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Diablo 4 Game Director let go by Blizzard

More key players are no longer involved with making games at Blizzard.

Diablo 4 Game Director let go by Blizzard

There’s more upset at Blizzard today with news that Diablo 4 game director Luis Barriga and lead designer Jesse McCree have been let go by the company.

According to Kotaku, and a later statement released by Blizzard, these two members of the Diablo 4 team are the latest fallout from the sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit. Blizzard has released the following statement on the departures.

We can confirm Luis Barriga, Jesse McCree, and Jonathan LeCraft are no longer with the company.

We have a deep, talented roster of developers already in place and new leaders have been assigned where appropriate. We are confident in our ability to continue progress, deliver amazing experiences to our players, and move forward to ensure a safe, productive work environment for all.

Things have not been going well since the lawsuit came to light, multiple key players have been let go, World of Warcraft players have been leaving the game, and Blizzard’s previous reputation has taken a massive hit.

Overall, much of the internal mess at Blizzard has left fans of their games annoyed at what’s been happening at the company, and rightly so. Change needs to come fast so it’s no surprise more people have been given their marching orders.



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mrpinsky

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11 messages 5 likes

The departure of Luis Barriga surprised me, because so far I have not seen his name mentioned as one of the culprits and I don't think he was seen in any of the pictures, either.

It's a dramatic development for D4 to lose the game director at this point in time, that's for sure. Whether it is ultimately good or bad for the game, I can't say. In some ways, I feel that Luis was on the right track, especially regarding art. But in other ways, it still looked too much like D3 for my taste, especially the cartoony animations. Also the updates on system design like skill trees looked like they do not know what they are aiming for and are just going through many design iterations without making real progress. And then there's the open world events that seem tacked on and are not really needed. So maybe new leadership will lead to some improvements.

The best case scenario appears to be if VV would take over D4. I have to say that D2R looks amazing and the people involved in it certainly appear to "get" Diablo like the Irvine Blizzard team never did.

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Vang

PurePremium

3,142 messages 849 likes

Good. In order to actually change a culture in a work environment you actually literally have to clean house. You leave one seed and it can blossom and spread putting you in the same situation as before.

And I 100% agree with @mrpinsky that VV needs to take over, they understand passion for game series.

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