Blizzard is looking to bring back in-person BlizzCon starting in 2023.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Blizzard president Mike Ybarra spoke about bringing back the event, “We are committed to bringing back BlizzCon in 2023.”
BlizzCon is an annual convention held in the Anaheim Convention Centre which is dedicated to Blizzard’s characters and games. The event wasn’t held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and it wasn’t held again this year due to the company’s ongoing litigation issues regarding workplace harassment issues filed by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.
“We previously announced we’re taking a pause on BlizzCon while we reimagine it for the future but do want to return to a live event that enables us to celebrate the community. Ybarra continued in the interview, “We recently hired a new leader of BlizzCon, April McKee, who is hard at work on that plan.”
BlizzCon has been the site of a few of Blizzard’s public mistakes in the past. At a 2010 BlizzCon panel, a female World of Warcraft fan asked if the game could have women that didn’t look like “they walked out of a Victoria’s Secret catalogue.” Future company president J. Allen Brack laughed at the question and said they’d look at other catalogues instead.
The now-infamous ‘Cosby Suite’ is also a BlizzCon product. This was the name given to a hotel suite used by Alex Afrisiabi and other company employees during the course of the convention, the matters of what happened within the suite are outlined in the CDFEH lawsuit.
In response to the Victoria’s Secret incident, Ybarra responded by speaking about the company’s cultural growth: “It reminds me of how important the culture work we have is. It represents what I hope we are growing beyond. I know we will grow beyond. I don’t think it ever ends. There’s no high-five that we met our commitments. This is something that is going to be in our DNA forever.”
BlizzCon is generally held near the end of the year, most often in November.
