It's time for Shattered Soul Stone, featuring the latest news from sanctuary and beyond. Each episode, a heroic party of Neum Band together to help keep you informed on everything in the Diablo universe. And now, your Diablo Community podcast. Coming to you from somewhere in sanctuary. This is episode 3 9 8 of Shattered Soul Stone, your Diablo Community podcast. This episode is called Return to Office. It is February 17th, 2023. And this is Jen. I'm gonna start off with an article from Kotaku.
I hope I'm pronouncing it that right, that correctly. I'm never sure what that word. The article is titled, Activision Blizzard is Forcing Workers Back to the Office. This is written by Luke Plunkett. Here's part of the article. Well, the worst of the pandemic is clearly over a few years of getting people to work from home has shown that lots of folks are happier and even work better if they get to do it where they live. So decisions to force employees back into the office.
Our understandably going to be met with resistance across the workforce, and video games are no exception. Activision Blizzard has confirmed with Game developer that their own plan first made public in this Twitter thread by, I'll get to that one in a minute. I've got it here by someone. Uh, we'll see. Activision Publishing employees asked to come back to the office on April 10, while Blizzard workers would be doing so on July 10.
Update King employees were not forced back to the office in July of 2022. That was the date their offices reopened. And while some workers have returned, others are still doing their jobs remotely. It should be noted that neither, neither Activision nor Blizzard workers are being forced into the office full-time as employees for both divisions will be required to come to the office three days a week end.
That's still a huge concern for both current and prospective employees, though as not only are people still catching Covid and dying from it, but three years of remote work has shown a lot of specialized workers in the games industry that they can do their jobs just fine without the health risks commute and other frictions involved in having to travel to a certain place to do all your work, all while dodging a global pandemic and battling a cost of living crisis.
And I'm gonna skip ahead for a bit because there's a, a lot of the thread that was mentioned a little bit earlier, and we'll get to that shortly. But yeah, this is what Activision Blizzard is doing. It's not just them. I think Apple's done some of this, and I know Amazon wants people to come back to the office and it's, you know, capitalism seems to be a hell of a drug for a lot of these CEOs and they just need to find, you know, a way, way to control their people,
even if it kills them. Uh, and it might if they don't do this correctly. So Game Developer has an article titled Activision Blizzard Planning to End Full Remote Work. That's a huge problem. This one's written by, uh, it doesn't say who it is. So it's from Game developer. Remote work is reportedly ending across Activision Blizzard, according to a developer at Blizzard Entertainment.
And I'll get to that person's thread on Twitter in a minute. Uh, workers also across the publishers, many studios will be expected to return to the office between April and June, depending on the studio. Game Studios went remote during the early days of the pandemic to protect employees and for larger Triple A studios, there were some initial hurdles to get through.
Blizzard specifically created several remote work layers, including cloud apps for personal computers and desktop infrastructure for latency and frame rate sensitive tools. To this day, studios such as Bungy continue to offer remote work amidst the general perception that the pandemic is winding down to an end. Some recently open studios like Wildflower Interactive operate solely through remote work. But first in the thread, and I'll, I'll get you to that thread again.
It seems to be a very popular thread and I feel like I don't need to read it three or four times, so I'll, I I've got it, I'll get it, I'll get there in a minute. And then there's an update. A spokesperson for Activision Blizzard confirmed to game developer that office work would resume on April 10 for ACT division publishing employees and July 10 for Blizzard employees, employees for both divisions will be required to come to the office three days a
week. The sale, the salesperson, the spokesperson added that the king portion of the publisher went back to the office in July of 2022. The cadence of those in-office days are set by King's team leaders to fit the needs of each team. Quote, Activision Blizzard has been returning teams to the office over the past year. The spokesperson said, these spokespeople don't have any names. We have no idea who this is coming from.
They continued by saying that the office days were created in partnership with the leadership of each team in customized quote, based on what's best for the business and for the team quote, we look forward to the increased in-person collaboration and teamwork. Yeah. Mm-hmm. , that's kind of a problem for a lot of people. And I'll get there. Um, right now. So there is a person on Twitter who's using the, at at least my hair is okay. That's kind of a cute little, you know,
at least my hair is okay. It's got the at symbol in there. Yeah. So I'm gonna read you this thread by this person today, ACT division and Blizzard announced a return to office plan to employees. It will begin April slash June. Depending on the studio, the company will see a large reduction in force. If this occurs in this thread, I'm going to explain why this is a terrible idea. The majority of employees at a BK have no interest in returning to office either full or part-time.
This isn't to say that nobody sees the value in an office environment, but we're, we've overall decided the risks do not outweigh those benefits. Getting the giant elephant in the room out of the way, COVID continues to be a threat to life and ability. Despite government guidelines. It is a mass disabling disease, and many of our workers or their families are at risk of complications should they catch it.
Further work from home arrangements have resulted in employees having more time since they aren't losing it. In commutes lowered gas slash slash insurance costs, as well as the ability to live further away from the expensive cities we labor in equates to more effective take home pay. This is crucial because we are currently going through an inflation crisis that a BK has failed to assist with a bk, meaning Activision Blizzard King.
