Kotaku: Blizzard pulled Diablo 4 announcement from Blizzcon (UPDATE: Blizzard disputes)

David___ said:

She said that her own sources from Blizzard say that it wasn't the case

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Tbf, they can both be right. She asked people at blizzcon, they said (publicly) one thing. Schrier's sources said something different privately and with the expectation that their identities will be kept secret.

It would help her position to actually let us in on what she knows/heard though. I'm usually not a fan of "I know something you don't" hints.

I don't believe it. I think this is Blizzard telling Kotaku this to alleviate the backlash.

Not excusing the backlash as I thought it was way too much, but I can't understand this decision if it was true. I can't prove it wouldn't be true and I don't think Jason is lying obviously, but I think Blizzard are lying about this.

Draconian said:

This is not the best example. Gears 5 had gameplay shown. The Metroid Prime 4 and Pokémon 2019 announcements are more apt comparisons to what this would've been.

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Except two years away, more like 3 or probably even 4. Honestly closer to the Elder Scrolls 4 than any of Nintendo's moves

hughesta said:

if the plan was to simply say it was coming but not ready.... why pull it? very strange.

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Yup. Really bizarre decision. They could've literally just shown a logo, with no release window or anything; plenty of AAA devs have gotten away with that. Hell, Bethesda got away with showing a logo for a game that isn't even in active development yet.

edit: meh, don't want to put anyone on blast

Night Angel said:

Tbf, they can both be right. She asked people at blizzcon, they said (publicly) one thing. Schrier's sources said something different privately and with the expectation that their identities will be kept secret.

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She's not just some random fan or streamer though, I'm sure she has her own connections at Blizzard. But yeah I guess it doesn't necessarily disprove what Jason has found out.

Idiots.

Don't know why some companies are so secretive

demosthenes said:

I don't know how far along it was when announced but Overwatch cost $$$$$$ to make and had a crazy development.

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Only if you factor in project Titans development costs and time which us what OW grew from.

TatteredHat said:

This does make me feel like Blizzard is mainly listening to their marketing people now, to pull a piece out of that famous steve jobs interview.

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It's actually felt like that for awhile now but this episode has certainly emphasized it.

So fans are going have to wait anyways regardless if it was teased at Blizzcon. Now fans know that the game is in development hell which is an even worse situation lol.

Im guessing game keeps getting rejected cause they arent gouging the player enough.

Asbsand said:

I don't believe it. I think this is Blizzard telling Kotaku this to alleviate the backlash.

Not excusing the backlash as I thought it was way too much, but I can't understand this decision if it was true. I can't prove it wouldn't be true and I don't think Jason is lying obviously, but I think Blizzard are lying about this.

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Yup.

Bishop89 said:

Don't know why some companies are so secretive

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Because they don't want all the hate when a project changes direction/has development issues and so wait until they are far enough along with development that they have a clear picture about the game. Perhaps they still don't know exactly what D4 will be, will it be just a normal ARPG, will it be an MMO, or maybe something even more different? Will it even be called Diablo 4?

Blizzard have already stated that they are working on multiple projects and in Blizzcon interviews stated that this includes projects that will excite the core PC fanbase.

Asbsand said:

I don't believe it. I think this is Blizzard telling Kotaku this to alleviate the backlash.

Not excusing the backlash as I thought it was way too much, but I can't understand this decision if it was true. I can't prove it wouldn't be true and I don't think Jason is lying obviously, but I think Blizzard are lying about this.

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My thoughts on this as well. They're in full-on damage control mode now.

Bishop89 said:

Idiots.

Don't know why some companies are so secretive

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If they are disorganized internally and have trouble finishing games because they change directions frequently it's best they keep a lid on it.

Parvaati said:

Schreier the Liar? Or bad info?

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I'd guess this is more of a case of Blizzard being a shit show right now with a bunch of people telling different stories because few probably really know what is truly going on.

Bishop89 said:

Idiots.

Don't know why some companies are so secretive

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I definitely agree that some companies take secrecy to an extreme beyond what is reasonable. At the same time, the games industry doesn't have protections afforded to it that other industries do (namely patent protection for game mechanics - not that such a thing would be beneficial, certainly in the framework of the current patent system), so a lot of innovation comes down to being a "trade secret".


