Jay Wilson Reacts To David Brevik’s Interview

A few days ago, David Brevik took the time to answer some questions for IncGamers.com. From the short Q&A David told about how he came up with the name for the game. It seems that Diablo was a mountain near the place he used to live. Of course this is not the statement that managed to get Jay a bit… upset.

David shared his own thoughts on the current state of Diablo 3 in a polite manner, trying to be as diplomatic as one person can be. Being the creator of the original game and part of the Blizzard North team, the game developer stated that some of the game mechanics are different from what he would have done for this sequel of the series. According to him, the loot system and the endgame content are very different from what he would have in mind for Diablo. He does take joy that the game he originally created managed to become so popular but the design is different from what he and the fans would have expected or wished. Everyone is entitled for an opinion and David shared his.

Shortly after the interview was published, Chris Haga, a former Blizzard employee posted the link for the interview on his Facebook page. Just like any other social media users, he has Friends and Jay Wilson is one of them. The discussion has started and at some point, Jay posted “F**k that loser”. Since Haga’s profile is public, everyone could see it. All it took was a search for “Chris Haga Blizzard” and there you go, the discussion was right on his wall with the stated of Jay out in the open for everyone.

Someone managed to take a screenshot and got it published on multiple websites. The story went viral and spreaded faster than a virus. Jay’s reaction is a bit exaggerated and Blizzard had to take a serious PR hit. Discussion threads have been opened, many have been deleted but the screenshot remained. One user went so far to make a small video parody and uploaded it on YouTube. In 24 hours it got 50.000 views. It contains scenes from an Indian movie with English subtitles in which Jay instructs Bashiok to delete all the threads and hide the evidence.

All of this happened right before patch day. Diablo 3 is now having a progress system more similar to the previous title and it is a bit unfair for David to get such a reaction from Jay. He is the founding father of the franchise that got us the fastest selling game in PC history with more than 10 million players in less than 3 months.

Nobody can deny his contribution and maybe his opinion should not be taken like an insult. A good move from Blizzard would be to issue an apology to David. Also, it is natural for such discussion to take place between developers but not in such a public manner. Without a doubt, there are internal debates similar to the one we saw on Haga’s FaceBook.