Blizzard Entertainment recently announced the company canceled its flagship annual event Blizzcon 2022, which was scheduled to take place this coming February. The organization said that it will take this time to “reimagine what a BlizzCon event of the future could look like.”
“We’ve decided to take a step back and pause on planning the previously announced BlizzConline event scheduled for early next year. This was a tough decision for all of us to make, but it’s the right one,” the organization said in a blog post. “Any BlizzCon event takes every single one of us to make happen, an entire-company effort, fueled by our desire to share what we create with the community we care about so much. At this time, we feel the energy it would take to put on a show like this is best directed towards supporting our teams and progressing development of our games and experiences.”
Just days later, Jen Oneal announced she would be leaving the company after she and Mike Ybarra were brought in to co-lead the organization following the resignation of J. Allen Brack in August. Oneal will transition into a separate role at Blizzard until the end of the year when she is expected to leave. As a result, Mike Ybarra will now serve as the sole leader of the company.
In July, a lawsuit was filed by the California State Department of Fair Employment and Housing against the video game publisher Activision-Blizzard. The civil suit alleged the company had a workplace with rampant sexual harassment, gender discrimination, and equal pay law violations.
The Profit‘s Take:
Apparently, on the actual earnings call, Diablo IV and Overwatch 2 have been delayed indefinitely. So, let me see if this is right: Blizzcon gets canceled, Blizzard games get delayed, Blizzard’s co-leader is leaving, and harassment issues continue to be exposed. How is anybody still a member of Team Bobby Kotick at this point? Kotick needs to go, or Activision-Blizzard is screwed. It’s disgusting how right I have been about this business for years now. This company has been rotting at the top for so long. At some point, the sh*t was going to hit the fan. You can only be a gaming company that makes no games for so long. At some point, this will all come to a head, and the business will have to stand on its own. You can do all the financial engineering you want; Activision-Blizzard will fail if they don’t make good games. This organization has been managed to a point where they have no games, a mass exodus of talent, a bad reputation, etc. I don’t know where this goes or how you right the ship without getting rid of the captain. I don’t see a solution here for Activision-Blizzard. There are a ton of underlying problems with this company. I can’t name one person that would want to work there right now. People want to work on games that will see the light of day, and I don’t think that will happen at this company. There’s an easy fix here: get rid of the people at the top. Bobby is not the guy for this company. A Wall Street money manager is not going to fix this business. The Activision-Blizzard story is just going to get uglier and uglier over the next year. Shareholders are going to get fed up, which will cause Bobby Kotick to be gently pushed out. Then they bring in a younger CEO that is more innovation-driven like Satya Nadella. They need to drop all other distractions and go back to being a video game company. I expect this transformation process to take three years.
(All information was provided by Blizzard News, CNET, Esports Bets, IGN, and Kotaku)
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