By now the dust is beginning to settle surrounding Blizzard’s questionably timed announcement of Diablo Immortal, which gives us a good opportunity to take a look at just what went wrong. If you missed the drama, here’s a super brief recap: Blizzard’s annual convention and celebration of all things Blizzard, Blizzcon, was held over the weekend. As is tradition, the event kicked off with the opening ceremony which typically serves two purposes: A bit of a state of the union for Blizzard and its various game franchises, and to make a bunch of announcements which often introduce the new games and content for existing games that will be on display at Blizzcon.

Blizzcon grows larger every year, and this year the opening ceremony was spread across multiple stages in different parts of the convention center. Technical issues, audio drop-outs and other weirdness made it seem like they were shuffling around the order of the announcements on the fly, made obvious by them being forced to cut back to Hearthstone after a failed announcement earlier in the presentation. This reshuffling likely led to the Diablo Immortal announcement as the grand finale of the opening ceremony. The reaction that followed the unveiling of a mobile-exclusive Diablo title, was completely expected- As if there’s anything that the different sects of gaming can agree on, it’s that there’s nothing worse than mobile games. The unifying battle cry this created was unbelie...