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Back in early April, Blizzard’s Saralyn Smith released a statement essentially noting it was too early to make a decision on BlizzCon 2020 as the pandemic was developing. Now, it’s officially time for all the “BlizzCon 2020 canceled” headlines to roll out. Smith has once again updated the BlizzCon website, this time confirming the inevitable. Making bad news worse, while Blizzard is working on something to replace the annual event, those plans aren’t going to make 2020 at all.
Smith’s statement seems to indicate Blizzard is still solidifying what those replacement plans are, noting the folks involved want to “do this as soon as we could,” but that it won’t realistically be able to happen until early 2020. No specific reasons for the delay are provided, but Smith does note that esports is a big part of BlizzCon, and that plans to make up for those competitions are also part of the equation.
BlizzCon has become the major source of announcements big and small for Blizzard, with last year’s showcase notably revealing both Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2. Neither of these games have release dates or even windows, so BlizzCon could have been a prime source of these titles’ next waves of information. The upcoming World of Warcraft: Shadowlands expansion doesn’t have a release date either, although it is targeting the 2020 window.
