Is This the End of Old School Blizzard?

[Music] All right, quick news here with the uh Diablo boss Rod Ferguson departs Blizzard. So Ferguson's been around for a long [ __ ] time, dude. Like the guy is is O [ __ ] G. And he is like literally I think the last OG guy left at Blizzard, right? And now he's leaving now. Everyone else is new since the Activision like really got regressive with these guys, but he was a general manager for the Diablo franchise for the last 5 years. He did Diablo II Resurrected, Diablo Immortal, Diab, which was a little bit controversial obviously. Diablo 4, which did well, probably not as well as people had hoped, but did pretty well, and the expansion Vessel of Hatred. He is OG. I've actually met the guy. He's a really, really good guy, right? But from my understanding, this was always the plan. like his job was to come in and fix Diablo and launch this game and move the [ __ ] on, right? So that's what he is doing. Evidently, he's not retiring despite his age and accomplishments.

He's moving on to a new project, which he's not really saying what that is. Could be go work with the rest of the OG Blizzard guys at Moreheim or maybe fix Gears of War
potentially.
Please. Oh my god, I love that franchise. because as Microsoft completely dismantles and destroys every franchise they [ __ ] touch. But we'll find out soon. Evidently, he's going to announce very soon what he's going to be doing.
I always heard that there was a little bit of a like not little, you know, new blood versus old blood type of a rivalry inside Blizzard. The OGs really didn't want to change and especially with the era of performance marketing and freetoplay that that was quite difficult. Do you think, Eric, that the new blood won?
Oh yeah, absolutely. It was Bobby and Armen, right? Bobby and Armen basically [ __ ] completely decimated Blizzard and changed the entire world at Blizzard, right? For better or for worse, right? Depending on who you talk to. I get it from both perspective. We've talked about this many times in the podcast, right? This is a new

Blizzard, right? Again, for better or for worse, right? But all the OG people, all the creatives are gone, right? They left years and years ago, right? So, we'll see. We'll see, right? Like, we'll see what what what comes up. They haven't seen much. They actually did fix World of Warcraft like in a way. Like they got that back on track. Diablo was reasonably good, but Overwatch was a [ __ ] absolute train wreck. Everything mobile has been a train wreck except for Diablo. So yeah, we'll see. We'll see. And I think with this whole Microsoft stuff is looking like the wheels are coming off at this point, right, in terms of people's motivation and getting [ __ ] done. I don't see any changes in this. And what my understanding is from people that work at Microsoft is like everyone is running around like their heads cut off. They have no [ __ ] idea what the strategy is anymore, right? So, and that trickles down to all these guys. So, yeah, we'll see. We'll see. You know,
must be an impact where they know that Phil is also leaving. Like, he already announced. He's like, I'm just here for the good time.
Was that fake?

No, Phil didn't announce he was leaving yet. People speculate that he's leaving, I Oh, but that was like covered in all the press that he will be leaving with a new
new console.
No,
I don't know. None of that has been confirmed.
Yeah.
Okay. But none of that
but he should have come out like, "Hey, this is bogus." Like, you could just tweeted.
Look, Phil's a great guy. Really sweet dude, and everyone's beloved. He beloved. Absolutely beloved, but he's not the right guy.
Not the right guy.
Yeah. No, Bobby.
Yeah, but I meant like like everybody's headless. Meaning that even if there's a conversation that even the leader is leaving after the next iteration, right,
or next console cycle, then that's even worse. You don't even know who to talk to.
I didn't mean this.
I'm putting Sarah Bond out there quite a bit who's president of Xbox and she is very, very visible.
All right, Jen, we get it. You got the campaign donations.
Okay, cool.
Yeah,
it's true. I I mean, yes, you you all know that I love to support the strong

women in our industry. However, it is true that she is out there speaking a lot.
Yeah. If you go to her Sarah, what should we do about Gears of War? You'd be like, what? Anyways,
but Mishka, you had posted like a LinkedIn post around Stormgate, right? That Stormgate, which was,
isn't it Stargate's like spiritual successor?
No, this is part of the Blizzard family that has, you know, exited Blizzard and started their own companies. Storm. [ __ ] What's the Starcraft followup? What's What's the game?
It is Stormgate. Remember this is by Tim Frost Giant Studios. They got VC money and they also went
I know we're going to talk about
directly to the people.
They went directly to the people if you remember. So there there are shareholders listening right now if you remember.
All right, let me just take a step back. So Frost Giant is by
Tim Morton. So Tim Morton is the CEO of Frost Giant, which is a team that was set up by ex Starcraft, two people, and

