Blizzard CEO talks about what’s happening at the company and whether to expect new releases

In August 2021, Blizzard underwent a major personnel change. The studio’s president, Jay Allen Brack, left the company and was replaced by Mike Ibarra. The new head came at a difficult time for the company. Sexual harassment scandals had taken a serious toll on Blizzard’s image and reputation, so Mike Ibarra had to work hard to solve numerous problems. What’s been going on in the backdrop of all this, he told us in an open letter.

Global staffing changes at Blizzard

According to Ibarra, his main concern was to rebuild the company’s reputation. In order to do so, he had to make some serious changes:

1. Improving the work culture. According to Ibarra, the effectiveness of managers and senior executives depends to a large extent on this. A safe and creative environment has an impact on cash payments.
2. There are more full-time positions that are required to improve the culture. Previously, these responsibilities were divided among employees who were working on something else. Now there are separate positions for culture improvement. Among them is the culture leader. It is his responsibility to keep all the best and most attractive features of Blizzard and to motivate employees to show the most positive side of themselves. There is also an organisational leader in Human Resources. He is in charge of building trust and developing a safe, positive environment for all employees. The company also has a Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Leader, who is required to monitor and review progress in these areas.
3. After high-profile scandals, the internal incident investigation team tripled in size. Finally, a comprehensive and clear list of penalties for misconduct was drawn up. And it applies to everyone in the company, including the director.

All departments and teams were made aware of upcoming changes and plans to improve all key indicators. In addition, a new feedback form has been made available to employees. Mike Ibarra hopes that the feedback will make a difference for managers.

It’s only the beginning

And, as the new manager assures, this is only the beginning of painstaking work in this direction. There is still a lot to do to regain the trust of fans and the lost reputation. Ibarra also touched on the topic of the release of new projects. At the end of the letter, he directly addressed the gamers. The current president said that he was well aware of the need for regular releases of game content, as well as to innovate not only in existing games, but also beyond them. At the same time, the company already has interesting projects in the pipeline, the announcements of which will be available very soon. Mike Ibarra thanked the communities and teams for their dedication. According to him, this is the main incentive for Blizzard.

It’s likely that the announcements that were being prepared for BlizzCon will soon be available to players. The thing is, at the moment the annual festival is not taking place. Initially, due to the pandemic, it was moved online and was scheduled to take place in early 2022. However, the festival was then cancelled completely. Largely due to a series of scandals that took place internally.