Cost of living has shot up across the country, and employees are feeling the strain with several departments taking yearly effective pay cuts despite raises, and to escape the pressures of rising cost of living
and stay safe. Employees have made cuts, they've moved farther, further away from our offices in expensive cities, sold or avoided purchasing vehicles and changed the way their households handle things like childcare and schooling for over a decade now, lower earning departments have pleaded with leadership to include yearly cost of living adjustments into salary to prevent this but have been denied.
And our most recent meetings from last month suggest that there are no plans for this to change this year. Two to four months is not enough time for the company to shift this stance. Even if they were willing, even assuming they are, it is not enough time for those who made the hard decision to move away to uproot and return. Leadership isn't prepared for what's likely to happen. An exodus of talent as we find work elsewhere, other jobs in the tech sector pay better and offer work from home.
And it's clear that our thoughts on the matter are irrelevant. What incentive do our employees have to remain at a B K? That means the rest of us have to work harder. Lowering morale, it means that we will need to rehire or outsource, which also means product delays and less polished products released this year. All of these factors will result in even lower pay for employees next year.
This return to office plan does not even affect by department customer support, which has been granted full work from home with no involuntary return to office plans. However, I feel compelled to speak out for my coworkers. In solidarity, we see you and we will support you.
Our employees have consistently put out excellent work, despite the drawbacks of work from home since Covid started to throw them back into office to risk, disease and death on the weak justifications of better collaboration is unconscionable. A BK leadership is either maliciously aware of all these factors or actively incompetent. We have had to ba we have had back to back years of record earnings while cutting cost measures like layoffs were continually justified.
Work from home was the silver lining that kept many of us Here It is clear what this return to office policy really is. And ultimatum quote, bend to our idea of work, of correct working conditions or leave end quote to a BK leadership. We have been flexible long enough that it is your turn to bend before you break this company irreparably. And there we are. Yeah. And so that's the main thread from this. It was, I thought it was really relevant,
especially as someone who's immune compromised. Now, I do not go to an office. I work from home. I'm freelance. I can quit leave, get a new job, you know, or a new, new contract whenever it's, I'm safe from this and I have to be, because I have two autoimmune diseases and I will catch everything. I don't even go outside very much. If I'm outside, I'm wearing a mask and probably going to a doctor's appointment.
So I can see why people at a BK would be very alarmed that all of a sudden you have to go back into the office without any announcement about how they're going to make sure people don't catch and spread covid in the office. Like do they have the proper ventilation? Are they still supplying, um, paid time? Are they supplying any paid time off for people who got sick to go, you know, to go home and recover? I mean, it's, it's gonna be a mess.
And I see why this thread was made and I agree with it. That said, there are some rules about exactly what, uh, you have to do as a company in order to require all of your people to come back to work in person, or the majority of them, at least as, uh, the thread that I read, uh, some of the people working customer service are allowed to work from home. So here's from the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and it has a thing here called Work at Home slash telework as a reasonable
accommodation. Here's what it says. Many employers have discovered the benefits of allowing employees to work at home through telework, also known as telecommuting programs. Telework has allowed employers to attract and retain valuable workers by boosting employee morale and productivity. Technological advances have also helped increase telework options.
President George w Bush's new Freedom Initiative emphasizes the important role telework could have for expanding the employment opportunities for for persons with disabilities. Um, and then in 1999, uh, the enforcement guidance on reasonable accommodation and undue hardship under the Americans with Disabilities Act was revised. It was revised in, uh, October 17th, 2002.
The Equal Unemployment Opportunity Commission said that allowing an individual with a disability to work at home may be a form of reasonable accommodation. The Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA requires employers with 15 or more employees to provide reasonable accommodation for qualified applicants and employees with disabilities.
Reasonable accommodation is any change in the work environment or in the way things are customarily done that enables an individual with a disability to apply for a job, perform a job, or gain equal access to the benefits and privileges of a job. The ADA does not, not require an employer to provide a specific accommodation if it causes undue hardship. Example, significant difficulty or expense. Not all persons with disabilities need or want to work at home.
I'm gonna go from there. Um, so here's a fact sheet for all of the employers out there that wanna pull shenanigans about everyone must work from the office now and get sick from covid and whatever else is in the air, you know, the flu and everything else that goes around. So one is, does the ADA require employers to have telework programs? The answer is no. The ADA does not require an employer to offer a telework program to all
employees. However, if an employer does offer telework, it must allow employees with disabilities and equal opportunity to participate in such a program. Now, that may affect ACT Division Blizzard King because their QA workers have been allowed to work from home. So that means they do in fact have and have had a work from home program. And, uh, that means that anyone who has a disability that's going to affect them terribly, if, you know, covid runs rampant through those offices, uh,
should be allowed to work from home as well. That's, that's it, that's it right there in a summary. Everything I talk about on this show is gonna be in the show notes@chattersoulstone.com. So you can read more about it if you want to. Uh, the other question in here was, may permitting an employee to work at home, be a reasonable accommodation even if the employer has no telework program. And the answer is yes.
Changing the location where work is performed may fall under the ADA's reasonable accommodation requirement of modifying workplace policies, even if the employer does not allow other employees to telework. However, an employer is not obligated to adopt an, an employee's preferred or requested accommodation, and may instead offer alternative accommodations as long as they would be effective. And there's a, that leads to something else.
How should an employer determine whether someone may need to work at home as a reasonable accommodation and that they have to describe this? Because a lot of workers that are, um, sick get sort of ignored. Um, you know, if you are, if you're immune compromised, if you have physical disabilities, if you have visual dis disabilities, if you have disabilities that make it hard for you to hear things, um, all of this kind of stuff, a lot of employers are just gonna be like, well, we don't care.
