Diablo 4 is rumored to be released next June 6, but according to The Washington Post (opens in new tab), which interviewed 15 current and former Activision Blizzard employees, meeting that date will be "hours of overtime and features It is a challenge that may require cuts."

Diablo 4 has reportedly moved its internal release date several times during the development process, which The Washington Post calls "distressing," although it has only been delayed once that we've heard of, when the release year was changed from 2022 to 2023. According to the paper, Blizzard "for the most part does not explicitly require employees to work overtime," but some employees "do not want to release an unfinished product" and feel pressured to work an unhealthy amount of overtime to meet the summer 2023 release date, which is unlikely to change again.

Reached for comment by The Post, an Activision Blizzard spokesperson said that Diablo 4 production is "going very well" and that "overtime is voluntary and limited to certain teams."

"We regularly survey our team's work happiness, and the latest results are the most positive in years," the company said.

One source of pressure for employees is the equity incentive associated with Diablo 4, part of which they must remain with the company for one year from the release date to receive. These financial incentives, reportedly favored by Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, undoubtedly encourage developers to cut corners in order to achieve an unrealistic release date. The Washington Post has heard such criticism from sources with knowledge of the company's incentive plans, and PC Gamer has heard similar criticism in the course of its reporting on Activision Blizzard.

Stock incentives "are really just a way for the company to make people want to work much, much longer hours to save the company money without mandating a crunch, stress themselves out, and burn themselves out," a Blizzard employee told the Washington Post.

Another reason employees feel the need to work overtime, according to the report, is the exodus of talent over the past year. As an example, two of the paper's sources said that its team of about 20 developers has been cut roughly in half due to a decline in employees who left in search of better pay and work environments.

The Diablo 4 team also had to deal with a sudden change in leadership last year, when Diablo 4 director Luis Barriga and lead designer Jesse McCree both left Blizzard in the summer of 2021, shortly after the California sexual harassment lawsuit rocked the company. left the company. The lawsuit was followed by numerous other firings and resignations of employees, some of whom were involved in the lawsuit and others who were not. According to Blizzard sources interviewed by PC Gamer last year, the departure of former Blizzard co-leader Jen Oneal, who had assumed half of the role following the departure of former president J. Allen Black, was a major blow to employee morale.

For Blizzard, staffing had been an issue even before the lawsuit: one former Blizzard employee interviewed by PC Gamer in 2021 said he noticed severe layoffs starting in 2019. Along with massive layoffs, he said, "waves" of employees began leaving around that time.

According to The Post's sources, other challenges in the development of Diablo 4 include a lack of "vision" by Barriga and McCree - apparently a battle royale mode was briefly planned and then discarded - and creative director Sebastian Stępień, and included a hated script by Sebastian Stępień, which made "repeated references to the rape of love interests" and was eventually revised.

"The storyline in question emerged more than three years ago under different leadership, not as the content of the game but as the backstory of the characters," Activision Blizzard told the Washington Post about the script. 'It was deemed inappropriate at the time and went in a different direction. We have confidence in the team - they are building something incredible and have received a lot of positive feedback from players."

Current and former Blizzard staff interviewed by The Washington Post had mixed expectations about the reception of Diablo 4." Some said it looked interesting, while others suggested that the game's review score would be mediocre but passable," the paper wrote. The full report, which goes into more detail about Diablo 4's development and employees' opinions on the project, can be read here (opens in a new tab).

We recently had the opportunity to play Diablo 4 and found it to be instantly satisfying, despite having only played a small portion of the main game.