Also, as mentioned above, they want to try and put on their best face for investors and consumers -- if it really is a shit-show internally, then that's terrible to have out in the open too.

Asbsand said:

I don't believe it. I think this is Blizzard telling Kotaku this to alleviate the backlash.

Not excusing the backlash as I thought it was way too much, but I can't understand this decision if it was true. I can't prove it wouldn't be true and I don't think Jason is lying obviously, but I think Blizzard are lying about this.

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Jason's response to this theory. They could be trying to use him by pretending to not want him to do it. But I doubt they really want people know about the projects turmoil

PrimeBeef said:

Only if you factor in project Titans development costs and time which us what OW grew from.

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I don't see why you wouldn't.

This is so monumentally stupid that i cannot believe it. We arent talking about a Titan situation where its complete unknown moving to something else. This is a sequel in a series. If its just an announcement with nothing to show, why pull it?

Castia said:

What happened to Blizzard :(

Been playing their games for almost 20 years and their name alone used to be a seal of quality, almost everything they released was amazing. They didn't care if it took 6 months or 3 years they wouldn't release a product until it was as close to perfect as possible.

Sad times.

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Activision.

Oh not again, Diablo 3 was great in 2010 & was received with almost universal praise at Blizzcon 2010, then they wasted 2 years of development time making it worse, by "fixing" what wasn't broken. Seems very much Diablo 4 is going through a similar development hell.

I think they should have done a title card even if it wasn't ready.

While this sort of confirms it, it would still mitigate some of the attendees disappointment after letting hyper go unchecked until 2 weeks before the conference

Remember when Sony announced the Crash remaster by quickly mentioning their partnership with Acti for it on stage before going into the Skylander's Crash Level trailer?

This is why.

The marketing team should be fired over this.

Dark_Castle said:

The marketing team should be fired over this.

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Yep calling for people to lose their jobs is really the way to go about this...

Maybe, just maybe, they can learn from this and just do better next time? We don't even know if it was the PR teams decision to put Immortal last at the opening ceremony or if it was requested from higher up.

steviejd1 said:

Yep calling for people to lose their jobs is really the way to go about this...

Maybe, just maybe, they can learn from this and just do better next time? We don't even know if it was the PR teams decision to put Immortal last at the opening ceremony or if it was requested from higher up.

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People don't get to be rewarded for doing their jobs badly. So what if the PR team was forced into it? They still failed their jobs.

Torlain said:

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Yeah no way they pulled this at last minute.

VallenValiant said:

People don't get to be rewarded for doing their jobs badly. So what if the PR team was forced into it? They still failed their jobs.

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I didn't say reward them either lol. It's not a case of reward or fire them, there are other options available...Blizzard's PR is usually quite good anyway.

Torlain said:

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So uh...that still begs the question -- if a video for a D4 announcement was made but not shown at Blizzcon this year, when the hell were/have they been planning to announce it that would potentially be better???

steviejd1 said:

I didn't say reward them either lol. It's not a case of reward or fire them, there are other options available...Blizzard's PR is usually quite good anyway.

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Blizzard trades a lot on consumer goodwill that they've (rightfully) built up over the years. This is a screw up. There will probably be a lot of uncomfortable meetings to figure out how this all went down as it did. I don't really see a good excuse for pulling a simple "we're working on it" announcement. It's quite possible a culture shift has occurred that will take time to really manifest clearly but this is a possible warning sign.

However, two people familiar with Blizzard's plans confirmed that the company had indeed recorded a video in which co-founder Allen Adham spoke to fans about a new Diablo project. What's in dispute here is the timing. We had originally reported that it was planned for BlizzCon, but it's possible that those plans were simply discussed and never solidified. (Either way, the video never happened.)

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So was there a video?

Its likely it wasn't pulled at the 11th hour, but that this announcement was pulled from Blizzcon weeks ago is pretty clear at this point. If other 'people' are to be believed, I forgot who posted the link, but apparently they also pulled D4's announcement prior to last year's Blizzcon as well, which is just more fuel for the development turmoil narrative.

My message to Blizzard - at this point, just announce the stupid game already. Its not like you guys have ever had issues with cancelling games that either had gone through too many development processes with nothing coming about or the games never reached your quality standard. Warcraft Adventures, SC Ghost, & the pre-Overwatch Titan all immediately come to mind.

