Please excuse me for this very long post but I tried my best to edit out what is relevant as of now.
I strongly recommend reading the original article. But here are key highlights from the Washington Post article h ttps://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/12/08/diablo-iv-release-date-crunch
Read the highlighted text or the recap at the bottom :
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“Diablo IV” say it will be hard to meet a June 6, 2023, release date without working significant overtime, in a process they say has been plagued by mismanagement.
Developers, in turn, have been afraid of disappointing gamers, and in interviews, they described a beleaguered process of trying to meet a release date that feels unlikely without many hours of overtime or cut features. The release date has already shifted multiple times, they said.
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Fifteen current and former Blizzard employees spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about company operations. They described a mounting sense of dissatisfaction and malaise among employees as they endured leadership changes at Activision Blizzard and on the “Diablo IV” team.
The Diablo team has been losing talent for over a year, as employees look for more competitive wages and better work conditions elsewhere, according to employees.
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Last January, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick attributed the company’s stock price drop to the game delay of Diablo in a Venture Beat interview, rather than an ongoing sexual harassment lawsuit filed against the company in July of 2021.
“I think what affected the stock price more than [the sexual harassment investigation] is pushing out [the release dates of] ‘Overwatch’ and ‘Diablo,’” he said, explaining that was one of the reasons he was selling the company to Microsoft.
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“We were never going to hit our date without crunch,” said a former Blizzard employee of a previously-intended “Diablo IV” internal release date. “And even with crunch, I don’t even know if we would have hit our date.”
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A person familiar with senior leadership found the performance shares “unnecessary and even destructive,” arguing that “they incentivize leadership to cut corners, compromise and ship products that are not ready to be released, instead of doing what is best for long term value creation.”
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Half of the stock grant that Activision Blizzard is awarding “Diablo IV” developers will vest automatically in December 2022 and March 2024, while the other half is tied to performance.
(Commentary: Ouch. Baldur’s Gate 3 will overshadow their financial performances in August and maybe game of the year)
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Under the terms of the Microsoft merger, according to an Activision investment document, restricted stock units will be paid out at $95 each, while performance shares will be calculated after the deal closes, pending regulatory approval.
“It’s writing checks that somebody else has to cover,” said Joost van Dreunen, a lecturer on the business of games at the New York University Stern School of Business. “Assuming the deal goes through, Bobby Kotick doesn’t have to give you cash, plus, rushing a title might erode the value of the franchise if it’s not bug-free.”
(Commentary: As expected, the value of the franchise is beginning to erode
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“I just went to work every day and got angry,” said a female former Blizzard Albany (Vicarious Visions) employee. “Either because the tools were slow or I didn’t like the game that much, to be totally honest with you. The quality of life to actually enjoy what I’m working on and see a path forward with it was way too important to stick around for the equity.”
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The employees interviewed by The Post said it was not simply people quitting that posed a problem, but the kinds of employees who left. Many with institutional knowledge and decades of experience exited, leaving new employees and developers brought in from elsewhere at the company to fill in.
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“Diablo IV” initially began development over five years ago (2017). Under the leadership of director Luis Barriga alongside lead designer Jesse McCree, employees described a sense of inertia as large parts of the game would be worked on and then revamped and decisions stalled out. A battle royale mode for the game was discarded early on. McCree and Barriga did not respond to a request for comment.
(Commentary: Even the developers tried to do new things like battle royale mode. Hope all the anti-MMO & Seasonal content lovers have a perspective in that.
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Some employees attribute delays to McCree, who they say had a tendency to micromanage and a scattered approach to development. McCree would grow intrigued by different aspects of the game and then lose interest and hand it off to other people without finishing what he started.
“You could tell that they [McCree and Barriga] weren’t very confident, there wasn’t a lot of vision for the game,” said a former Blizzard employee. “They were changing their minds a lot, sometimes without even giving things a fair shot, like over the weekend. This started to really slowly start to burn people out.”
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The most upsetting management decision for many employees came from Barriga’s pick for creative director, Sebastian Stępień. Stępień, who had been brought on in 2019 to revise the game’s story, was previously creative director on the “The Witcher 3” and head writer on “Cyberpunk 2077.”
Employees said “Diablo IV” underwent a series of particularly disturbing revisions to the script.
Although Stępień had held a creative director title before, his background was more in cinematic directing than in game mechanics, and he approached “Diablo IV” from the perspective of taking the entire game and rewriting it himself.
