High profile departures hit Blizzard as Vivendi sale drags on

Four key staff at Blizzard Entertainment, including vice president Bill Roper and the three co-founders of the unit that created popular RPG series Diablo, have left the company in order to pursue new opportunities.

The departures, which were confirmed last night by parent company Vivendi Universal Games, come as the negotiations over the sale of the games and entertainment divisions of giant conglomerate Vivendi Universal continue to drag on.

Along with Roper, who as vice president at Blizzard has been the public face of the company for several years and is seen as a key figure behind the Warcraft and Starcraft franchises, brothers Erich and Max Schaefer and David Brevik are also leaving.

The Schaefer brothers and Brevik were founders of development studio Condor, which was purchased by Blizzard and became known as Blizzard North in 1996, and went on to develop the Diablo franchise.

It's expected that the four will go on to form a new development studio, but no firm plans have yet been announced by the group. For its part, Blizzard claims that the departures will have no effect on any properties in development.

Speaking about his decision to leave with games news website GameSpot, Roper admitted that the situation regarding the status of the Vivendi Games division was an influencing factor. "We wanted to have a level of involvement that was not going to be made available," he told the site. "For the interests of the people that we work with, we should have been able to talk to the people that make the decisions and that knew what was going on."

It's not clear whether the departures will have any effect on the negotiations currently underway over the future of the games division, but Blizzard has always been seen as Vivendi's main games asset, and having key staff leave during discussions on the sale of the unit is unlikely to strengthen the company's bargaining position, to say the least.