Blizzard is openly responding to rumors to Kotaku about a game they never officially announced, for what reason exactly? This is such a silly situation Blizzard is placing themselves in by not announcing a thing they are still talking about anyway. One of the biggest rules in PR is to never let the story get away from you and in the span of a weekend, Blizzard has gone from seemingly this super secretive dev house to having one of their most active dev teams stuck in a development hell of sorts, with a PR team that is so out of touch with the fanbase they never imagined there'd be a backlash to announcing Diablo Immortal the way they did.

Blizzard, stop using the 'we have multiple Diablo projects in the works' as a shield as well to not announce a game everyone already knows about, in which you're already responding to rumors for. You're embarrassing yourselves.

Avitus said:

Blizzard trades a lot on consumer goodwill that they've (rightfully) built up over the years. This is a screw up. There will probably be a lot of uncomfortable meetings to figure out how this all went down as it did. I don't really see a good excuse for pulling a simple "we're working on it" announcement.

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Oh I totally agree that it was a tone deaf screw up, calling for people to lose their jobs because of it is dumb and certainly an overreaction that slips into the "gamer" stereotype of outrage and like I said, I would rather they sat down, discussed what went wrong and learn from it.

Tovarisc said:

Was it ever confirmed one way or another that OW is literally what was salvageable from Titan?

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Yes, a lot of the Overwatch heroes were characters from Titan. Some were more directly inspired than others. Tracer is basically straight from Titan. There was a panel about it at last year's Blizzcon I believe.

Pizza_King said:

I hope we don't have to wait another year to see something on D4.

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I would guess 2020. Blizzcon 2019 should be a WoW expansion year and probably another mobile game or one of the new games.

So we're at bargaining now?

It's gotten to the point where people are making conspiracy theories to try to alleviate their disappointment.

Diablo 4 does not exist until you're playing it.

Diablo Immortal should have been announced in a press release prior to the event with more information on it at blizzcon and they should have just shown nothing on the main stage. If you're not confident in showing D4, don't show anything on that main stage.

LycanXIII said:

So was there a video?

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Sometime soon would be a good time to release that video. It is possible to retroactively fix bad PR.

LycanXIII said:

So was there a video?

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I believe he's saying the video was recorded but not released.

If so, last sentence should read 'Either way, the video was never released'

Bit of a head scratcher.

Draconian said:

This is not the best example. Gears 5 had gameplay shown. The Metroid Prime 4 and Pokémon 2019 announcements are more apt comparisons to what this would've been.

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Did they show the 3DS Metroid followed by the MP4 teaser? Cuz that would be similar. Regardless, I think having an announcement that, on its own, would piss the fanbase off is the key thing here, not whether the announcement following it was a teaser.

The cynic in me is thinking that "Diablo 4 is in development" is just Wyatt and 4 game designers in the initial story boarding phases, and nothing beyond maybe a few prototypes. Multiple Diablo projects in the works... sure. A comic book, a novel, and 5 guys sending art assets to NetEase.

There's just been too much precedent for the Diablo franchise the last 6 years for me to believe that Blizzard knows what the future of the series will be. A strained launch, removal of the Auction House, a (rumored likely) canceled expansion pack, "maintenance mode", outsourced mobile game. All of these things indicate Diablo has not been a priority for them the past 6 years.

Now I don't doubt that we'll see the next game in the franchise eventually... 4-6 years from now... but I am going to cynically predict it will be not quite what the community wanted, either through monetization, simplification, or abandoning ARPG roots. Previously the fanbase would have had trust in Blizzard that they knew how to make a game people wanted. Now that trust has eroded.

I suppose predicting the Diablo fanbase will get angry in the future doesn't make me a prophet, though.

If nothing else, the meme economy surrounding this debacle is doing well.

Pretty scathing Polygon piece.

https://www.polygon.com/2018/11/5/18064290/blizzard-diablo-immortal-reaction-explainer-blizzcon

dishonestjest said:

I believe he's saying the video was recorded but not released.

If so, last sentence should read 'Either way, the video was never released'

Bit of a head scratcher.

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That was a hastily written typo - I've fixed it in the piece.

