boosts and the like.

On the insider info, yeah, I’ve seen that before and it’s still hard to imagine that senior management would be so financially incompetent that they wouldn’t be able to capitalize on 30 million copies sold for 6+ years. That’s easily in the 100’s of millions.

But my main point was they tried RMAH as one revenue model and it failed. When ROS releaseed in 2014, it wasn’t until a year later that they tried mtx - and that failed. I don’t know when the insider quote is dated, but if it’s 2014 after ROS release and they’re saying, “…you’ve finished ROS and it’s great but we’re moving on to D4…” then they STILL tried mtx in 2015.

In other words, the higher ups still wanted a revenue model - they just completely failed to come up with a good one. And it’s likely that a successful revenue model would have improved the life support on D3 even though the Kotick yacht tax would still take it’s toll.

If there’s a date on the quote, it’d be interesting to see if it’s before the 2015 mtx rollout.

EDIT: took a couple secs to find it - it’s on or before 2014

The team later released the first expansion for the game called Reaper of Souls, a critically acclaimed masterpiece of additional content that also rebalanced many of the issues fans had with the title. The reception was exceptionally positive, and it felt like Diablo 3 had finally hit its stride and would be a popular Blizzard property for years to come.

According to a report from Kotaku, however, Blizzard outright canceled Diablo 3’s second expansion just before Reaper of Souls released. The company hadn’t even waited to see how the expansion was received by fans despite the long period of time Team 3 had been working on it, and even the success of Reaper of Souls wasn’t enough to convince the company to give more Diablo 3 expansions a legitimate shot

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True although if TBC Classic is teaching me anything it’s that a lot of people, actual players included, seem to want to not define XP/Level boosts as pay to win.

Hopefully they stick to just expansions and cosmetics.

Well my point is that any sort of revenue stream is going to involve micro-transactions and a fair bit of them. That’s just how they monetize games these days(and the definition of pay to win is not something even players seem to be able to agree on).

There’s a lot of people on the WoW forums who will tell you that WoW isn’t pay to win, despite Blizzard offering both a level boost and in-game gold for real money. They’ll insist it’s not pay to win until the best gear in the game is being sold or possibly even gear better than that.

There’s no actual date on the quote from the developer, but the article itself is from 2019: https://www.kotaku.com.au/2019/11/the-past-present-and-future-of-diablo/

Mentions of 2013 and 2014 are because that’s when these events were taking place. They don’t seem to mention when the actual quote was made.

The quote was probably 2013 - 2014 just because of the article wording:

"In late 2013 or perhaps early 2014, not long before the release of Reaper of Souls, Blizzard made an internal announcement that shocked the development team: Diablo III‘s second expansion was cancelled.

Team 3, the Blizzard department responsible for Diablo, hadn’t done a ton of work on this second expansion”they were mostly focused on Reaper – but it was planned as their next project. And now it wasn’t happening. What they told the team was, ‘You’ve finished Reaper of Souls, it’s really good. But we think the best thing for the IP is to move to Diablo IV in whatever form that’ll be,’ said one person who was there."

Anyway - kind of enraging for D3 fans because that means, ROS ended up doing really well and they had already decided to pull the plug on D3 second expansion and future plans before ROS was even out the door.

The usual deal with a handful of out-of-touch mgmt guys deciding the fate of a franchise and completely screwing it up. Personally, I think Josh M did a heckuva job turning the D3 ship around and I would have let those guys keep going.

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The quote has to be after that because the quote is about what Blizzard was doing at that time. You can’t exactly make a statement in 2013 about what your dev team did in 2014, after all.

it does suck for people who like Diablo 3, though it’s part of why having the game be good at launch is important. Many games that are improved post-launch never get up to the level they could because of a bad launch.

and that’s not really the kind of decision that more communication with the playerbase would change. They’re sticking strictly to what they think makes them the most money.

Hot take time:

WoD is my second favorite expansion only behind Wrath, just because of how much fun I had as a Gladiator Warrior. I hadn’t spent more than a couple days on each class since I started in 2005, but when I found Glad, I couldn’t think of playing anything else.

What do you mean this is an Arby’s Drive thru?