Vicarious visions allegedly brought into the blizzard to work on the remake of Diablo 2

Following the news that Vicarious Visions has been incorporated into Blizzard Entertainment, a new report says the studio was brought to Blizzard to work on the Diablo franchise, including a planned remake of Diablo 2. As reported by Bloomberg, Vicarious Visions, the studio behind games like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 and Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy, has been working with Blizzard since last year, although the announcement of his merger was only made today, January 22.

Until 2020, the remake of Diablo 2 was set to be developed by Blizzard Team 1, which is located on its campus in Irvine, California, and was the ideal group to rework classic games. Its most recent title, Warcraft III: Reforged, was not received positively and currently has 59 in the aggregated rating of the Metacritic website, which is also the lowest score from Blizzard to date. IGN gave Warcraft III: Reforged a 7/10, saying “it’s an uninspiring remaster, but Warcraft 3 itself is still a great game almost two decades later.”

Have you ever played Diablo II?

YEANOT

Internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg attribute the game’s flaws to “poor planning, lack of communication and a hasty launch due to financial pressure from management, among other factors.” An example given was that, after the game was revealed in November 2018, he started making pre-orders for 2019 before informing the majority of the development team about the launch window.

Blizzard and Team 1 obviously didn’t want to make the same mistakes with the long-awaited remastering of Diablo 2, and after a “post mortem”, Blizzard eventually removed the team’s remaster and placed the division behind Diablo IV in charge. Vicarious Visions is also working on this project, which is or was known as Diablo II: Resurrected.

In October 2020, Blizzard reorganized the entire division known as Team 1 and team members had the opportunity to interview for other positions in the company. Those who did not find a position ended up being dismissed, while others chose to go to independent studios like Frost Giant Inc. and DreamHaven Inc., the latter of which was founded by co-founder and former Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime.

Prior to Warcraft III: Reforged, Team 1 was responsible for Heroes of the Storm and StarCraft 2. In 2018, Blizzard began to reduce the development of Heroes of the Storm, and StarCraft 2 also recently stopped content development.

For those who are still playing Warcraft III: Reforged or waiting for updates, a company spokesman said “it is still committed to updates in support of the community”.

A report in 2020 stated that the long-rumored remastering of Diablo 2 was scheduled to arrive in the same year, and it is possible that these changes in development and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to its internal backwardness.

Do you have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Send an email to [email protected].

Adam Bankhurst is an IGN news writer. You can follow him on Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on Twitch.