In 2019, many Blizzard employees were disgusted by a version of the game’s script that repeatedly mentioned the rape of a love interest and referred to this female character as the raped woman as her primary description.
Many expressed discomfort with the idea of adding rape to the game in what they considered to be an effort to make “Diablo IV” feel grittier and tonally darker than the previous game, rather than engaging with the subject in a sensitive way.
(Commentary: Now I’m interested what the actual lore of D4 was, to be honest. Anyway it means the lore wasn’t complete even in 2019)
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“Diablo IV” had multiple internal, unannounced release dates. At one point, 2021 was floated as an internal goal. A more specific date emerged — December 2022 — after the title was publicly announced in 2019 at the company’s annual gaming convention BlizzCon. Developers appealed for more time to avoid massive cuts to the game. After moving the date to April 2023, the team felt it still needed more time and was able to get the June date approved.
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Blizzard Albany employee: “So we all just have to go along and figure out how much we’re willing to hurt ourselves to make sure the game gets released in a good enough state.”
“The problem with games like Diablo is that they are actually quite content heavy,” said a former longtime Blizzard employee, who added that the Diablo team’s desire to break free from “Diablo III” meant finding new solutions to systems that the previous installment had already established.
To help get “Diablo IV” over the finish line, Activision Blizzard enlisted industry veterans known for shipping games on time: video game industry veteran Rod Fergusson and Vicarious Visions, now known as Blizzard Albany.
Employees described Fergusson, now in charge of the entire Diablo series, as holding regular weekly Zoom meetings he dubbed the “Rodcast,” where several hundred people would join. Fergusson would discuss movies he enjoyed or celebrities he had spent time with. He would also address the team’s problem with attrition and share employee survey results, but employees felt that not much actually came out of these discussions.
“To me, he came off as a bit of a clout chaser about where he came from, like ‘Gears of War,’” said a former employee. “People got frustrated because we all thought he was gonna come in and fix the game. And when nothing happened, that’s when you started to see this massive turnover.”
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In August of 2021, the former studio head of Vicarious Visions, Jen Oneal, was promoted to Blizzard co-leader alongside Mike Ybarra, who joined Blizzard in 2019. Three months later, Oneal stepped down.
“You’re like, ‘Man, I feel like I’m working for the bad guys,’” said the female former Blizzard Albany employee. “I feel like any work I do is tainted by this name.”
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Last year, developers in Albany and Irvine were working on a battle pass and a Season Journey for “Diablo IV.” The Season Journey, which also existed in “Diablo III,” was supposed to challenge players at the end of each chapter. But over time, it morphed into a second battle pass. Eventually, the team judged that the two were duplicates, and ultimately cut one of the battle passes, scrapping work.
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Employees are mixed on whether the final, finished product will sate fans and be fun to play.
Some said it would be fun, while others suggested that review scores for the game would come out to be mediocre but passable. Most agreed that crunching to hit a specific release date resulted in a strained development process that could impact the quality of the game, but more importantly, the health of employees.
(Commentary: The review score did not turn out to be mediocre or even passable, sadly)
Recap
- Upper management crunched the devs to release the game regardless of the state of the game is finished or not.
- A lot of internal mismanagement and poor leadership from Barriga, Mcree, and Rod.
- Vicarious Visions aka Blizzard Albany is the team that helped this game launch(Known for their reputation). The poor coding is most likely the contribution from Vicarious Visions.
- The final crunch most likely started at the end of 2019 (Main story campaign being scrapped, team members leaving)
- This was not included in the article but item/skill designer David Kim also left Blizzard. Hence there is a discrepency into the showcase demo and release.
- Developers admit there were making cuts to release the game on unrealistic schedule.
My thoughts
I feel terrible what the devs had gone through and who presevered it. I wish the best for Shely. So, I wish the community could give another chance. (Though, I am not looking forward to people defending poor design choices)
I just hope that the community will finally arrive to a consensus and compromise each other :
- Yes this game does really suck. The devs expected it & the players experienced it. So, let’s move on. We still love this game.
- Give more positive support to the devs and…
- Former devs really wanted to free this game from Diablo III and even bring ideas to add battle royale pvp modes. This may come off as sacriledge to the purists, aka who think seasonal mode is the only mode of Diablo franchise need to take the chill pill.
- Allow more fresh ideas for Diablo 4 to evolve into its own identity. This game doesn’t need to be D2R/D3.