David Brevik, the creator of Diablo and the upcoming indie title It Lurks Below, recently went on a bit of a rant regarding the state of Blizzard.
“The people above Blizzard, who are profit happy, [are saying] ‘Oh my God, Fortnite is making a fucking shitton,'” said Brevik on a stream that featured thejunglequeen playing the Diablo-like Path of Exile. “‘Overwatch isn’t Fortnite…why have you wronged us?…We’re going to get rid of the profit sharing program. We don’t like this. We don’t like the fact that low-level employees make decent money at Blizzard. We’re going to get rid of this program because we need more profits to increase our stock price and improve our shareholders and the elite 1% of the company.'”
Brevik continued to bash Blizzard by suggesting that some of the recent corporate decisions made by the company (or for the company) may have been responsible for Blizzard co-founder Michael Morhaime shockingly leaving the company.
“‘You don’t like this very much, Mike Morhaime? Well too fucking bad, you’re gone,'” said Brevik. “‘Now we pass it and we get more profits…more money in my pocket, motherfucker, for your work that you’re doing.'”
Remarkably, Brevik doesn’t stop there. He also talks about how he knows about “some of the things [Blizzard] has planned” and wonders whether “Blizzard even be close to the same” if these projects don’t go well. He also laments how many people have left the company and seems to question whether or not Blizzard is really even Blizzard anymore. We can’t even begin to cover everything that he said that is worth hearing, so be sure to check out the full rant by watching the video below (skip to about 3:38:10 for the good stuff):
Let’s get a few things out of the way before we dive into this a bit. First off, Brevik admitted that he was fairly drunk during this stream. Second, he states that he is speculating a bit regarding the specifics of Morhaime’s departure and some of the other things he mentioned. You have to take all of that into account.
However, it’s 100% true that Blizzard has dropped their employee profit sharing program (which has reportedly led to decreased overall wages for Blizzard employees), and it’s also true that Mike Morhaime’s departure from the company was surprising and came around the same time that Blizzard cut the employee profit share program. Brevik notes that the structure of Activision Blizzard means that Blizzard might technically have power over Activision, but that it’s only because Vivendi has power over them all.
In case you’re out of the loop, this discussion regarding the state of Blizzard is rather timely as Blizzard recently revealed a very controversial mobile adaptation of Diablo and also announced that they plan on making mobile versions of more of their games. Those moves have thrust some of the other controversial business decisions that Blizzard has recently made into a far larger spotlight.