The last few years haven’t been exactly pleasant for Blizzard fans. Heaps of layoffs, shoddy games, bad remakes and the company’s ever-present greed for money regularly stabbed players in the hearts. What hurts even more is the information that Mike Ybarra actually wanted to declare war on microtransactions.
Mike Ybarra will be well known to Blizzard fans. After working at Microsoft for several years and often being directly associated with the Activision takeover, he moved to Blizzard in 2021. He was even promoted to president of the company in February 2022 and apparently had big plans.
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At least that’s what comes from the new book by Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier. As he explains in Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, Ybarra planned, among other things, a complete reboot of Overwatch.
What’s actually even more exciting is that he was very critical of microtransactions. He wanted to massively reduce real money investments in Blizzard games, and he particularly targeted Diablo IV. The action role-playing game was praised for its comparatively harmless monetization options when it was released, but that probably wasn’t enough for Ybarra.
The purchaseable cosmetic items were a thorn in the president’s side, which is why he wanted to further defuse the system. However, it encountered strong headwinds, which should come as no surprise. Ultimately, Blizzard earned several hundred million dollars from the in-game shop.
In general, according to Schreier, Ybarra was not particularly popular with the workforce. After the peak of the corona pandemic, he wanted to have employees back in the office. The planned departure of live service games was not only met with approval by developers because it would mean considerable additional effort.
Unfortunately, we will never know what Blizzard would have been like if Ybarra had been able to implement his plans. In January 2024, after heavy waves of layoffs, he left the company without giving any precise reasons.
In this trailer, Blizzard Entertainment shows some gameplay scenes from the new Season of Hatred Rising in Diablo IV.