So they need to spell this out for them so that they will actually do the right thing from a legal standpoint. And again, this is the Fed, this is , this is the federal government. This isn't just a statewide thing, but I'll get to that too. Yeah. So there's descriptions in there about exactly what employers are required to do. How should an employer determine whether a particular job can be performed at
home? Like a lot of these questions, I feel, are in here because the first thing that the, uh, E E O C thought would happen is a bunch of employers saying, well, we wanna get around this. Teach us how. And they're going, no, we're not going to teach you how to do that. We're going to tell you what you need to do. And, you know, it's just the way it goes in here. How frequently may someone with a disability work at home is a reasonable accommodation?
An employee may work at home only to the extent that his or her disability necessitates it. For some people that may mean one day a week, two half, half days, or every day for a particular period of time. Example for three months while an employee recovers from treatment or surgery related to a disability. Other instances, the nature of a disability may make it difficult to predict precisely when it
will be necessary for an employee to work from home. For example, sometimes the effects of a disability become particularly severe on a periodic but irregular basis. When these flareups occur, they sometimes prevent an individual from getting to the workplace. In these instances, an employee might need to work from home on an as needed basis as this can be done without undue hardship.
Now what they're talking about here is disabilities that randomly basically, uh, cause you harm without any warning. And a lot of these don't have easy cures. Like I have fibromyalgia, I've had it since I was 16. Doctors didn't know what it was until fairly recently. To summarize, um, it is a neurological disease, which means there are times where I can't really move at all. Um, like my legs won't work when I wake up in the morning or my feet will be
tingling and I have to wait it out before I can stand up. Uh, that happens sometimes, not every day, but sometimes, um, in addition to that, it's uh, also the type of disease that causes muscle spasms randomly. And those are absolutely no fun at all. There are a few things I can do to try to quell it, but there's nothing that's going to stop that from happening for the rest of my life on and off periodically without warning. It's also an a disease that is, it suppresses your immune system.
And I already have allergies to damn near everything. So I have like a double problem with immune stuff. There could be anyone working in any big corporate, corporate company right now that has something similar, but maybe not exactly what I have. So it would be ridiculous for an employer to say, well, you know, we can't give this to you because you're, you're okay.
Sometimes, I mean, it has to work around the employee and I'm really glad that the E E O C has this in writing so that bad companies can have some sort of sanction if they do this wrong intentionally. Now, as you may know, Activision Blizzard King is, um, at least Blizzard is in California. Uh, I'm not sure exactly where Activision is. I've never looked it up, but, um, they're part of that same company. So the California Department of Public Health has things to say as well.
And this was updated on January 19th, 2023. Employer questions about AB 6 85, California's new COVID 19 law. So here's some stuff. What is AB 6 85? It is a California law signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in September, 2020 and amended in 2021 via AB 6 54. It requires employers to notify employees who have been exposed to Covid 19 and to report workplace outbreaks to the local health department.
It requires the California Department of Public Health, C D P H to publicly report information on workplace outbreaks by industry. There's a list of things that, uh, employers would have to give to workers information, you know, to workers about if someone catches covid in the workplace.
Okay? So there's a couple of things that they have to do. Uh, the short answer is upon identifying a Covid 19 case in the workplace, you must provide the following information to your employees, the employer of subcontracted workers, and any labor representative you have to provide notice of possible exposure to
covid 19. Information about benefits and options, uh, that includes can include workers' compensation company, sick leave, state mandated leave, supplemental sick leave, negotiated leave, and anti-retaliation and anti-discrimination protections. And then you have to enact disinfection and safety plans to provide, uh, you know, safety for the work site. How and when should workers be notified? And this again, is a bunch of questions that I feel that the person or people putting together
this site went, okay, so here's what we want them to do. Now, what are they gonna try to do instead? Let's talk them out of that and explain why and make that legal, you know, that kind of thing. So there's that. They have to report to, uh, COVID 19 cases in the workplace to a local health department. And you know, there's about a bunch of stuff in here about how that's handled.
Who qualifies as a Covid 19 case? Is this not relevant? I mean, like, is this not something we don't know after all these years of Covid? I guess some companies don't. So here's what they wrote under AB 6 85. A Covid 19 case is someone who has a positive viral test for Covid 19 is diagnosed with Covid 19 by a licensed healthcare provider, is ordered to isolate for COVID 19 by a public health official, or dies due to Covid 19 as determined by a public health department.
That's pretty freaking clear actually. We know exactly what that means. Will workplaces actually, you know, follow these roles? Who knows? But this is one of those. Fuck around and find out kind of situations and we'll see how well they do. There's also a group called Equipped for Equality. This is an Illinois group specifically, but I'm sure there's others out there and I haven't looked them up, but this is a really good example.
They are advancing the human and civil rights of people with disabilities in Illinois, and they're talking about telework as a reasonable accommodation. Um, we know what telework is. There's a question in here I need to telework due to my disability. How does my employer have to allow it? And the answer is, it depends.
The Americans with Disabilities Act, adas, the Civil Rights Law that protects employees with disabilities under the ada employers have to provide reasonable accommodations to employees with known disabilities under certain circumstances. Telework may be a reasonable accommodation under the ada. Okay?
