Lead Class Designer for Diablo 4 is leaving Blizzard. „What a long, strange trip it's been”

Diablo 4 has parted ways with its former Lead Class Designer, who left Blizzard Entertainment after 15 years.

Jacob Blazewicz

Source: Adam Jackson / LinkedIn.

After 15 years, Adam Jackson, the Lead Class Designer for Diablo 4, has left Blizzard Entertainment.

The developer announced the end of his career at the American studio in a post he published on X, and in a longer version, on LinkedIn. In the post, the dev mentioned that working at Blizzard was a "long and strange trip," and its conclusion was "bittersweet" - but he quickly added that he is eager for his next adventure. Clearly, Jackson, like other veterans of big studios, is far from finished with game development.

Before he started working on classes in Diablo 4, Adam Jackson began his career by responding to World of Warcraft player reports and later testing interfaces for games such as Hearthstone, Diablo 3, and StarCraft 2. Later, he helped with the development of Heroes of the Storm and finally Diablo 4.

Of course, since Jackson was partly responsible for balancing D4 as the Lead Class Designer, the news of his departure started discussions about how much players credited him for decisions regarding the combat potential of Diablo IV characters.

In the comments from internet users, we can find both people blaming him or his managers for unpopular decisions, and people worried about the departure of a "passionate" creator (apparently, some players still fondly remember Jackson from the active development of HotS). Above all, he was the Lead Class Designer for the still actively developed "game-service" (although Blizzard has been looking for a replacement since at least December).

Diablo IV

June 6, 2023

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Jacob Blazewicz

Author: Jacob Blazewicz

Graduated with a master's degree in Polish Studies from the University of Warsaw with a thesis dedicated to this very subject. Started his adventure with gamepressure.com in 2015, writing in the Newsroom and later also in the film and technology sections (also contributed to the Encyclopedia). Interested in video games (and not only video games) for years. He began with platform games and, to this day, remains a big fan of them (including Metroidvania). Also shows interest in card games (including paper), fighting games, soulslikes, and basically everything about games as such. Marvels at pixelated characters from games dating back to the time of the Game Boy (if not older).