Diablo IV's development was set back by Blizzard's developer shuffles
Blizzard Entertainment's newest title was hit hard during development by the toxic behavior of its key staff.
![Screenshot of Inarius in Blizzard's Diablo IV. Screenshot of Inarius in Blizzard's Diablo IV.](https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt740a130ae3c5d529/blt7ce84665381b8594/650f063efb0fc3f6105139a3/diablo_4_tyrael.jpg?width=1280&auto=webp&quality=95&format=jpg&disable=upscale)
Blizzard Entertainment's Diablo IV had a rocky development, and part of that stems from its original key staff, Luis Barriga and Jesse McCree. A new piece from Esquire reveals how bringing over the two World of Warcraft alums resulted in numerous ongoing issues for the action-RPG.
While some of the history behind the issues of Diablo IV have been known for months, Esquire gives extra context on some events. It also shows how hard development was hit by the arrival of those two developers, and that just moving bad actors around (similar to what happened with Ubisoft in 2020) only goes so far.
Both Barriga and McCree were taken off Diablo IV and fired from Blizzard in 2021 after allegations of misconduct. Prior to their firing, Barriga reportedly clashed with creative director Sebastian Stępień, who was brought on by Barriga himself and previously worked on The Witcher 3.
During the three men's time on the project, women on the team reportedly protested elements of their writing, which was said to regularly denigrate women or put them in oversexualized situations."
One ex-staffer told the outlet that "wars were fought"