And then there's all this stuff about, um, there's factors here, like if you can get telework instead of, uh, going, you know, and, and staying home safely and, you know, keeping yourself from getting worse from your chronic illnesses of whatever type, uh, instead of, you know, and catching covid in the workplace potentially. But, um, there's a lot in here about that. It is extremely difficult to get, uh, the American With Disabilities Act to work for a person who actually has
disabilities. I've tried it. I got denied and denied and denied, but there's at least like, you know, a good template here as to what other states could probably do if they actually, I don't know, cared about the health of their workers, that sort of thing. Polygon has an article written by Nicole Carpenter, it's titled Blizzard Workers Furious. After Demoralizing Q and A meeting, blizzard President Mike Ibarra addressed employee satisfaction but made a
lot of workers more angry. That's not the route you want to take, generally speaking. So let's see what happened here. Blizzard Entertainment workers throughout the world of Warcraft and Overwatch two publisher say they are demoralized, outraged, and upset after a meeting held Thursday by Blizzard President Mike Kibar. Shortly after that meeting, blizzard staff began tweeting about what they called a disappointing showing from leadership and publicly challenged jabbar's statements.
Their outward show of solidarity comes with some video game industry workers, including those at ACT Division, blizzard itself, continue efforts to organize the industry's first labor unions. Game developer on Thursday published a detailed account of the meeting describing a q and a that intended to address and quote, employee satisfaction Survey. Blizzard leadership pre-screened questions about its stack ranking process for
evaluating employees. If you remember, there was someone who left Blizzard because they refused to use the stack ranking policy to give a worker who was doing just fine a bad mark, which would make it harder for that worker to, or workers to move up in the company to apply for other positions in the company. And it would also take away the amount of company stock that they had
and the person that did that eventually left the company because of it. And so, stack ranking is a terrible thing that seems incredibly unfair. And so it's, it seems interesting to me that Blizzard leadership pre-screened the questions about the stack ranking process for evaluating employees because obviously they didn't wanna talk about what, you know,
what really happens to the person that gets marked down for no good reason. Uh, they also, uh, pre-screened questions about reduced profit sharing and the company's return to office mandate. Polygon has sent spoken to several Blizzard developers who described the low morale that followed the meeting. Blizzard spokesperson Andrew Reynolds.
Holy cow. We got a name of a spokesperson, confirmed many points made during the meeting and told Polygon, the company stands by you, Barr's statements and quote leadership in tough moments. End game developer said the reduced profit sharing plan, which would sea workers receiving just 58% of their promised bonus came as a shock two weeks ago. Activision Blizzard announced quarterly financial results that it called a
kickoff to a strong financial performance in 2023. Well, I guess it's how they're getting their strong financial performance. They're taking it away from their workers at Blizzard Entertainment, specifically sales and operating income nearly double the staggering 90% as Warcraft, Overwatch, and Diablo all generated more than a hundred million dollars in net Bookings Act.
Devision Blizzard said Yoba spoke about profit sharing at the meeting suggesting that workers who believe executives are making more money are living in a myth end. Oh, that's abusive. Uh, the profit sharing cut to 58% applies to executives the same as it does employees. Yoba said still that doesn't account for extreme salaries. Differences among executives and employees. A functional tester in Santa Monica is paid between $14 and $26 an hour while a chief of staff salaries upwards of $270,000
a year. These numbers are furnished by job postings on Indeed. They are markedly different jobs, but a profit sharing cut no doubt impacts these workers differently. Pay came up again when your borrow spoke on the company's return to office mandate, which begins in a few months and requires workers to come back to the office for three days a week after two years. That accommodated work from Home King, the Activision Blizzard subsidiary that makes Candy Crushes already returned to
office. For example, each of the publisher subsidiaries is making their own decisions on Work from Home Act division Blizzard spokesperson, Joe Kris not said whatever the case commuting to work adds on another significant expense for employees. Not to mention the cost of moving for those hired from out of state during the Pandemic Blizzard spokesperson Reynolds. Wow we're getting names of spokes.
Spokespersons here said that Blizzard will honor its current long-term remote agreements and make exceptions, quote from medical or religious reasons. Uh, and quote, customer service workers will continue to work remote too. There's more in that article and I'll leave you to read it@chatter.com where I always put show notes with everything I talked about in it. Game Developer has an article called q and a with Blizzard, leadership on return to office bonuses, leaves, devs fuming.
There's an update in here. Blizzard has reached out to provide additional clarification on your Barr's comments so that they do not appear to address the core concerns employees expressed yesterday. This is written by Bryant Francis. Some of it was already said. What did Mike Ybarra say to Blizzard employees? Okay, here we go. What surprised developers the most were restatements made by your bar that might
be considered tone deaf. As mentioned earlier, this q and a followed a discussion of an internal employee satisfaction survey and was drawn from pre-screened questions. A spokesperson for Blizzard confirmed that the q and a took place and that the comments provided to game developer were accurate. Frustration apparently began to boil as the q and a went on, particularly during a conflicting back and forth discussion of how company ranks worker performance.
