In an interview with Axios, the developers of Diablo II: Resurrected (D2R) said that “people should do what they feel is right” when it comes to the decision of whether or not to purchase the game or not.
This is in light of the recent allegations mentioned in the civil rights lawsuit that has been filed against Activision Blizzard (with much of it centering on this conduct occurring within Blizzard Entertainment). D2R is the graphically enhanced version of Diablo II (including the Lord of Destruction expansion). Much of this work was done by the company that Activision Blizzard had acquired (and has made a wholly owned subsidiary), Vicarious Visions.
People are free to do with their money as they please. For myself, I walked away from Blizzard Entertainment as a customer back in 2015 (and as an ATVI shareholder not too long ago after learning how much worse things were internally with the company with the allegations brought forth). While I fully realize this culture goes well beyond Blizzard Entertainment, the issue I’ve taken with Blizzard is how for years, they’ve marketed what has been a big lie (portraying it as a family which they cared about and listened to) to their community and own employees (similar to what Disney does); where at least two of the three co-founders, were part of that toxic culture (contributing to and/or being purposely oblivious to it).
Activision Blizzard being one of the biggest companies in the gaming space, and not holding anyone at the executive leadership accountable (Kotick and Townsend are still there), translates into ZERO money going their way from me. It also doesn’t matter if the bulk of the work was performed by a subsidiary studio; they are still wholly owned by Activision Blizzard where the only thing these executives (in the main holding company) care about are the bottomline numbers. The only way actual change is effected is when the bottomline numbers (revenues, MAU, concurrency, churn, etc) fall through the floor. Yes, rank and file employees become collateral damage. But guess what? They have always been considered expendable (like the ones Kotick sent pink slips to in the recent past even while the combined companies were raking in record profits).
With all that is public now, how much more of a charade can the executive “leadership” continue to thin out the rank and file (the ones actually designing and developing these titles the company is reliant on for their revenues) in order to massage the numbers on the expense side of the ledger? IMHO, this is the absolute worst time to continue supporting anything Activision Blizzard puts out. But I know realistically that there are a lot more who do not keep up with, or care about how these companies operate. So certain high profit franchises (like Call of Duty and Overwatch) will continue to rake in the money. Likewise, many Diablo fans (who know what is going on with Blizzard) will continue putting money into Bobby Kotick’s pockets where so long as they continue meeting expectations, executives like him will never see any accountability.
