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Blizzard North Co-Founders Leave Company

Posted by simoniker on from the vivendi's-only-good-asset-going-byebye? dept.

Thanks to several readers for pointing out a Reuters/Yahoo story discussing the departure of four key employees from Warcraft and Diablo developers Blizzard Entertainment. The article elaborates: "In a statement, Blizzard Entertainment said Blizzard North co-founders Erich Schaefer, Max Schaefer and David Brevik, along with a fourth employee, Bill Roper, 'resigned from the company to pursue other opportunities.'" With Bill Roper often the public face of Blizzard, and the Blizzard North co-founders being the original Diablo developers, this is a big deal for Blizzard owners Vivendi, as well as gamers everywhere, especially as Blizzard "is widely seen in the games industry as one of the most attractive assets of VU Games, which has been languishing on the auction block for months."

6 of 288 comments (clear)

  1. Reasons? by r84x · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Could a reason for their leaving possibly be in reaction to Blizzard's handling of the battlenet controversy? Just a thought...

    --
    Karma: Can there be a void?

    .. -. - . .-. .-. --- -...

  2. Re:Hm... by GrouchoMarx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I don't play many Blizzard games... someone care to tell me what this means?

    This is the equivalent of Hawkins/Dubinsky/Collings leaving Palm to found Handspring in 1998. Or Alan Cox saying he's bored with Red Hat and going to do something else. (Not a perfect analogy, but you get the idea.)

    I'm wondering what is happening with Chris Metzin. Wasn't he a mover and shaker in the Warcraft/Starcraft arena? (All the artwork is credited to him in the manuals, and didn't he help with the story line?)

    --

    --GrouchoMarx
    Card-carrying member of the EFF, FSF, and ACLU. Are you?

  3. Blizzard -- an empty shell of a company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Many of blizzard's key employees left to start Arena.net. Now with Arena.net using innovative techniques to make online gaming better, Blizzard is languishing with World of Warcraft, a "me too" MMORPG. Their last few core members are now gone. Now it's just a bunch of interns and code monkeys with the rights to Blizzard's brand name.

    I'm interested in seeing where these folks go. Will they join their brethren at arena.net? Will they found their own company? Will they walk off with their massive paychecks from Warcraft3 and sit in Hawaii sipping drinks with 3 digit proofs all day? Only time will tell.

  4. trivia by mraymer · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Bill Roper was indeed not only one of the figure heads at Blizzard, but he voiced Hadriel in Diablo II. (Hadriel is the archangel that tells you to go smash the soulstone before heading into the Chaos Sanctuary.)

    On the subject of these employees leaving... Well, I'll just quote Cain.... "This does not bode well..."

    Heh... at least, not for Blizzard... But I'm sure their talents will be put to just as much use wherever they end up.

    --

    "To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking

  5. Re:Does Blizzard hate Linux? by parkanoid · · Score: 4, Interesting

    On the other hand, the default tooltip for the penguin unit is "Call uopn the spirit of a penguin to save you". Interesting, yes? ;-)

  6. Bill Roper Interview by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I guess Roper's immediate comments regarding his departure validate many of the anti-Vivendi theories floating around.