Jabbar reportedly downplayed comments made by lead software engineer Brian Birmingham, who criticized the company's use of a STA stack ranking policy that he claimed would force him to punitively rank an employee whose performance he found to be satisfactory. Blizzards spokesperson told game developer that Ybarra did not directly reference Birmingham's comments. They provided an explanation of the content of this conversation that did mirror
the sentiments our sources said were expressed in the meeting. Quote, we don't. Okay, this is, I'm reading it as it is, quote, we don't to do stack rank employees one through X at at Blizzard. We have high expectations for our teams managers set goals with every employee and we measure performance against those goals. We provide managers with guidelines for how to consider performance ratings across larger teams to ensure they're more fair and and unbiased and that there is flexibility.
They said leadership provides feedback across the company to ensure that ratings are not solely based on one manager's opinion. Performance management is every manager's job. It isn't an easy one and we appreciate them when they're saying we appreciate you to, for doing a thing that's going to demoralize at least some people in your office because you had to do this terrible decision. That's not a good luck. I think the tone deaf thing comes in here pretty well. Holy cow.
After reportedly defending the ranking system currently in place, Jabbar began making comments that would truly anger employees. They began with a statement that seemed to imply Blizzard entertainment executives are equally impacted by the decision to slash the annual profit sharing bonus. I already talked about that. Um, in the other article in the context of the discussion, Jabbar's statement was technically factual.
Blizzard's decision to cut the profit sharing bonus to 58% does equally apply to all employees, executives included. In a broader context, of course, you know, someone's done the math and said this is gonna hurt workers a lot more than it's gonna hurt the higher up people that make tons of money compared to what the workers make. If a lower paid worker at Blizzard Entertainment doesn't receive that bonus, they have less money to spend on gas, rent or groceries,
let alone luxuries or student loan repayments. Mike Ibarra, who earns a much higher salary and additional compensation as company president does not face those same concerns. It goes on from there. There's other things in here about work from home. Blizzard employees were concerned about the slashing of the annual profit bonus, partly because of Activision. Blizzard's announced plans to require all employees to resume working at in-person offices in at least a hybrid capacity.
Though some workers have remained worried that an end to remote work would increase developers' exposure to covid 19, others were more concerned about how a return to office would lead to increased expenses for those hired as remote only workers or those facing longer commutes. High housing costs and inflation have eaten into the incomes of workers in many fields in the last two years, and employees facing such mandates or grappling with the increased personal
costs that come with them. If a worker was hired as an all remote employee, they might not live near one of the required offices and would have to pay more to move out of pocket. If they do live nearby, they would have to begin factoring in the cost and time of commuting into their lives. Activision Blizzard's return to office policy does not appear to contain any corresponding pay bonuses to blunt these new costs.
And I'll let you read the rest from there. Code CWA tweeted something out. Uh, code CWAs is the campaign to organize digital employees in the tech games and digital industries with, uh, the CWA union. And they have a screenshot here and it is talking about the profit sharing thing with Jabbar saying that the 58% applies to executives the same as it does employees. But part of this says a functional tester in Santa Monica is paid between 14 and
$26 an hour, while the higher ups are are not. And Code cwa, uh, wrote pretends to be shocked in a tweet and says, solidarity with a better a, b, K at we are GWA and every underpaid QA tester at Activision cuz that's what's happening here and that's terrible. Switching topics for a minute here. Um, TwitchCon 2023 hype intensified. This was posted on February 16 on blog, the blog of Twitch, the Twitch blog. It's very shiny and it has the logo and everything like that.
So here's what they have to say. After such a long time apart, it was amazing to see the Twitch community in real life in both am Amsterdam and San Diego in 2022. And now as we look forward to connecting with and celebrating streamers and their communities in the new year, we are very pleased to announce that we'll be moving Twitch con to two new exciting cities in 2023. For the first time ever, France will be hosting Twitch Con Paris at the Paris Expo. Port Dave Versa.
On eight, uh, J eighth, eighth through 9th of July, 2023. Our North American show will make its debut in Las Vegas, Nevada at the Las Vegas Convention Center on 2022. October, 2023. Uh, there's a description of all the stuff you could find there. Um, they're looking for sponsors and exhibitors and there's a thing you can link to. You can click on a link here if you wanna do that. General FAQ could be found here. Well, let's see what that is.
Where's the f faq? Okay, so, uh, there's some questions here. How do you book a room? Okay, what happens at TwitchCon? Uh, things you would expect panels, drag shows apparently. Interesting. That's cool. Um, Twitch rivals showdowns meet and greets, new games to try in the expo floor, exclusive merch, all this other stuff. Uh, someone wants to know if they can have their content in Artist Alley. How do you do that?
What languages will Twitch con be presented in most Twitch Con Paris content will be presented and streamed in English and French Twitch Con in Las Vegas will be presented and streamed in English. Do I need to be a streamer to go to Twitch Con? No. Will I meet my favorite streamers? Many of them. Yeah, I guess. Can I meet up with the community? Yeah, there's meetup places onsite and areas for that. Can I volunteer to work at Twitch Con? They're not going to do that.
And there's no information about how to prevent people from catching covid or the flu or the con crud. Way to go Twitch. Holy cow. The Diablo two resurrected patch 2.6 is now live and I think people are very excited about it. I've seen some people already posting things on Twitter that, you know, they started playing and it's live and the Diablo count, the Diablo main Diablo account, uh, posted that with a lovely little graphic here. If you're not sure what to do,
max rolls. Gotcha. The latter Season three patch for the 2.6 max roll update for Diablo two resurrected, uh, is up and it's been updated. They do update their things as time goes on cuz changes are made in the games. And so there's a table of contents, there's a build guide, uh,
with update highlights and you know what's new? This one is specifically, um, I'm not sure, but it just shows you like a whole bunch of stuff you can do if you wanna do a sorc, Aris, if you wanna do any of these other ones, you can. There's leveling guides linked here for all the other classes and some game walkthrough and things like that. There's a tier list. Maxwell does a really good job with this.
