Rod Fergusson, the boss of Diablo 4, gave an interesting interview 3 years ago, clarifying that he is the reason why Fortnite is still alive. His move to Blizzard is to blame.
Who is Rod Fergusson? This is the longtime game developer many now know as the general manager of Diablo. He is the boss behind the upcoming Diablo 4 and before his time at Blizzard was also known to have held various director of production, program manager or studio head positions at the studios of 2K, Epic Games and even Microsoft.
However, many who have been playing Fortnite for years now do not even know that Rod was almost the one who canceled the game completely.
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“I would have canceled Fortnite if I hadn’t gone”
What does the Diablo 4 boss say about Fortnite? Fergusson served as director of production for Fortnite: Save the World when it was still considered the game that would take over the zombie games market.
Games Informer sat down with Rod and did an interview 4 years ago at E3 2019. There was a question that concerned him and Fortnite in particular. It was asked if he was having sleepless nights because Fortnite was no longer true to the original theme that Epic Games and Rod were following at the time.
You can find the excerpt of the interview here:
Rod Fergusson then replied:
No, I’m really happy with the success (of Fortnite). The questions I’m more likely to get are, “Are you disappointed when you left? Because you would have had such a big hit if you stayed with Epic Games and oh boy it’s a shame you didn’t stay with Epic. And I’m just saying “You should all kiss my feet” because when I was at Epic, I was trying to scrap Fortnite.
The interesting thing here is that Rod Fergusson tried to cancel Fortnite even before he quit. He himself reports that every game in development has its challenges, but Fortnite: Save the World would never have gone over his “counter” in its current state.
Especially not as a game that should be developed and expanded for a long time.
To this Rod added:
So when people look at me and say, “Oh don’t you feel bad?” Should I just say, “No, you should feel better because the game you love and the worldwide sensation it created would not exist if I had stayed with Epic Games.”
So you see, there are often very interesting stories behind the scenes of the developers that are only made public late or not at all. Despite this, Rod’s change of company had a huge impact on gaming, because if Fortnite had not appeared, one of the biggest hypes in gaming would have been missing.
Do you know the story of Epic Games and how they managed to prevent Fortnite from dying 3 times?