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David Kim Leaves Blizzard (WoW Principal Designer and Former Diablo 4 Lead Systems Designer)

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In a somewhat surprising announcement, it seems David Kim has left Blizzard Entertainment earlier today, as spotted by WRHeronkill. After heading up the Diablo 4 systems team since 2017, Kim moved on to the Principal Game Designer role for World of Warcraft in the latter half of 2020, and has now announced he is leaving the company:

Last pictures at Blizzard. Good bye and I will miss my friends and great people the most!

Posted by David Kim on Thursday, April 15, 2021

In the comments of the post we can see many employees saying goodbye and wishing Kim luck in his future endeavors.

It seems the WoW job either didn't quite work out or, more likely, was just temporary to help ship Shadowlands and get it through the launch period. Kim has been with Blizzard since 2007 and was one of the main architects behind StarCraft 2, in particular the balancing side of the game. After that he moved on to Heroes of the Storm for a while, went back to SC2, and then Diablo 4 where he spend 3 years. It seems he wasn't quite ready to work on Hearthstone and Overwatch, just to get his "worked on all major Blizzard franchises" ticket.

We wish him well in any future endeavors, and will be checking the roster over at Dreamhaven for any new additions periodically.

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With more and more of the company being influanced by Activision (Chinese censoring) More and more of the base blizzard employees are leaving in droves.  Not just high up ranking members of the company.

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Be interesting where he lands........

One of the ex-blizz employee studios?? Blizz 2.0 forming, just without the IP's...........

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Internet wants to be pessimistic always.

I mean it's not like they're picking young developers right out of school with some kind of entry level help program possibly called "Student Opportunities", and even list many jobs tagged with "Temp" even for Senior positions.

Oh wait... they do. 😮

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2 hours ago, rowaasr13 said:

I don't remember any "Chinese censoring", but I'd buy it any day over SJW-cancelling people, like that voice of Kael'thas guy.

Where do you think the whole SJW comes from?

It is a common Communist tactic.

Ultimately, Chinese Censoring and SJW Cancelling people are one in the same, it is a pity that the 'useful idiots' that are the SJWs do not know they hard helping take away their own Freedoms that they were born into and unknowingly betraying.

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8 hours ago, Lithari said:

Where do you think the whole SJW comes from?

It is a common Communist tactic.

Sorry, man, I'm one of those "born in USSR" guys, so you won't sell me this drivel. It was more of meritocracy here than anything else.

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On 4/17/2021 at 7:12 PM, 72kore said:

American mentally ill SJW culture is more annoying than the chinese censoring. I'd take the censoring any day.

Well, you got Diablo Immortal. It doesn't have Witch Doctor, since chinese are racist AF.

But both sides censor for the same reason: "Immorality"

Edited by Turmoil

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