Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future Of Blizzard Entertainment

by Jason Schreier

In the past, even the finance people had channeled Blizzard’s player-first ethos. Back in 2011, when discussing how much of a cut Blizzard would take from transactions on the Diablo III auction house, Blizzard’s accountants told the team to lower the numbers, saying they were creating the system only for the benefit of players. “It was one of the most incredible things I’ve ever seen in the video game industry,” said designer Jason Bender. Even when Morhaime pushed his game teams to add more recurring revenue models to their games, like character boosts in World of Warcraft or the map marketplace in StarCraft II, they were supplemental. When a model didn’t work out, like the auction house, the company would kill it. “I think Blizzard’s forte was really leaving a bunch of money on the table,” said Jonathan Bankard, “and investing in, the term we used was, the ‘player sentiment bank account.’” Now, the landscape was different.