Rod Fergusson departs Blizzard, leaving us wondering what’s next for Diablo

Rod Fergusson has been the General Manager of the Diablo franchise for five years, overseeing the launch of Diablo 4 and its expansion, Diablo 2 Resurrected, and Diablo Immortal, as well as Diablo 3’s descent into maintenance mode — but now he’s leaving Blizzard, and we don’t know who will hold the reins next. After a long stretch where Diablo 3 was the only active title, Fergusson has overseen a busy time for the franchise, packed with new games… though not everyone has been happy with the direction those games have taken.

Fergusson announced his departure on Twitter:

(Don’t read the comments on that post. Trust me.)

Fergusson takes a lot of flak for everything players believe is wrong with the franchise, but he did get Diablo 4 out into the world after nearly a decade in development under a revolving door of game directors. The game launched in 2023 with a strong single-player story campaign — probably the best in the franchise — but a weak end game that the devs have been working to shore up ever since. Perhaps Fergusson’s rejection of Blizzard’s old standby of a “when it’s ready” release date had something to do with that, or with the rough season launches the game has had since its release date. But in my opinion you simply can’t blame a game’s weaknesses on any one person — particularly considering Fergusson joined Blizzard well into the game’s development cycle.

Diablo Immortal was, as anyone reading this certainly knows, not well received — even though I find it to be a fun game which has added additional lore and some very interesting new classes to the franchise. (Classes I continue to hope will make an appearance in Diablo 4.) But its pay to win mechanics are a big turnoff (and the reason why I’ve never played to the endgame), particularly since Diablo fans have eschewed previous efforts to monetize the games, such as the deeply unpopular real money auction house that launched with Diablo 3. Even Diablo 4’s cosmetic-focused battle pass doesn’t seem to be a hit, and the feature has become even less appealing since Blizzard made it more complicated (and in some cases more expensive) with the new reliquary system.

With Fergusson out, it’s unknown who will take his role running the Diablo franchise, but considering how far in advance games are planned out, it’s unlikely we’ll see the end of his influence any time soon.

So what’s next for Diablo, particularly Diablo 4? That’s anybody’s guess. D4 released a roadmap for 2025, but we’re at the end of announced content, and all we know is that an expansion is due out in 2026. (The game initially planned annual expansions, but that hasn’t panned out.) Adam Fletcher, Director of Social and Content Marketing for Diablo, has said that the Season 10 PTR is “a few weeks out” so it seems like we should expect business as usual for the game’s quarterly seasonal cycle. However Fletcher also said they plan to change how they do streams for upcoming content, so we may be in for a different cadence of announcements, or perhaps content in general.

We’ll be watching to see what comes next for the game, and we’ll let you know about Diablo 4’s next chapter as soon as we hear about it. (Perhaps a cow level?)

But for now, we wish Fergusson well with whatever he does next. Running the Diablo team is a tough job, and a lot of the vitriol directed at Fergusson reminds me of the hate directed at Jay Wilson, who worked on Diablo 3 and was harassed out of the industry by fans who were angry about the state of the game. Five years is relatively long tenure in this job (and may feel like a lot longer than five years). Whoever steps up to take over the Diablo team will need both a love of the game and all the luck they can get.

Take care Rod, and I hope you have a great time working on your next game, whatever it is.