Rod Fergusson Leaves Blizzard After 5 Years Overseeing the Diablo Franchise - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 08 August 2025 / 3,275 Views
Rod Fergusson, the Diablo general manager at Blizzard Entertainment, announced he is leaving the company after five years.
"After five years of driving the Diablo franchise forward with four big launches, it's time for me to step away from Blizzard/Microsoft, sword in hand, and see what's next," said Fergusson.
"The teams are set up for success, with an exciting slate of releases ahead. I'm incredibly proud of what we've built together and looking forward to what comes next for Diablo, and for me."
Fergusson first worked at Microsoft from 1996 until 2005, followed by Epic Games from 2005 to 2012, Irrational Games 2012 to 2013, and The Coalition from 2014 to 2020.
He has worked on a number of popular games over the years including the Gears of War franchise, BioShock Infinite, Diablo IV, and more.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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So he ruined the series? Good to know
This guy responsible for some of the dirtiest monetisation in gaming?
I wonder where Turd Fergusson ends up next?... Wherever it is, God help them.
Yup, he got pushed. Diablo IV has been doing poorly since its strong launch numbers
I don't think it's doing that bad for a 2 year old game. It's currently the 74th most played game on Xbox, and had 14k peak concurrent players in the last 24 hours on Steam. On Xbox it's beating some of Xbox's other owned live service games like Fallout 76, Elder Scrolls Online, and Forza Motorsport.
It’s a massive live service game with a big team of people making new content every 3 months season. It’s still going to have a reasonable amount of players. I’ve played the last 4 seasons and a lot of people still do.
There is no official statement but it’s generally believed the expansion sold extremely poorly(i don’t even own it yet) and the expansion for this year has been delayed into next year. It also appears that spending on in-game content is really low, it was at around $150m after 15 months, around $10m a month(although it was probably front loaded when the player base was its largest). The game made $666M in it’s first 5 days, showing the disparity between the initial revenue from boxed game to ongoing revenue.
The ongoing Live Service aspect of the game is almost certainly failing to hit target numbers, and the cost for maintaining the game will absolutely not be cheap. A full team working on an expansion and seasonal teams making 4 seasons a year. It’s probably not losing money but it’s nowhere near the massive hit it looked like being with its initial playerbase.