So if you've already started your Diablo two ladder experience, and maybe you're too late for this, but you could look at it and do some changes, I assume. And uh, that's always good to have, you know, a a really qualified community telling you this is this is what you should do. Of course you don't have to do all of that, but you could if you want to. Wolf Kreer has a tweet, uh,
actually two of them and I'm gonna read you the first one. The first one starts, well it's a thread and it is titled, uh, or it starts with level with a cause, the past, present and future a thread. So I will read this to you. When I started level with the cause all the way back in July of 2017, I never dreamed of the wild ride it would become after getting a small amount of success as a content creator for my favorite game, Diablo three. I felt a strong need to give back.
I wanted to find a way to bring the D three community together and do something awesome as a group. So I began recruiting for a group charity Drive to coincide with the starting weekend of season 11 in Diablo three, a small group of D three content creators managed to raise over $7,000 for charity during that first event. Since then, the response to level with the cause has been astonishing. To say the least.
The share amount of Diablo three content creators that have participated throughout the last 17 seasons is still quite unbelievable to me.
The fundraising roster would change from season to season and over these last five plus years, well over a hundred different streamers, big and small have been involved with level with the cause at one time or another, each season would yield different results, but combined we have raised over $103,000 for charities including over $74,000 for Save the Children, which has become a favorite go-to charity for a level with the cause due to its
transparency and the work that they do to help children worldwide. When it first started, I never once thought I would be doing this for 17 straight Diablo, three seasons. But here we are about to start the final Diablo three level with the cause event with Diablo four on the horizon. My intent is for our level with the level with the cause to continue in some
fashion and he's got more there. He's done this for years obviously. And um, it's such a good thing to give back to a community like many of the ones that he's named, including Save the Children. That one gets a lot of money every time this happens. Um, am I gonna stream it? I don't know. Um, , I don't, uh, have any idea how to work with a, how to get together to connect funding to a to a cause. Um, I guess I could see about that.
And there is some information here on another thread from Wolf Cryer. He wrote this. Do you plan on streaming during the opening weekend of Diablo three, season 28? Have you ever wanted to do something awesome? Join the level with the cause team as we raise money for Save the Children on, uh, February 24 through February 27.
You can donate slash join at and there's a link as always. We use, they use Tilt five and um, yeah, you could find more about level with the cause on our website there's a link on that thread, a part of the thread. And as always, I'm available to assist anyone with setting up campaigns, et cetera. And there's a little graphic that shows you here's what you need to do to support the campaign and that's pretty cool.
Season 28 writes of sanctuary preview is up on the Blizzard website and it's got this graphic with, um, I think all of the classes in here or many of the classes in here. And I'm not sure what I'm seeing in here, but it, it's a lot going on in that little piece of art. So here's what they wrote. Power from the days of your rests silently across sanctuary waiting to be uncovered once more to what ends is for you to decide.
Nephem season 28 Rights of sanctuary goes live on February 24 at 5:00 PM P s t c e t and k s t For an in-depth look at the seasonal theme rewards and the balance changes made between the end of patch 2.7 0.5 ptr. Now take a gander below . It's a gander . Here's the theme. I love this part of these, uh, postings because it's like a story. So here's the theme. Oh, the pursuit of coin makes you do the most foolish things, but mining is profitable.
Our search for ancient neum artifacts forces us to enter a maligned mass of corroding fo foliage and decaying flora. We chipped away at stone after stone until my tool made a hardy thunk into the rock of the fol and the foulest stream of gas spewed out the other miners helped me dig out the biggest artifact I've ever seen, an ominous looking altar. As we began to investigate this curious find a faint whisper infiltrated my thoughts. It was not one voice but a collective who they are.
I'm unsure of, but I can be certain that we must share our discovery with others. We began the long haul back to Nu Tristram with our prized discovery. A few days passed, many towns folk came to view the altar and left. Then the neelum marched into town and requested to see the altar. This is written by New Tristrum, minor . Okay, season 28 introduces the rights of sanctuary. Our new seasonal Veeam.
Using the ancient altar of rights, curious Neelum can follow the instructions sacrificing various materials for unspeakable power that lasts the entire season. The developer's note says, our aim with this season theme was to enhance the journey players experience each season by tying material goals to meaningful choices.
As we look towards Diablo four's release, we wanted to celebrate its arrival with the feature that emphasizes progression as well as offer some interesting details about sanctuary. We hope you enjoy the rights of sanctuary as much as we do. There are some cosmetic rewards. If you finish the season journey, uh, you get a really interesting portrait, uh, frame and it looks like a gold dragon with, um,
some kind of angelic light wings going on. It, it almost looks like a clockwork dragon in some cases cause it's got, or maybe that's just the armor it's wearing. I'm not sure. Uh, so it's the primal hunter portrait and tannin the tiny pet, which I bet he is not tiny, I don't know, but it looks like fun. How do you get this? Let's see. Beginning with season 17, we began reintroducing previous rewards to make them available to players who
may have missed them the first time around. For season 28, this means rewards originally available from season 16 are returning. In addition to the Hellman shoulder slots of the exclusive conqueror set, players can earn a brand new series of portrait frames themed around the Clarion Call of Adventure. For the most devoted cosmetic collectors, we have a pair of wings fit for a monarch. The wings of Lepo draw inspiration from some of the Nobles creatures in
sanctuary. And aside from a cosmically rare drop, few other wings are quite as lovely. So you can get that apparently. I'm not really sure how, but there we are. There's a list here of the season journey rewards and what you get, things that you can do if you wanna be a little extra about it. Um, season Conquest. He's gift This time around, I'm gonna read you the class sets for each of these.
