The players will have to take their troubles patiently. Activision Blizzard announced delivery delays on two flagship video games on Tuesday: Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV. These are games from the Blizzard studio, with which Activision merged after the 2008 takeover of Vivendi Games from the Vivendi group. The publisher had given no specific date for the release of either, but many were expecting them in 2022.
Released in 2016, Overwatch is one of the main titles of Activision Blizzard. Its success was such that it gave rise to the creation of a dedicated championship, the Overwatch League, one of the most prominent examples of the development of esports. As for Diablo, the first edition of which dates from 1997, it has been the subject of several versions. The last iteration, Diablo II: Resurrected, was released at the end of September (Diablo III had already been published in 2012), and enjoys great popularity on Twitch, the popular video platform for “gamers”.
No specific date
On Tuesday, the group said that it had “appeared that some of the content (whose launches were) planned for next year (would benefit) from more development time to reach their full potential,” said number two Daniel Alegre on the third quarter results conference call. If he did not give a date, the leader thus hinted that the exit ofOverwatch 2 and Diablo IV would not intervene before 2023.
Daniel Alegre attributed this postponement to staff renewals, at the head of Blizzard but also within the creative teams in charge of developing the games. At the beginning of August, the president, J. Allen Brack, in fact left the company, a few days after the outbreak of a scandal which exposed accusations of harassment and discrimination in the company. On Tuesday, the group also announced that Jen Oneal, who replaced J. Allen Brack in August with Mike Ybarra, will, in turn, be leaving Blizzard.