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Blizzard has announced that it’s shelving its planned Blizzcon Online showcase, originally planned for February 2022.
The company revealed the news in a post to the community entitled ‘Reimagining Blizzcon’. They wrote “At this time, we feel the energy it would take to put on a show like this is best directed towards supporting our teams and progressing development of our games and experiences.”
Back in May, the company revealed it would forego a physical event for the remainder of 2021 due to ongoing concerns of the global COVID-19 pandemic. It did hold an online event back in February, though that represented the 2020 iteration which was also cancelled for similar reasons.
However, since then parent company Activision Blizzard has faced increasing scrutiny following its sexual harassment lawsuit by the State of California. While the lawsuit isn’t mentioned directly in the announcement, Blizzcon events were previously cited in allegations of toxic behaviour. It’s reasonable to suspect the shadow of these may have had an effect on the decision.
What Blizzard do say however is that they “would also like to take the time to reimagine what a BlizzCon event of the future could look like”. They add “Whatever the event looks like in the future, we also need to ensure that it feels as safe, welcoming, and inclusive as possible”.
While Blizzcon 2022 may be cancelled, Blizzard maintains it’ll still make announcements and updates for its games in 2022. These include both Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4, both of which are expected at some point next year.
An update on BlizzConline: https://t.co/JmEhX88xF6 pic.twitter.com/q2llPl77pj
— Blizzard Entertainment (@Blizzard_Ent) October 26, 2021
