Blizzard Entertainment Crumbling Due to Poor Esports Performance and Executive Meddling?

Earlier this year, Blizzard Entertainment, a company that I personally hold in high regard due to the amazing experiences they have provided millions of people across the world for years but earlier this year they did a massive layoff of employees, letting go of over 200 people suddenly and without warning, this made a lot of people mad and a lot of rumors have been going around lately. It seems that everything started crumbling inside the company in November 2018 after their hilariously bad Blizzcon 2018, where everything they announced received a poor reception by the audiences, that felt mocked by the company, especially on the Diablo stage with the Diablo Immortal announcement which is still nowhere to be seen and the forever infamous line spoken by Wyatt Cheng "Do you guys not have smartphones?" cringe worthy indeed.

This past week has probably been the worse for them this year, at least since the train wreck in November, there are strong rumors of executive pressure forcing blizzard into projects they don't want to, causing the sudden cancellation of 4 other blizzard projects and the defunding of the Heroes of the Storm Esports league and slow down of development for the game.

Not only that but it seems several high profile and experienced staff are set to leave Activision Blizzard in the near future. Among them will be Kim Phan, the Global Product Director of Blizzard Esports - someone who has been with the company over thirteen years and has been the lead in every Esports breakthrough the company had and to make it worse, there are possible rumors and leaks being spread out by disgruntled employees that where laid off all over the internet revealing the awful working conditions and stress the whole staff is under due to the pressure of the executives that just want to milk the company and the IPs. There's even rumors of a covered up suicide attempt inside the company grounds due to self-harm of an employee and people just breaking down and crying under their desks due to pressure and stress.

With Activision-Blizzard stock on an all year low and pressure growing from the executives to perform and the creativity and brain power of the company being drained, will this be the perfect storm that breaks the camel's back or will Blizzard manage to survive this mess they have been cornered into by the higher ups in Activision? Personally I hope the company survives, to many friends, to many memories would be lost if they dissapear, hopefully they'll be able to weather this storm and come out stronger on the other end.