While Blizzard is about to release ‘Diablo 4’, the sequel to the Diablo series after 11 years, concerns are emerging as it is known that the manager of the Korean branch who will lead the domestic service is not a gamer . ‘Blizzard Immortal’, released by Blizzard last year, failed at the box office as it faced fierce criticism for falling into an Asian-like payment model such as probability-like items.
◇ Robert Lee, Blizzard branch manager with no experience in the games industry
According to the game industry on the 1st, Robert Lee, the president of Blizzard Entertainment Korea, who oversees the Korean service of Diablo 4, which will be released on the 6th, has no experience in the game industry. Lee, who was appointed in November last year, oversees Blizzard’s Korean business. He was responsible for corporate transactions and sales at Wells Fargo for 10 years, and was responsible for strategic partnerships and business development within the global business at Samsung Electronics for 3 years. Before joining Blizzard Korea, he is known to be responsible for strategy and business development at Amazon Korea.
This is unusual considering that former President Jeon Dong-jin (currently CEO of One Store), who led Blizzard Entertainment Korea for about four years as a predecessor, was an expert in the game industry. CEO Jeon joined NCsoft in 1997, served as the CEO of NCSOFT’s Taiwan and Thailand branches, and passed through the CEO of Smilegate West. In 2015, he joined as the director of Blizzard Korea, and in 2018, he became the CEO of Blizzard Korea, overseeing Blizzard’s Korean business, and led services such as ‘World of Warcraft Classic’ and ‘Diablo 2 Resurrection’.
Global game companies usually appoint personnel familiar with games to their Korean branches as representatives. For example, Park Seong-cheol, CEO of Epic Games Korea, began his career as a founding member when Sony Computer Entertainment Korea (SCEK) was founded in 2001, and led the launch of the Xbox 360 while managing the Asian and Australian markets at Microsoft (MS) . Since the establishment of the Korean branch of Epic Games in 2009, he has held the position of branch manager for over 10 years. Jo Hyuk-jin, the CEO of Riot Games Korea, also joined Riot Games in 2011, before the League of Legends service in Korea, and took the representative position in 2020 after experiencing all kinds of game-related tasks such as human resources, general affairs, game operation service, and public relations.
◇ Can you convey the voice of Korean users to the head office?
The reason for the voice of concern before the release of Diablo 4 is that it is difficult for the company to reflect the voices of users saying, “As a PC game master, focus on the quality of the game, which is the essence of the game, rather than a business model (BM ) as a random item.” because of the evaluation. Stochastic items are It is easy to motivate billing as an item whose type, effect and performance are determined by probability. Stochastic items are the so-called ‘Korean-style BM’ that game companies such as Nexon and NCsoft have been using to gain high profits, but as user opposition grows, they are gradually reducing them.
The Korean branch manager of a global game company usually conveys various opinions related to game operation such as updates as well as additional tasks for games such as marketing and publicity to the head office and responds to errors. The branch manager should play the role of conveying the complaints of Korean consumers, including BM, to the head office. For this reason, there is criticism that it is not suitable for a person with a lack of understanding of games companies or users to fulfill this role.
An industry insider said, “Blizzard seems to have chosen a person who has experienced a lot of risk in large companies instead of a game expert. This symbolically shows that Blizzard has abandoned the game-centric color that the fan base was passionate about in the past and has become an organization desperate to make money.”
