During Blizzcon 2018, Blizzard announced a new mobile game: Diablo Immortal, that did not go over well with fans in the audience and online. There is a myriad of reasons as to why it didn’t go over well, all of which can be represented by knowing your audience. Firstly, is the announcement itself. Gamers have been clamoring for the next step in the Diablo Franchise, and this announcement was the capstone announcement at the event. The audience was expecting a Diablo 4, or at least an announcement that is was being developed. Instead, the audience, being primarily PC and Console players, were given the grand presentation of a mobile game, a game that inherently does not target them as the core players.
Secondly, is the reaction to the announcement. Blizzard was shocked at all the negative buzz about the game. In a post-announcement QA, a member of the audience asked if it would ever come to PC and Console, to which the developer responded there are no plans to do so. This response got a collection of Boo’s from the audience and it was at this point the developer stated on stage “Do you guys not have phones?” This is where this starts to dive into PR nightmare territory when you have a product that you think is a great success, the core audience doesn’t love it, and you blame the core audience for not liking it. If your product is verbally unloved by your target market, then you either need to pivot your product or pivot your target market.
Thirdly, their conference showed the game would be mostly mobile, but other then that there isn’t a lot we know about the game as far as gameplay goes. We do know it’s being made by NetEase, a Chinese company that is known as the distributor of Blizzards games in China, and with them developing it, a lot of people have been claiming this is a reskin of one of NetEase’s own games: Endless of God, which is a Diablo clone itself.
How to handle a PR nightmare and damage control is something that no company ever wants to think about but all companies should be prepared for. There are many ways this announcement could have been done better (i.e. Bethesda’s announcement of Elder Scrolls Blades on iOS followed by the announcement that they are working on Elder Scrolls VI). One core issue of the announcement was the hardcore gaming audience’s aversion to a mobile version of the long-running franchise. Blizzard has done this right in the past, as their previous title optimized for mobile was Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, and that was not announced at a Blizzcon, but at a PAX event instead. It’s also likely that backlash can be due to high expectations of BlizzCon and desire for a sequel to 2012’s Diablo 3.
Putting the could of’s aside, there is a lot of damage control that Blizzard is handling poorly. Owning up, making good, and communicating transparency are all forms of handling damage control. This is a statement In an interview with Allen Adham, Co-founder of Blizzard and Executive Producer, on Polygon, he stated:
“We have said that we have multiple Diablo teams working on multiple Diablo projects and that remains true, even after releasing [Diablo 3 for Nintendo] Switch and announcing Diablo: Immortal,” Adham said. “We still have multiple Diablo teams working on multiple unannounced Diablo projects. Diablo is a tentpole franchise for us. And it always will be. We love it. We hope our fans understand what we’re saying when we say that.”
This is fantastic transparency of the company and excellent communication. For fans of the franchise, this is what they needed to hear to ensure them that mobile isn’t the only direction the franchise is going. In the whole article (which will be linked below) Adham covers all of the processes of how to handle a PR nightmare with proper damage control. He owned up by stating how they were unsure how the announcement would go, he communicated transparency with the quote above, and he made good by saying he believes the gameplay of the game will change how you think. The issue with the interview is the timeliness of it. These are statements that should have been made hours after the announcement when they saw all the negativity toward it, not the next day in an article that fans may or may not read.
That all said, this could all have been avoided if they did more research into how a core PC and console community would react to a mobile game as the capstone announcement at Blizzcon.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/professionaleducation/12/tips-for-spinning-pr-nighmare.asp
https://www.polygon.com/blizzcon/2018/11/3/18059222/diablo-immortal-blizzard-response-blizzcon
Austin Easler Game Marketing 