Blizzard has suffered a 29% playerbase decline in the past 3 years

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New data shows that Blizzard is suffering a large decline in its playerbase, according to the company's Q1 2021 fiscal report. This follows a negative trend that Activision Blizzard has been facing for the past few years, laying off hundreds of workers, criticisms of CEO Bobby Kotick being "massively" overpaid, the controversy surrounding Diablo Immortal, the departure of longtime veteran Jeff Kaplan, and many other recent stories that have seen their public perception fall, all despite the company doing better than ever, financially. As of the report, dated March 2021, Blizzard saw revenue growth up 7% compared to last year, which, while positive, is an odd statistic, as active users have fallen 29% in the past three years. In just the past quarter alone--just three months--Blizzard lost 2 million "MAU" or monthly average users total. Previously, Blizzard boasted 38 million MAU in Q1 2018, and now that number has dropped to 27 million in Q1 2021. The company remains positive, however, asserting that upcoming titles like Diablo II Remaster, Overwatch 2, Diablo Immortal, and Diablo IV will be major releases to help draw players back in, furthering brand growth.

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FAST6191

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Normally I would do a taking bets on timing of Blizzard's death. That is boring though so now I am more curious what Blizzard would have to do to turn it around.

Being the game industry one mega smash could set them on course, and they do have a lot of history to draw from. Do they have enough people remaining, or trained properly by those that did and both little enough and enough oversight to make it happen then being the question.
 

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Overwatch was still hot 2 years ago, Diablo 3 was remembered much more too.

You know something's wrong when your players are more excited about re-releases of old games than any new games. Still, I think WoW will keep them afloat for the next decade at least.
I am more interested on Diablo 2 than Diablo 4, so yes, they have problems.
 

Xzi

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lol I'm excited for whenever the 100% playerbase decline happens
Yeah, though I'll probably play the D2 remaster for quite a while. Maybe whatever remaster VV helps them make after that too. Then I'm sure their quality will start falling off as they assimilate into ActiBlizz. How the mighty have fallen.
 
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raxadian

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Normally I would do a taking bets on timing of Blizzard's death. That is boring though so now I am more curious what Blizzard would have to do to turn it around.

Clean their act like Microsoft did? Notice that act cleaning only includes their videogame consoles in Windows they just got worse.
 

Hells Malice

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Tbh any attempts to directly connect Blizzard's actions with player decline is a complete fallacy.

Diablo 3 - 2012
Heroes of the Storm (was never popular to begin with) - 2015
Hearthstone - 2014
Overwatch - 2016 (man that feels so much older)

World of Warcraft has been on a steady decline since whatever the hell came after WOTLK, I don't even remember. Pandas?

They have very little driving new players into their games, so they're just slowly bleeding the playerbases they do have. It has nothing to do with Blizzard itself or really even the quality of the games. Overwatch is great but there's only so many thousands of matches a person can handle and there's TONS of competition these days. Diablo 3 hasn't had new content since 2014 (aside from the overpriced Necromancer in 2017). All of their games are old or highly contested genres.

Given they're about to release a barrage of new games, and they boast a "measly" 27 million userbase still, I think they'll be just fine. You'd have to be an idiot to think Blizzard will die. Most devs would shit their pants and then eat them to get 27 million players in their games.
 
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