The last couple of months have been a turbulent time for Blizzard Entertainment and Activision Blizzard as a whole, with the company coming under fire due to allegations of widespread sexual harassment and discrimination against employees, which, as you’d imagine, has had legal consequences as well. The allegations have led to something of an exodus at the company, with many employees being let go due to their involvement in the controversies.
Diablo 4 lost two of its leads not that long ago when it was confirmed that game director Luis Barriga and lead designer Jesse McCree had been let go from the company. Now, a replacement for the former has been formally confirmed.
In an update published on the Blizzard website, Joe Shely – a Blizzard veteran who’s been serving as design lead on Diablo 4 since 2017 – announced that he’s been appointed as the new game director for the project. ” As a design lead who has been working on this dark, shared, open world action role-playing game from the beginning, I’m honored to continue the vision of Diablo IV as its new Game Director, and I’m humbled to represent the team pouring their hearts into this game,” he wrote.
“Like many of you, our team has been reflecting upon recent events. A lot has happened since our last blog and the hard work of practicing the values we aspire to must continue. In parallel with that important work, development of Diablo IV continues too.”
Diablo 4 was announced back in 2019 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, though no release date for the game has been confirmed since then. It’s probably going to be a while though, and there’s every chance that native PS5 and Xbox Series X/S versions will also eventually be confirmed.
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