You read that right, Blizzard has delayed the long-awaited titles yet again, to no surprise from fans and critics alike.
It is a known fact that neither Overwatch 2 nor Diablo IV had concrete release dates, yet it was still expected of Blizzard to have released them sometime during early 2022, as hinted by the company itself. It seems that now, both the games will be seeing their releases in 2023, that is, if they don’t get delayed even further.
This is what a Blizzard executive announced during Activision Blizzard’s third-quarter earnings call:
“As we have worked with new leadership in Blizzard and within the franchises themselves, particularly in certain key creative roles, it has become apparent that some of the Blizzard content planned for next year will benefit from more development time to reach its full potential,”
The Blizzard executive went on to say:
“While we are still planning to deliver a substantial amount of content from Blizzard next year, we are now planning for a later launch for Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV than originally envisaged.”
The reasons for these delays could be attributed to the massive troubles and scandals the company has been coming under recently. Blizzard received multiple lawsuits regarding the women in the workspace alleging assault, sexual harassment, discrimination, as well as unfair labor practices.
Following these lawsuits, there were a lot of employee and executive departures and firings, including the game director of Diablo IV, Luis Barriga. All of these monumental issues are likely to have caused the delays in releasing the two highly-awaited games.
Published: Nov 6, 2021 06:56 am