Diablo IV was a huge success, but not everything is rosy about Blizzard.
Although hoard goblins first appeared in Diablo, they’ve since appeared in World of Warcraft, first only during events, and then this year in the Dragonflight add-on. The idea is always the same: they drop treasure when you defeat them, but only if you catch them before they escape through the magical portal. It is also unique in that, by tradition, it is part of the acquisitions division of Venture Co. , which is a goblin trade cartel that is primarily a parody and mockery of corporate wrongdoing.
I wrote jokes mocking the Venture Company’s general corporate greed for looting the puck (very personal), but then I got drive-first into the joke after locking the chain while my focus was on finishing the patch.
Because of their embarrassment, I’m no longer at Blizzard. https://t.co/jrPmKnGig4 pic.twitter.com/EqspeWGXCQ
– Eric Covington (@covingtown) May 31, 2023
This is a bold move for Blizzard, which has been known in recent years for its toxic environment and company culture. When Eric Covington on the research team at World of Warcraft dreamed them up, he put up things like “Another record quarterly revenue!” in their mouths. or “No profit sharing!”. But the move was quite reckless on his part, and suddenly he noticed that they were showing him where the door was: he was literally thrown out of nowhere.
Of course, he blasted the professional on Twitter and claimed he was fired “because someone saw a harmless joke and saw it reflected in it.” It is not known exactly what sentence the person’s fuse might have missed, you can see what the sprites say in the post above. It also seems likely that someone who was influential but did not sympathize with these jokes did not like them. The same couldn’t be said for the marketing team, who used them in promotional materials even after Covington was fired and didn’t hold back at all, writing them exactly the same stereotypical and greedy scripts as before. By the way, this also hurt the developer a lot, because he thought he could have talked to him and replaced the problematic parts, but he didn’t have the opportunity to do so. The issue also baffled him, since material that is posted on social media is vetted, meaning it has been approved by someone out there. This again did not reflect well on the company, though it seemed at last that the mood around the company house had calmed. Reports that Kotick was last seen jumping through the escape gate with a bag over his shoulder have not been confirmed.
Blizzard has seen some failures in the past years, but Diablo 4 can fix it all. If you are interested in DIABLO 4, you will find a Console World Available on offer.
