Today Amrita Ahuja, Blizzard’s current CFO, left the company to join the Square, the mobile payment company.
This news doesn’t particularly come as a surprise. After all, it’s the beginning of the year (hiring season!), when companies usually end up trading executives like a game of Duck, Duck, Goose. Just last week, as reported by DualShockers, Activision’s CFO Spencer Neumann left the company and went to Netflix. These high-level executive swaps are fairly common, almost like trading baseball prospects.
So what does this mean for Blizzard? Not much, right off the bat. In fact, it likely means a lot more for Square whose stock dropped dramatically after former CFO Sarah Friary announced she was leaving the company in October 2018.
Ahuja’s departure comes at a strange time for Blizzard. After publicly being rinsed due to the announcement (and subsequent reaction) to Diablo Immortal, the company announced it’s still planning a broader mobile initiative for the future. Shortly afterward, the company announced that it’s scaling back support for Heroes of the Storm, the company’s MOBA.
Additionally, reporting from Kotaku‘s Jason Schreier stated that Blizzard initially developed Diablo 4 to be an action-RPG (ala Dark Souls), however, decided to stick to the franchise’s roots. Between the company’s mobile aspirations, canceled Diablo project (reportedly codenamed Hades), and decision to shift developers from Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard’s future seems to be changing before our very eyes.
The post Blizzard CFO Leaves Amidst Heroes of the Storm and Diablo Controversies by Travis Verbil appeared first on DualShockers.
