Thousands of gamers in the Anaheim Convention Center arena went wild when, eight minutes into the opening ceremony of BlizzCon 2023, one middle-aged corporate executive introduced another. Before Mike Ybarra, the current president of Blizzard Entertainment, even said the name of Phil Spencer, the CEO of Microsoft’s gaming division, some in the audience were cheering and gasping at the mere thought of the head of Xbox coming out on stage. Just a few weeks earlier Microsoft completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, and at BlizzCon Spencer essentially welcomed the fans of Blizzard’s major franchises—Warcraft, Overwatch, Diablo—to the Xbox family. In turn those fans gave Spencer a hero’s welcome of his own.
Something you pick up on fast when you go to gaming events like this one: gamers love their CEOs. Until, suddenly, they don’t.
Seeing a favorite studio get bought by a larger company used to cause trepidation among videogame fans. Will the studio’s existing culture and identity survive the change? Will the developers who actually made the games stay on or leave for new opportunities? Will the new owners continue to support favorite games that might not be as profitable as others, or abandon them to focus on the biggest money-makers? There seemed to be little trepidation about Microsoft among the audience in the Anaheim arena, though. If anything, there was a sense of hope that perhaps the corporate giant could make up for some of the damage done at Blizzard since its former parent company Vivendi merged with Activision in 2008.
Blizzard’s last 10 or 15 years haven’t been ideal. They’ve made a lot of money and released some very popular games, but the way they’re viewed by fans and within the industry has changed, and a toxic culture of discrimination and predation within the company has been exposed. Activision’s CEO Bobby Kotick is one of those CEOs who is vastly unpopular with the gaming audience, and Blizzard fans largely blame him for a perceived increase in microtransactions within Diablo, Warcraft and Overwatch since the merger. Meanwhile the launch of Overwatch 2 has been widely criticized by fans, an attempt to build an esports league around Overwatch has been a costly failure, and beloved Blizzard franchise Starcraft has basically disappeared. And of course there’s the biggest and most damning blight on the company’s reputation: Activision Blizzard has also been sued by the state of California for fostering a corporate culture of sexual harassment and discrimination.
This was the first in-person BlizzCon since 2019. The major reason for the start of that four-year gap should be obvious; the convention was canceled in 2020 and was online only in 2021 due to the pandemic. Plans for a 2022 edition were scrapped in part due to the scandal and the lawsuit, though. The details in that suit, which was filed in the summer of 2021 and is still ongoing, are shocking, and allege a corporate culture that was disgustingly hostile towards women. The suit led to the company firing or disciplining dozens of employees, and incited multiple walkouts and protests by Activision Blizzard employees. Despite employees calling for his removal and signaling no confidence in his leadership, Kotick has somehow retained his position throughout, but he is set to leave the company at the start of 2024. Many who were in positions of power throughout Activision and Blizzard are still there, though, and California’s lawsuit remains active.
You wouldn’t know any of that happened if you visited BlizzCon 2023. Blizzard’s fans seemed as passionate and dedicated as ever, with palpable excitement on the show floor and long lines for almost every booth. On the ground, in the convention center, even while walking through hotels and restaurants near the show, Blizzard fans appeared to be having a wonderful time. They cheered loudly and often at the opening press conference, where new games, characters, and expansions were announced. They stood in long lines to buy Blizzard merch or take interactive photos with CGI videogame characters. Cosplay was abundant, with elaborate recreations of the costumes of Overwatch and World of Warcraft characters. At one point a small platoon of show-goers wearing what looked like identical plush onesies mobbed the front of the convention center, performing a BlizzCon tradition known as the “March of the Murlocs.” Based on the size of the crowd taking photos and videos, it’s apparently a very popular part of the BlizzCon experience. A show-closing concert by LE SSERAFIM, a K-pop band who are part of a cross-promotion with Overwatch, was a big celebration that felt like a triumphant exclamation point on a seemingly successful show.
The only notable boos during the opening ceremony came during the sole mention of Diablo Immortal, a mobile game whose announcement at BlizzCon 2018 was infamously met with an uproar by the fans in attendance, and whose 2022 launch affirmed fears that it would be a typical mobile game built around predatory microtransactions. Other than that every presenter at the press conference and everything they presented was met with riotous applause by a fanbase that had clearly missed the sense of community and camaraderie they felt at shows like BlizzCon.
Shortly after the convention ended, though, complaints about BlizzCon started to grow across social media and Reddit. Long-time attendees groused about this installment’s smaller size and higher cost compared to the past. One frequent complaint was about how poorly organized the event was, with confusing signage, unclear processes, and insufficient crowd management; this was readily apparent to anybody actually at the show, and frequently noted in negative recaps of the event. Some who bought a high-end, more expensive pass that was supposed to come with a variety of benefits and upgrades felt ripped off. Granted, today’s internet is almost exclusively a dumping ground for grievances, and nobody hates something more than its biggest fans these days. But these are people so loyal to Blizzard that they spent large amounts of money to travel to this celebration despite all of the company’s problems, and they still left unsatisfied. They might be a vocal minority, but they’ve shaped the post-BlizzCon 2023 narrative, and not in a positive light.
BlizzCon is the most prominent gaming convention dedicated to a single studio. (It might be the only one at this point.) It’s a shame it cares far more about the company’s name and intellectual property than the actual people who create the games that made Blizzard what it is. Corporations don’t make games; people do. And why should anybody celebrate a corporation? Corporations don’t care about their employees, they don’t care about their customers, and they only start to act like they do when their reputation is in so much peril that it might substantially impact their revenue. Corporations only care about making money, whether it’s through underpaying and overworking employees, creating new and increasingly predatory ways to squeeze more funds out of customers for games they’ve already paid for, or charging hundreds of dollars a ticket for a poorly planned convention that preys on the passion of fans. The most entertaining and interesting parts of BlizzCon 2023 were the ones created by the fans themselves, from the cosplay to that Murloc meet-up. Let’s have a convention where we celebrate people—the artists who actually make these games, and the fans who build a community around them—instead of the corporations and execs that exploit them both. It may not be big enough to fill convention centers or feature concerts from pop stars, but it’d be a much better use of time and money.
Senior editor Garrett Martin writes about videogames, comedy, travel, theme parks, wrestling, and anything else that gets in his way. He’s also on Twitter @grmartin.