Have you been enjoying the storylines in World of Warcraft lately? We have some news for you.
Steve Danuser, who was narrative designer for the long standing MMO, quietly quit Blizzard a few months ago. And by that we don’t mean the meme of quiet quitting, where you just pretend to work hard because you’ve given up on your job. We mean Steve really left the company months before we publicly knew.
Steve joined Blizzard in 2015, so he likely had input in the last four World of Warcraft expansion packs, namely, Legion (2016), Battle for Azeroth (2018), Shadowlands (2020), and Dragonflight (2022). He may also have some work in the latest upcoming expansion, The War Within, which is releasing this year.
As reported by PC Gamer, Steve just made his exit from World of Warcraft and Blizzard public only now. He shared an update on LinkedIn revealing that he left around November, which was a full month before Microsoft finalized their acquisition of Activision Blizzard King, on October 13, 2023.
Fans apparently speculated there could have been friction between Steve and Chris Metzen, who was a veteran Blizzard developer who recently returned to the company to head World of Warcraft. Steve explains that Chris had nothing to do with it. In his words:
“Wanting to continue working remotely was a factor, as I’m a big believer in the effectiveness of online team collaboration.
But eight years is a long time to work on a single game, and while helping to architect WoW’s story direction for the next several years was challenging and rewarding, more and more lately I’ve felt the itch to stretch my creativity in new directions.
I was fortunate enough to be able to relax and recharge over the holiday season. As for what’s next, I am not announcing anything yet, but I look forward to exciting things in 2024.”
Steve is certainly fortunate that he was able to leave the title on his own terms and take a brief sabbatical from the industry. Based on the timing of his exit, it is definitely possible that Microsoft or Activision Blizzard asked at least some of their employees if anyone wanted to voluntarily leave the company at that point, and Steve took it.
Please note that this is speculation on our part, but given that Activision went through planned layoffs in the company a few months later, they could have offered this to their employees first.
We congratulate Steve for their retirement from World of Warcraft, and hope to see their work in video games in the near future.
