Diablo iv developer5/17/2023 Some employees who spoke to The Post were from Blizzard Albany. We remain confident in the team - they’re building something incredible, and have received a lot of positive feedback from players." At that time, it was deemed inappropriate, and we went in a different direction. Stępień did not respond to a request by The Post for comment, but Blizzard spokesperson Reynolds said that "the story in question was floated more than three years ago under different leadership as character backstory, not game content. The script was ultimately overhauled the same year and the character cut from the story. Two employees also told The Post of a line in the script which read, "And then she was raped, brutally", and that employees would repeat the punctuation out loud to each other, "comma, period - alarmed by the direction Stępień had gone with the script." Stępień allegedly undertook a rewrite of Diablo 4's entire script, creating what multiple employees called the "rape version" due to repeated references in the script to the rape of a love interest, and to the script referring "to this female character as the raped woman as her primary description," according to the Washington Post. The article charts the development of the game under several different leaders, from alleged indecision and scrapped work under director Luis Barriga and lead designer Jesse McCree, who both left Blizzard in 2021, to a lack of significant improvement under the current head of the Diablo franchise, Rod Fergusson.Įmployees also spoke about the "disturbing" creative decisions by Sebastian Stępień, the former creative director on The Witcher 3 and head writer on Cyberpunk 2077, who became creative director on Diablo 4 in 2019. We regularly survey the team on their professional well-being, and the latest results are the most positive they’ve been in years." Overtime is voluntary and limited to specific teams. Production on the game is going extremely well. Although this internal date has allegedly slipped several times already, one staff member at Blizzard Albany said that, "We’re at the point where they’re not willing to delay the game anymore, 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."īlizzard Entertainment spokesperson Andrew Reynolds told The Post that, "As you may know, game development in general, and ‘Diablo IV’ specifically, follows an iterative process where the scope evolves over time. Staff said that Diablo IV has an unannounced release date of June 6th 2023. Speaking to the Washington Post under the condition of anonymity, the employees say that impossible deadlines, managerial indecision, and disturbing script revisions have led to employee dissatisfaction and high turnover.Īccording to the detailed report by the Post, Blizzard have "not explicitly required employees to work overtime in most cases," but are incentivising it in different ways including profit-sharing and offers to cover meals. Current and former Blizzard employees have shared details of alleged mismanagement and crunch during the ongoing development of Diablo IV.
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