The toxic transformation of Warcraft maker Blizzard

Decoder with Nilay Patel

Today, I’m talking to Jason Schreier, a Bloomberg journalist and author of the new book Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment. If you don’t know Blizzard, you do know its games — the studio behind Warcraft, Diablo, and Overwatch has achieved legendary status over three decades. At the same time, the company has become emblematic of many of gaming’s biggest failings.

Jason’s book is out on October 8th, and it’s an incredible, detailed accounting of how Blizzard started, grew into a hitmaker and, eventually, became a victim of its own mismanagement. Oh, and there are a series of chaotic acquisitions along the way, culminating in Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard last year. In this episode, Jason and I get into all of this and more.

Links:

• Play Nice: The Rise, Fall and Future of Blizzard Entertainment | Hachette
• How Blizzard’s canceled MMO Titan fell apart | Polygon
• Blizzard was built on crunch, co-founder says, but it’s ‘not sustainable’ | Polygon
• Inside Activision and Blizzard’s corporate warcraft | Bloomberg
• Blizzard cofounder’s new company Dreamhaven aims to recreate old magic | Bloomberg
• Activision Blizzard’s rot goes all the way to the CEO, alleges report | The Verge
• Activision Blizzard’s workplace problems spurred $75 billion microsoft Deal | WSJ
• California settles Activision Blizzard gender discrimination lawsuit | The Verge
• Microsoft completes Activision Blizzard acquisition | The Verge
• Microsoft lays off 1,900 Activision Blizzard and Xbox employees | The Verge

Credits:

Decoder is a production of The Verge, and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Our producers are Kate Cox and Nick Statt. Our editor is Callie Wright. Our supervising producer is Liam James.

The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.

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