they built a game called Stormgate, which is essentially an iteration or the followup or a version of Starcraft. You got the three races, and it's u RTS, which we don't see much on anywhere anymore. And it is free to play, right, Phil?
I remember they did early access founders packs. Remember they had a big campaign component. co-op was a
it is not free to play. But anyway, he posted on LinkedIn saying, "Stormgate has had a smooth launch last week and the critical reception has been positive." That said, Stormgate is not getting the concurrency of sales that I hoped for. As the CEO of Frost Giant, that is my responsibility. I'm constantly trying to learn how to do it better. When I've had some time to digest, I will share my thoughts and opinions. So, basically, the the post on LinkedIn is saying that the sales are not doing that well and they will have to do some correction moves. He didn't specify those and I understand it's incredibly stressful time. The team has gone from after the fund raise I believe they had Kickstarter where you can

become a part owner of the company and we were actually covering it on this podcast. It was kind of weird is like just a Kickstarter. It was just it was a special financial vehicle. It was like a Kickstarter but remember you actually had
ownership through this very weird it wasn't an SPV. I don't know what Eric I don't know what the [ __ ] this financial engineering was but it's gross. Yeah, it was it was weird. I I remember the weirdest part for me is not Tim working [ __ ] hard to keep his company alive and to bring something new on the market. The weirdest part was when Bitcraft was announcing their $300 million fund. They had Tim talking as he they were quoting him and I'm like, "Guys, if you're raising so much [ __ ] money, give this guy a little bit. Don't make him like make these [ __ ] financial vehicles to raise like 500k. How about you your fun Tim? Anyways, that was the weirdest part of that. But looks like the game
What was [ __ ] Jasper doing, dude? Jasper should just kick some [ __ ] money down, right?
But yeah, but he was like announcing 300

million and then Tim was quoted multiple times and I'm like he's out there begging money from players for a game that hasn't even released. Like how like I don't get it. Anyways, but I I've heard all the good things about Tim and I've heard that he works extremely hard and cares a lot. So it must be a stressful time for him as the game is not getting the the reception that he wished for.
All due respect to Tim, I really like the guy. I think he's like absolutely brilliant OG guy. But like building a RTS in this market right now is just
we talked about this ages ago. There was no product market fit at all. And only thing that made sense was go to the super core and charge a huge premium and tried to do it that way to get like a few million people to get the game. And that he just didn't execute against the game. the game was just not of high enough quality to attract the audience that he needed to attract. So,
no, I I don't agree with that. The thesis was weak. You have the right answer, the threat of right answer, but you're going after an RTS Tamic.
You caution Will Robinson, you got to stop there. You're making this is like

it's not as moas.
All right. I was This isn't an execution issue. I mean, you're executing. You're big fish, very tiny pond. Doesn't matter how good the execution is. Too small.
I made the same argument. I know, Bill. I'm just trying to give throw him a bone, you know.
No, no, no. And I don't The reason I don't want to throw him a bone is I do agree. He's an extremely nice guy. I remember he gave that incredible beatdown of web 3 if you remember
beforehand.
But these founders don't choose ambitious enough thesises. And we were just talking about the Blizzard OG's not surviving. This is literally an example of it, right? The next news article is exactly this
and I think that is important like the market doesn't care, you know, doesn't care about your ideas and it moves
or your feelings, right? And and we were also talking about the Warcraft Rumble game, right, which had a hundred people on it a year later, right? You don't continue to throw capital into something like that. It doesn't have U-shapes like it does in HD. And I think that is very important.

You're right. I'm getting sentimental. my old age. Phillip, we started with your whole like, you know, midlife crisis. I think you know, those of us that are dinosaurs or OGs in the industry need to realize that we can't keep doing what we used to do and have it work.
Like the industry is moving on and you know, genres that used to work don't work. Play patterns that used to work don't work anymore. And we got to realize this.
This is why I love Scopely, right? I think like Javier and Walter were the best that like they would get disciplined by the market and they would take the lesson, understand it and apply it moving forward even if they had their priors and like dude there was a lot of lessons
100% dude Bobby Cotek dude the guy [ __ ] executed he got rid of everything and he focused on three franchises period end of sentence like yeah he he adjusted with the market [ __ ] EA finally adjusted with the market that's part of the brilliance of the CFO back then anyway sorry I I get you right
but there was also expectation guess how much frost giant and raised.
Don't know.
Not as much as Beatar, which just got

acquired by Dulingo.
All right, everybody can go and Google that. So, anyway, it's it's tens of millions. [Music]