(Bloomberg) -- Developers at Blizzard Entertainment, the maker of popular video-game franchises such as Diablo, Warcraft and Overwatch, nervously prepared for a big meeting with their new bosses. 

On Oct. 13, after a protracted battle with regulators, Microsoft Corp. had completed its $69 billion acquisition of the gaming studio’s parent, Activision Blizzard Inc. Two weeks later, Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft’s Xbox, and his lieutenants were inbound. 

On Blizzard’s Warcraft team, leaders scrambled to compile a PowerPoint presentation, as they would have in days past, detailing their vision for the future and the products they had in development. But when Spencer arrived at Blizzard’s campus in Irvine, California, he told them something pleasantly unexpected. He wasn’t interested in talking business. He just wanted to check out their games and meet their staff.  

Before long, Spencer was battling orcs and trolls on his phone while playing the new mobile game Warcraft Rumble. Afterward, the company served barbecue outside, and Blizzard employees lined up for hours to ask questions and take selfies with the Xbox executives. 

“What they were trying to communicate to us was really wanting to get to know us,” said John Hight, general manager of the Warcraft franchise. “‘We’re not here to tell you what to do. We’re not coming in with a master plan. How can we help you?’ It was awesome.”

It’s too early to know how Blizzard will ultimately change under Microsoft. But Spencer’s visit helped ramp up a growing sense of optimism among Blizzard staff after years of disillusionment with their previous boss, Activision Blizzard Chief Executive Officer Bobby Kotick. In 2021, following his handling of a sexual misconduct lawsuit, close to 2,000 Activision Blizzard employees signed a petition calling for Kotick to step down. In October, when the Microsoft deal finally closed, Kotick announced that he would be leaving the company at the end of the year. 

Blizzard staffers are particularly hopeful that the new regime will restore the studio’s sense of autonomy. In an interview, Blizzard President Mike Ybarra said that Spencer had indicated that he wants Blizzard to be more like the independent studio it once was.

“I absolutely love that,” Ybarra said. “It motivates the teams.”

Blizzard became part of Activision in 2008 and for years remained largely self-governing. But in the late 2010s, Kotick and his executives began pressuring the studio to cut costs, expand development teams and produce games more quickly. The interference was unwelcome to company diehards.  In 2018, Blizzard co-founder and CEO Mike Morhaime stepped down. Many other veterans followed.

By contrast, over the past decade, Spencer has taken a largely hands-off approach to the dozens of game teams that Microsoft has purchased. Ybarra said he expects the precedent to continue at Blizzard to the benefit of all. In the two years he has been in charge, Ybarra said, he had to run many decisions up the chain of executives at Activision, slowing everything down.

“Going to Phil and saying, ‘Hey, can we do this?’ I think he would look at me and go, ‘Run your studio,’” Ybarra said. “I do think our decision-making will be faster.”

Before the acquisition, Blizzard’s hits, misses and delays could significantly impact the share price of Activision. Moving forward, Blizzard will account for a much smaller slice of the $2.6 trillion Microsoft — a difference that, in theory, could ease the overall pressure on the studio and give Ybarra more leeway to share numbers and results with his employees.

“Those kind of changes, I think, are going to increase transparency in an awesome way,” he said. 

One frequent question among staff is whether Blizzard will now be allowed to experiment more freely. In recent years, Blizzard has increased the focus on billion-dollar franchises such as Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch —  a narrower emphasis that was on full display at the company’s recent BlizzCon convention in Anaheim, California. Meanwhile, both fans and employees have lamented the lack of attention for beloved, yet less successful games, such as the long-dormant StarCraft.

Ybarra said that on the heels of the acquisition he still intends to have big teams working on the largest franchises. But he is also open to less mainstream projects, including a possible return for StarCraft. Under Kotick, many Blizzard staff members with experience developing real-time strategy games left the company. So if the franchise does return, Ybarra hinted that the next iteration could be in a different genre altogether. 

“It’s not me saying, ‘Go make a StarCraft game,’” Ybarra said. “I need to have someone who has the vision and passion that comes with the idea, and I’ll bet on that team.” 

At the moment, Spencer’s broader vision for gaming revolves around the Xbox Game Pass, a subscription service in which users pay a monthly fee for access to a catalog of games.  At Microsoft, the focus on a broad subscription offering can greatly influence what kinds of projects are valued. Developers can help bolster Game Pass with titles that strongly appeal to a particular demographic even if they don’t sell millions of copies to the masses — yet another potentially major change for everyone at Blizzard. 

Ybarra, who spent more than two decades at Microsoft before joining Blizzard in 2019 and becoming president in 2021, said he has yet to discuss his own future with Spencer. He would like to stay at the studio as long as possible. 

“Someone will drag me out of Blizzard,” Ybarra said. “That’s how long I will be here.”

©2023 Bloomberg L.P.