Absorbed Blizzard daughter Vicarious Visions is working on Diablo II remake

Vicarious Visions, the Blizzard subsidiary who most recently created Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, is now part of Blizzard itself, and the studio is reportedly working with another team from Blizzard on the Diablo II remake.

Blizzard itself came out on Friday with confirmation of absorbing Vicarious Visions, which worked on Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 and Skylanders and helped build Destiny 2. Vicarious Visions’ roughly 200 employees will all transfer to the WarCraft creator. The studio had been a subsidiary of Activision since 2005, which merged with Blizzard in 2008 to form Activision Blizzard.

A report by Bloomberg gaming journalist Jason Schreier also sheds some light on what Vicarious Visions is working on right now. He states that they have been handed part of the task of developing the Diablo II remake. Blizzard already has a special team that focuses on polishing up older games for remakes and remasters, called Team 1. For example, they worked on WarCraft 3: Reforged. However, that game was not to the taste, after which they were removed from the Diablo II remake. Now the VV team is working with the Diablo IV team on the Diablo II remake, according to Schreier and his sources.

According to Schreier’s report, the reasons for the relatively disappointing success of WarCraft 3: Reforged are ‘poor planning, miscommunication and hasty development due to pressure from management, who wanted to save and earn money’.

Rumors that Vicarious Visions is working on the D2 remake have been circulating last year, but Blizzard has still not officially announced anything. This second report makes it more likely that the remake actually exists. Incidentally, there is talk of a remake and not a remaster because the original code and assets of the game would have been largely lost. It is unknown when this remake should be released.