Photographer: Troy Harvey / Bloomberg
Photographer: Troy Harvey / Bloomberg
Video game publisher Activision Blizzard Inc. took it one step further to consolidate control over the Blizzard Entertainment division, which once felt proud of its autonomy, shifting to its ranks a 200-person design studio.
The studio, Vicarious Visions, had been a subsidiary of Activision since 2005 and worked on franchises such as Skylanders, Crash Bandicoot and Tony Hawk. He will now focus entirely on Blizzard franchises, including Diablo, rather than making his own games. Former head of study at Vicarious Visions Jennifer Oneal will take a place on Blizzard’s leadership team, reporting directly to the president.
The news, reported by GamesIndustry.biz, came a few weeks after Blizzard quietly dismantled one of its internal development teams, according to people familiar with the company.
Blizzard, the maker of games like World of Warcraft and Overwatch, has traditionally developed most of its games at home. But in recent years, the publishing arm Activision has taken over a stronger hand in Blizzard operations. Vicarious Visions, based in Albany, New York, has been working with Blizzard since last year on the Diablo franchise, including a planned remake of Diablo II, according to people familiar with the plans. They asked not to be identified by discussing private information.
A Blizzard spokesman declined to comment on Vicarious Visions’ current projects, only confirming that the studio “has been working with Blizzard for some time.”
Until last year, the remake of Diablo II was to be developed by Blizzard Team 1, which is part of the company’s Irvine, California campus, which had become known for reworking classic games. . Its most recent release, in January 2020, was a remake called Warcraft III: Reforged. The title was poorly received due to failures and lack of features, scoring 59 out of every 100 points on the Metacritic review aggregator, the lowest score a Blizzard game has ever scored.
Team 1 members met to discuss what had gone wrong. Blizzard’s internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg identified game failures over poor planning, poor communication, and a hasty release due to financial pressure from management, among other factors. For example, Blizzard announced the game in November 2018 and began placing advance orders for 2019 without first informing most of the development team, according to several people who worked on Warcraft III: Reforged.
Team 1 wanted to avoid repeating the mistakes of Warcraft III: Reforged in their next project, the remake of Diablo II. Shortly after the postmortem, however, Blizzard removed this project from the team and commissioned the division behind Diablo IV. A group from Vicarious Visions is also working on the remake, which was known as Devil II: Resurrected.
On October 15, 2020, Blizzard informed members of Team 1 that it was reorganizing the entire division, according to people working on Warcraft III: Reforged. In the following weeks, team members had the opportunity to be interviewed for jobs at other Blizzard sites. Those who found no charges in the company were gradually reduced. Others went to independent studios recently created by veterans of high-profile companies, such as Frost Giant Inc. and DreamHaven Inc., initiated by Blizzard co-founder and former CEO Mike Morhaime, whose departure largely marked the beginning of Activision’s takeover.
Team 1 was also responsible for the games Storm Heroes and StarCraft II. Blizzard halted support for the development of Heroes of the Storm in 2018. On the same day that Blizzard said it was reorganizing the division, it publicly announced that StarCraft II was ending all ongoing development.
Blizzard is committed to continuing to fix and upgrade Warcraft III: Reforged, though it will likely do so with an external computer. A spokesman would not confirm who manages the ongoing development of Warcraft III: Reforged, but said “we are still committed to the updates to support the community.”