We have some pretty bad news for those who’ve been looking to get their hands on Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV: their release date has been pushed back to 2023 — at the earliest. Calling this a depressing bit of information would be an understatement. And yet somehow we’re not surprised.

According to a novel report by Kotaku, Blizzard had disclosed this update during a recent conference call with investors. Both titles were announced at BlizzCon 2019 (a lifetime ago, it feels like), and the fact that they won’t “see the light of day” until 2023 (at best) is quite heartbreaking. Moreover, the fact that Blizzard needs to hit a home run to stay afloat is also worrying seeing how the outlook is getting grimmer and grimmer by the minute.

“While we are still planning to deliver a substantial amount of content from Blizzard next year, we are now planning for a later launch for Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV than originally envisaged. It has become apparent that some of the Blizzard content planned for next year will benefit from more development time to reach its full potential,” Activision Blizzard said in an official statement.

The Overwatch League will still compete on an early build of OW2 next April, so at least fans will get a good look at the sequel and all its many upgrades. Still, it’s impossible not to be worried given the many layoffs over at Blizzard and their effect on both the company as a whole and game development in particular.

We’re not fully convinced that pushing back the release date of Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV is going to result in a more polished experience further down the line. It stands to reason to expect such a thing, of course, but the issues that are plaguing Blizzard and its development teams simply cannot be solved in a few months’ time.

Hopefully we’re wrong on this one, but it’s getting harder and harder not to sound the alarms.