Blizzard continues to lose talent as the Lead Artist of World of Warcraft and Diablo Immortal, Glenn Rane, has left to form his own company along with several other ex-Blizzard developers.
Following several major changes at Activision-Blizzard, another long-time talent has left the studio, with Glenn Rane joining several former Blizzard and Epic Games developers to start their own studio—Lightforge Games.
This comes after the recent merging of Toys For Bob into Activision’s Call of Duty team and the departure of Overwatch boos Jeff Kaplan, but no word as of now as to the specific reason for Glenn’s departure, or why Activision-Blizzard is seeing such massive turnover right now.
Along with co-founding the new studio, Glenn will join the staff as Art Director for the team. While the announcement of the studio is fresh, and they are presumably not close to announcing any sort of games being worked on, the studio page suggests they will be looking to revolutionize the RPG genre, where they aim to stay rooted in a “culture of empathy, honesty, and growth.”
Beyond Glenn and Jeff Kaplan, Activision-Blizzard has also seen World of Warcraft’s Dave Kosak, World of Warcraft Classic’s Omar Gonzalez, and Diablo IV’s David Kim leave recently, with a number of these high-profile departures coming from members who had been at the studio for years and years.
It really makes you wonder what is happening right now at Blizzard Entertainment and Activision to cause so much change, but with a history of departures, issues, studio closures, and mass firings, one can only assume that the continued business model that the company is embracing either isn’t one that employees are on board for or the company’s need to drive profits might be the root cause, but either way, it’s disappointing to see alumnus leaving in droves.