The video, from what I've heard, is Allen Adham assuring fans that a new Diablo game is in the works. I know for a fact the video exists. I had originally heard (and reported) that it was planned for BlizzCon. Blizzard doesn't dispute that the video exists, but they do dispute that the video was planned for BlizzCon. I'll relent to them and again apologize for the misinformation. Make sense?

As for what people care most about here: Diablo 4 is in development and has been for a while. It's gone through multiple forms. I think the team is avoiding talking about it because so many of the details are still in flux.

jschreier said:

That was a hastily written typo - I've fixed it in the piece.

The video, from what I've heard, is Allen Adham assuring fans that a new Diablo game is in the works. I know for a fact the video exists. I had originally heard (and reported) that it was planned for BlizzCon. Blizzard doesn't dispute that the video exists, but they do dispute that the video was planned for BlizzCon. I'll relent to them and again apologize for the misinformation. Make sense?

As for what people care most about here: Diablo 4 is in development and has been for a while. It's gone through multiple forms. I think the team is avoiding talking about it because so many of the details are still in flux.

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Well, they may as well release the video now and try to salvage some goodwill at this point.

steviejd1 said:

Oh I totally agree that it was a tone deaf screw up, calling for people to lose their jobs because of it is dumb and certainly an overreaction that slips into the "gamer" stereotype of outrage and like I said, I would rather they sat down, discussed what went wrong and learn from it.

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I don't understand, what is wrong with firing incompetent people?
Why is it that jobs are so sacrosanct, that people needed to be protected from their mistakes?

I completely fail to understand your position. Is it your belief that all jobs are for life, no matter how incompetent the person is?

jschreier said:

That was a hastily written typo - I've fixed it in the piece.

The video, from what I've heard, is Allen Adham assuring fans that a new Diablo game is in the works. I know for a fact the video exists. I had originally heard (and reported) that it was planned for BlizzCon. Blizzard doesn't dispute that the video exists, but they do dispute that the video was planned for BlizzCon. I'll relent to them and again apologize for the misinformation. Make sense?

As for what people care most about here: Diablo 4 is in development and has been for a while. It's gone through multiple forms. I think the team is avoiding talking about it because so many of the details are still in flux.

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Still seems like a dumb idea to not even mention it and close the show with a mobile game. I bet 95% of that shitsotrm could've been avoided if they'd just name drop D4 without going into any additional details. Good to have unofficial confirmation though.

Anyway, glad to see some of the sites decided not to act as Blizzard's outsourced marketing branch as many others do, that Polygon piece sums up the situation pretty neatly.

VallenValiant said:

I don't understand, what is wrong with firing incompetent people?
Why is it that jobs are so sacrsanct, that people needed to be protected from their mistakes?

I completely fail to understand your position. Is it your belief that all jobs are for life, no matter how incompetent the person is?

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There's nothing wrong with firing people. Gamers who have no idea about the inner workings of Activision Blizzard should not be calling for people to get fired, that is toxic behavior and is taking shit to the extreme.

Edit: Just as an addition, if everyone in the world got fired for 1 screw up, no one would have a job.

jschreier said:

That was a hastily written typo - I've fixed it in the piece.

The video, from what I've heard, is Allen Adham assuring fans that a new Diablo game is in the works. I know for a fact the video exists. I had originally heard (and reported) that it was planned for BlizzCon. Blizzard doesn't dispute that the video exists, but they do dispute that the video was planned for BlizzCon. I'll relent to them and again apologize for the misinformation. Make sense?

As for what people care most about here: Diablo 4 is in development and has been for a while. It's gone through multiple forms. I think the team is avoiding talking about it because so many of the details are still in flux.

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It does not make sense.
I am not saying that you are lying or anything but i am trying to explain why there was not any kind of news relative to the audience, ready for the presentation. Even if D4 is in a fluid state of existence, a simple hint of it could cut the damage in half. A video such as the one you report could have nullified it.

How can some Blizzard execs be so out of touch?

They're not announcing Diablo 4 because it is probably so early in development that it may change drastically from what it is now or even be cancelled altogether. Remember they had "Titan" in development and it was quite far but they cancelled it eventually and turned it into Overwatch. They didn't want to announce Titan and then later on say "Titan has changed to Overwatch." Same thing with whatever they're working on now.