And just like that, any further plans for another Diablo game are now gone as Microsoft will find a way around this.
It’s about god damned time.
Unionize the gaming industry across the board.
How is this going to benefit the gaming industry?
I don’t understand all the down voting. I’m genuinely curious, thanks to the people who explained.
My younger cousin was in his first year of college, and he told me he wanted to make video games. I told him about how hard the industry is on developers, and encouraged him to look into other careers. He eventually changed his mind and picked something else (something programming related, I forget what exactly).
He’s a really bright and creative guy, and we’ll never know what awesome game he could have helped make, if I hadn’t talked him out of it. So it can be hard to see what we’re missing sometimes.
You see, when you look past the sales figures and hype men you eventually come across dozens or hundreds of talented people who create the actual art and entertainment that we all enjoy.
A good work environment means more talented and artistic people will continue to make the things that we enjoy.
Hope this helps
Industries are made of people. People require goods and services. Goods and services are purchased with currency. Currency can be extracted from companies more effectively with the use of collective bargaining.
They’ll be required to pay their employees appropriately and provide benefits, as their talent pool will now collectively bargain for these things. Hundreds of people negotiating as one instead of everyone for themselves.
Fairly paid talent will produce better games.
Good developers can work there?
when are they going to make Diablo 2 again
No. Must, not, install, D2 again!
There’s 450 Diablo developers?
According to the Diablo IV credits, over 9,500 people worked on that title in some capacity:
https://www.mobygames.com/game/204085/diablo-iv/credits/windows/
I’ve worked in the video game industry for a couple years and have been credited in several games. This number may actually be higher.
It may sound crazy, but there’s a lot of people working on AAA games, usually most of them completely unrelated to game dev. Marketing, public relations, translators, 3D graphics artists, sound designers, orchestra performers, motion capture stuntmen, voice actors. Probably a few dozen managers, who have never even seen the game. Hell, some companies even credit IT staff in the game’s credits.
That’s already a whole bunch of teams. It’s also important to mention that many third-party contractors will often be skipped from the credits. QA is very commonly outsourced (to poorer countries like Romania or Serbia) and rarely gets into the credits. You may only see 5-10 names, while in reality it was at least 100. This is true for several other fields, though mostly non-game-related, e.g., localization, promotial material, merchandise.
I won’t disclose in what capacity, but in the past I have worked on several of Blizzard’s titles for a few months and I’m not credited anywhere. Just like at least a couple hundred other people. Not necessarily saying I should be - it was never mentioned or promised. Just highlighting that the real number of staff that worked on the game (or adjacent to the game) may be above 10k.
Crazy that AAA games take that many developers no wonder they all feel a bit samey.
As a bit of a thought exercise, I went through every mainline GTA game using that website to get an idea of each title’s respective headcount:
- GTA : 86 people (DOS)
- GTA2 : 170 professional roles (Windows)
- GTA3 : 185 professional roles (PS2)
- GTA:VC : 688 professional roles (PS2)
- GTA:SA : 780 people (PS2)
- GTA4 : 1,333 professional roles (PS3)
- GTA5 : 3,686 professional roles (X360)
So while the general headcount growth over time tends to track, as each generation of platform requires more and more people to churn out higher fidelity content, I can’t help but wonder what portion of that headcount is just there to churn out micro transaction and Games-as-a-Service garbage.
A good number of that is 3D artists. Try making a highly detailed 3D model in Blender. Now imagine a game like GTA V has thousands of those, but even more detailed. This is one of the major reasons why AAA are taking longer and longer to produce. At the same time, game systems and mechanics are simplified to cut costs.
Well the other thing is that design work doesn’t scale the way art does. You can’t throw 1000 game designers at a project and expect them to create a coherent game design.
So you end up with one or a small team of game designers and they need to get the major parts of the design done early since everyone else follows from that. This leaves you with so little room for experimentation that you end up with a cookie cutter game design.
Most of those devs are probably freelancers or from hired studios doing esoteric work. It’s still crazy to see these numbers when most of the games I play are indie and have tiny credit listings. 450 people could make at least ten of the games I play.
I’m still surprised when I see 50+ on some indie games.
Yea there’s still ongoing seasons for Diablo 3, Diablo immortal, Diablo 4 (seasons and another expansion), Diablo 2 resurrection. Probably other stuff I’m not aware of.
Diablo 2 ressurection seasons don’t actually get new content though. It’s just a wipe.
Weird, seems kinda pointless.
IIRC seasons as we know them started with D2C with no new content. Endgame items had become commonplace, and it was hard for beginners to trade. Everybody missed what it was like when the game first started.
Of course, some parts can never be repeated. I was following the story and got legit surprised by Duriel.
The community isn’t happy about it either.
I genuinely don’t understand what all those people are doing there. Not just in Blizzard, but any other corporate studio
Well, someone in this thread linked to the Diablo 4 credits, and those list what they do.
Microsoft is notoriously bureaucratic - there’s probably a lot of PR, middle managers, support staff and bean counters at each studio.
I think you just discovered why they’re unionising so hard.
Microsoft: Don’t worry, Blizzard. We can quash a union attempt. There’s only like 100 of them, tops…
Blizzard: There’s 650.
Microsoft: _spits drink _. For this shit!?
I bet 449 are just for the auction house
unpopular opinion. i liked the ah in D3. was able to make my money back. should be in all games to make your money back when they churn out shitty games. at least u can make a profit from a bad game
I’m giddy that we’ll never let them live down D3 Original
How long until the studio closes and gets folded into a non-union org?
Good.
