Blizzard covers DE&I in wrap-up of tumultuous year

Blizzard has released its end-of-year review for 2023, in which it discusses some of the major changes of the company’s culture in 2023. This comes at the tail-end of a hectic year for the company, and in fact the report comes only a few hours after news about a major leadership change at its parent company. In particular, the company focused on its increased internal education efforts as well as its new DE&I officer, Pamela Burga.

Blizzard president Mike Ybarra said in the update, “As we head toward the end of 2023, this is a great time to reflect on what has been a massive year of learning, growing, and joy for Blizzard… We always say that we want to think of our culture work at Blizzard like the work on our games – part of who we are. We’re always building and iterating on different initiatives, programs, and more. We believe great ideas are core to Blizzard and should come from anywhere.”

Blizzard began the year by losing its partnership with NetEase and cutting off its titles from Chinese gamers. In its transparency report, released in June, the company revealed it’d received 114 reports of harassment, discrimination and retaliation in 2022, of which it substantiated 31 cases. Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard King completed in late October following months of federal battles, and finally Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick announced he’s stepping down at the end of December. It’s been a busy year for the company.

In addition to its culture report, Blizzard also offered a glimpse of game stats for its major titles. According to Blizzard, players created 1 billion characters across Diablo and World of Warcraft combined. 150,000 Battle.net accounts have been active for over 25 years, and the WoW community raised $1.5 million for BlueCheck Ukraine.