The Barbarian gets the hoard of 90 Savages Crusader, Aegis of Valor, Demonn Hunter, gears of Dread Lands, monk Patterns of Justice, witch Doctor Dugu Regalia Wizard, Typhons Veil, and Nero Maner Masquerade of the Burning Carnival. I'll leave you to check out the rest in here. There is this graphic here of the Altar of Rights and it's got like the whole alphabet in here, uh, even more than the whole alphabet.
And it's got these little dots that you can, you know, put something into in order to uh, get stuff from this. And I think that's gonna be really interesting to mess around with. Maxwell of course, has the season 28 begins on February 24th post on their website and there's a table of contents and, you know, release date, the season name, the uh, suggested path from most builds. They have that there for you so you can kind of go ahead and work your way through that and what stuff you need.
I might be looking at this very heavily before that season starts to see if I can understand what I'm supposed to do to get the best stuff out of it. There's a new cube receipt, uh, primordial Ashes of Curiosity and Laura Naar who's the one that stands next material and talks to him in town. Um, yeah, so that's interesting. Um, that sort of thing is good. These guys do good work, so I always try to hype them when I can.
There's an article here about Diablo Immortal called Diablo Immortal Bug Fixes and Patch Notes for all platforms was posted on February 14. The Diablo Mortal team has been digitally monitoring your feedback and working to introduce bug fixes and patches to further improve your playing experience. As we implemented these types of changes for the iOS, Android, and PC and open beta versions of Immortal, we will update this list. Um,
here's what we got. War band got fixed, fixed an art alignment issue with the war in the war Band ui. That was the February thing. There's a whole bunch more they did before that. Uh, also the Diablo Mortal account on Twitter said Reward your curiosity with the Alchemist ad mixture. Season 10 Battle Pass update live today. That was posted yesterday on the 16th. It's got a lot of, um, it's got all the classes that are in the game with very purple looking armor
and it's kind of neat. I don't know if I'll get any of that or not. And if you're interested in Diablo Mortal and wanna make it Better Life at Blizzard posted on February 15, a bunch of open roles in Diablo Mortal including live ops producer, senior, commercial designer, all this kind of stuff. So if you're into that, you could do that. I have no idea if you'll be asked to work from the office or not if you get this, but there we go.
The Diablo account also wrote that the IGN on a different thread. Of course this isn't the Diablo Mortal. There's a Diablo account for like Diablo three, uh, Diablo four and Diablo two resurrected. And then there's the Diablo Mortal account separate for some reason the Diablo account that encompasses most of those games wrote IGN Fan Fest tomorrow 10:00 AM pt ign.com. You don't want to miss this.
This was posted today on the 17th and Rod Ferguson, the SVP and GM of all things Diablo at Blizzard wrote, I wonder if we'll hear about the next beta, which got a lot of people really interested in seeing if there's gonna be a new beta coming up for Diablo four Wellhead has a little bit of information, uh, about Diablo four and it's uh, an article posted five days ago by varied, if I'm pronouncing that right, if I'm not. I'm sorry. Diablo four showcase at IGN fan Fest on February 18,
10:00 AM pst, there's the logo. Uh, we recently reported that Diablo four s opened beta release date could be announced during IGN Fan Fest 2023. And we now know the exact time of the showcase happening next weekend. You can catch, you can watch the IGN fan fest on ig N's official website. It's official YouTube channel and many other platforms. The Diablo four showcase will happen on IGN fan Fest. Day two, February 18 at 10:00 AM Pacific Time, 1:00 PM et 7:00 PM c s t.
You can check out the full schedule and text descriptions here. There's a link. And at the end of this article, as reported last week, it's very likely that Diablo four's development team will announce the start of Diablo four's first open beta phase. At the event during the showcase, Diablo four's game director Joe Shelley will make an appearance to answer community questions, questions and quote, maybe reveal something new. So IGN said this, the battle between Heaven and hell rage is on.
As Diablo four bursts forth this summer, IGN sits down with Joe Shelley, game director for Diablo four to talk about what's on the horizon for the blockbuster game. Answer some of your burning questions and maybe reveal something new. Stay a while and listen. So there's that , there's that thing. Um, wellhead also has an article posted two days ago also by there called Diablo for renowned overview. Now live as one of these centerpiece of character and account progression.
Diablo four's renowned took inspiration from world of Warcraft's renowned system. Our Diablo four renowned overview highlights everything we know about the system based on last December's PR preview play test, including activities and their exact renowned rewards and, and rewards earned after reaching certain renowned thresholds. Here's what our Diablo team had to say about the renowned system in their first impressions article after playing blizzard's preview last year.
