The producer of the original Diablo 2 doesn’t want to know much about the relaunched Resurrected version of the game. The recent Blizzard scandal about sexism and discrimination at the developer is obviously to blame.
With the release of the revamped Diablo 2 Resurrected approaching, developer David Brevik, who was instrumental as a producer on the first two installments of the game series, was asked on Twitter if he might want to do a let’s play of the remake as well as share his thoughts and experiences on the original game as part of it.
The veteran developer declined, saying that he does not want to support Blizzard at the moment, including all things related to Diablo 2 Resurrected. He will therefore neither buy the game nor host a stream about it, and his interactions and statements on the subject will also be exceedingly limited, according to Brevik.
Blizzard scandal reverberates
While he didn’t give a specific reason for his boycott, the cause is obvious, as the scandal surrounding a sexist and discriminatory climate at Blizzard famously caused quite a stir in July and beyond. Employees also went on the barricades on a broad front and some partly high-ranking employees had to vacate their posts. Brevik himself explained in a long thread on Twitter how angry and horrified he was and that he had only experienced one such incident during his time at Blizzard, and the person in question was promptly fired.
Meanwhile, the most recent accusation from the judicial side in the scandal was that important documents were removed that were said to be related to employee complaints and internal investigations. In the case of Diablo 2 Resurrected, the participants of the open beta phase were recently asked for feedback on how they would rate the given changes and improvements.