Activision Blizzard’s latest financial results reveal that Blizzard lost another two million players across its games in just three months.
As spotted by MassivelyOP, Blizzard’s monthly active users fell from 29 million in February (Q4 2020) to 27 million in this quarter’s results. The outlet notes that this is part of a steady trend for Blizzard, which has lost 11 million players in the last three years—a 29% drop in players across all titles.
That said, Blizzard isn’t exactly struggling. The developer’s revenue increased 7% year-over-year, driven heavily by World of Warcraft: Shadowlands‘ release. Hearthstone’s latest expansion, Forged in the Barrens, also performed strongly, with Blizzard reckoning it’s on track to outperform its previous expansion for the second consecutive release. Somehow, Overwatch earned 10 million new players without releasing any new heroes or modes.
Blizzard fans seem to be consolidating around the studio’s biggest releases, then. But Eurogamer points out that it’s been a while since the studio last launched a big new game. Granted, the studio has dabbled in remasters (to varying degrees of success) and nostalgic throwbacks like WoW Classic, and the MMO’s expansions keep on coming—but it’s been a while since we had something new and exciting like Overwatch. Other Blizzard games like Diablo 3, Starcraft 2 and Heroes of the Storm have largely been left to languish.
Hopefully, Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 will help fill that gap, with more remakes like Diablo 2: Resurrected and WoW Classic: The Burning Crusade arriving in the more immediate future.
The investor call notably didn’t include mention of Overwatch director and Blizzard VP Jeff Kaplan’s departure from the company, nor Activision CEO Bobby Kotick’s sizeable pay cut.