Not a lot of systems were active in the press preview build due to its level limitations. Unfortunately, however, one of Diablo four's core pillars, the renowned system was fully available. Similar to World of Warcraft, you can earn renowned by completing different activities or discovering side areas and to optional quests. Each zone has five renowned tears, each rewarding player with gold and to experience. Occasionally players can get skill points, paragon points or additional potion charges.
Collecting renowned feels very natural. And on the side, not least, because Diablo Four's World Map does a tremendous job of showing players points of interest to visit and thanks to do that will reward renowned by the way, skill and Paragon points earned through the renowned system will be available to all of your future characters.
The starting experience with the second or third character was vastly different and even more fun because you were able to go deeper into the skill tree much earlier. Purity Ablo announced on February 15 that they have another episode out. It is the, uh, let's see, Diablo four chat with Blizzards. Leviathan. I think most of you know who he is. He's actually working for Blizzard now and so I'm sure he is got a lot to say
about different things. And I'll, I'll put this in the show notes. You can, um, listen to the show right from the pure diablo.com site if you just want the audio, but there's also a video on YouTube that you can check out as well. And I've got just a few more things to go here. There is a battle not Valentine's Day sale if you were unaware of that. And it is up through 67% off through February 27. So, uh, there's a discount on World of Warcraft Dragon Flight right at the top.
There's, if you don't have Diab Diablo two resurrected yet, it's $13 and 19 cents right now. There's Call of Duty stuff. I don't know enough about Call of Duty to talk about that. So there's a bunch of it in here. You can sort through that for yourself. There is this thing for World of Warcraft. It is called World of Warcraft, the ultimate cuddly pack. Enjoy this bundle at a joyous discount. It's got a bunch of little fluffy pets that you could have obtained
in the game somewhere. And um, when I look at this a little further, it says that if, uh, there's 21, there's a total of 21 adorable companions from the blizzard shop in one fell swoop, uh, offer valid for a limited time. If you already own one or more of the items from the ultimate cuddly packets, price will automatically adjust. All items from the ultimate cuddly pack are also available as standalone
purchases of course. And uh, it looks like the cost for that was originally $210, but now it's $68 and 99 cents, which is just about enough to buy Diablo four with if you get the lowest uh, tier on that one. There's, um, let's see, now I'm seeing some things over and over. There's a Wrath Classic Faction Change. If you decided to switch, it's $21, which seems like a lot to me. There's a North End heroic upgrade for, um, wow classic, uh, wrath of the Lich King. Um,
there's a couple of those. There's a whole bunch of Call of Duty stuff in here. And then there's uh, the Diablo four packages. So there's the standard, the Digital Deluxe and the Ultimate edition standard is 69 point 99 Diablo, uh, digital Deluxe Diablo four Digital Deluxe is 89.99 and the big one is 99 99. I haven't bought one yet cuz I'm kind of deciding like, do I have the energy for this and is it gonna play well on, uh, on Xbox because it doesn't play on a Mac.
So I'm still kind of trying to figure out, you know, what to do with that. If you've never played Diablo three, you can get it for $9 and 99 cents right now, as well as the Reaper or Souls thing separately. That's an expansion obviously. So that's pretty easy for, I think people might have the money for that if they haven't jumped in yet. There's a Diablo three battle chest, which gives you both of those things at the same time,
which costs $19 and 98 cents. And then there's the rise of the Nero Manzer Pack, which requires Reaper of Souls. Go get that. It is so much fun. I bought that one when it was brand new and I got through all of the set Dungeons with the Nero Manzer. I had a great time with it. So if you haven't done that, pick it up. It's a lot of fun. There's also, um, there're also in here. It's play for free. It's Diablo,
mortal and um, that's in there too, if you wanna get into that. Uh, if you choose, and I'm gonna end this show with this glorious piece of artwork that looks like it was hand drawn, uh, with ink and possibly pencil at the beginning. And it is of the butcher. And it is, uh, underneath it, it says July, 2006. The Blizzard Entertainment account. Posted this on Twitter and wrote Fresh Meat because that's what the, the, uh,
butcher says. There's a very close up view of his, uh, body, which got all those like, you know, things holding it together and skulls around his waist and whatever other stuff. He's got those giant horns. He's got like a sickle in one hand and a big ax in the other hand. And then behind him is a smaller version of what the back of his outfit looks like.
He's got all these scars that have been stitched together and things are sort of a, an apron he is wearing is being held up by two hooks on the back of his back of his body. I really, really wish that Blizzard Entertainment said who drew this thing because there's no indication of that. But the artwork is good. I'm happy to see that. I think it worked pretty well into, you know, iterations of the butcher that we've seen in different games and stuff like
that. But I really wish they would've taken like, you know, a minute to find out who drew this and maybe give them some credit, but they didn't. There we are. And that's where I'm gonna end this show. Uh, I don't know how long it's been going on. Looks like a while. Um, , there was a lot to talk about this time I can't help it. So you have been listening to episode 3 98 of the Shattered Soul Stone, your Diablo Community Podcast. Missed episode.
You could find the show blog and listen to the show archives at www.shatteredsoulstone.com. Come join us in game our in-game community and clan, both named Shattered Soul Stone, are open to anyone who would like to join. You can also join us on the Discord for the ultimate team and community based experience. Find the Discord invitation link on our Twitter and Facebook page, as well as the Shattered Soul Soul Stone website. Thank you for listening.