High-level overviews of a couple big scandals:

Sexual harassment/assault cases:

• One of California’s government’s departments brought forward a case in 2021 detailing that women had unequal pay, were sexually harassed, were subject to retaliation for reporting issues, and were also subject to discrimination if pregnant. Wikipedia article here.
• Lawsuit also detailed that “frat boy culture” was prevalent and there was no meaningful penalty for sexual discrimination.
• One woman had nude photos of herself shared, and as a result committed suicide during a company retreat.
• Multiple other agencies have pursued Blizzard over this. The SEC has had Blizzard pay out $35 million for not having a proper reporting structure, and made a $18 million settlement pool. The pool has been criticized for being far too small.
• Original lawsuit appears to still be continuing.

Hong Kong

• A player in a Hearthstone tournament said “Liberate Hong Kong. Revolution of our age!” He was immediately removed from the tournament, given a 1-year ban, and forfeited all winnings.
• Two stream casters also had their contact cancelled.
• Blizzard later stated that they would return the player’s winnings, reduce the ban to six months, change the streamers’ ban to six months, and would ban a team that supported the player’s action for six months, stating his actions violated a contract term that “offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages [Blizzard’s] image.”
• Blizzard has denied this has anything to do with their financial ties to Tencent.
• Wikipedia article about this

Diablo 4 expansion

• Bringing this up because of the question about Diablo 4 specifically: Blizzard apparently sent out a survey asking if $90 was an appropriate price point for the expansion, though that price point might have extra perks attached. For reference, the base game is $70.

The first two were lifted from the controversies section of Blizzard’s Wikipedia page, and they have more information in the linked pages and articles in those pages. For more information, I’d suggest reading there.

Personally, the way the sexual harassment has been handled has stopped me from touching their games. They’ve shown no remorse aside from being caught, they’ve been accused of shredding evidence during the investigation, and instead of addressing the issues, were instead upset that they weren’t approached privately before the public lawsuit. Instead of showing a willingness to reform, they appear to be entirely concerned with preventing financial damage.