Confirming the legitimacy of the abusive "fuck that loser" remark he had allegedly made on Facebook about Blizzard North founder and Diablo creator David Brevik, Diablo 3 game director Jay Wilson has publicly apologised in a detailed post on the Battle.net forums.

As many of you probably know, I recently made a comment on Facebook about Dave Brevik. I want to make it clear that I am very sorry for what I said. I have higher expectations for myself than to express my feelings in such a rash way and disrespect a fellow developer like Dave, someone who deserves to be treated with greater respect.

What I said was expressed out of anger, and in defense of my team and the game. People can say what they want about me, but I don't take lightly when they disparage the commitment and passion of the Diablo III team. Dave is awesome. In Diablo and Diablo II, he made two of the games that have most affected me as a developer. I respect his vision for Diablo, but just like he said in his interview, the Diablo III team must drive a vision for the game that is true to us. We believe in Diablo and have stuck by it through years of hard development to make it a reality.

The incident was sparked by this interview with incgamers, in which Brevik, now the President of developer Gazillion Entertainment, politely explained how Diablo 3 was very different from the game that he would have made, and emphasised the significance of individual developers and how they impact the product. Indicating how most of the original Diablo and Diablo 2 team had departed following the closure of Blizzard North.

Wilson goes on to explain that the current team does still have some of the heart of the original creators, explaining how their lead programmer "built the basis of the Diablo III engine while at Blizzard North" and how most of the team were avid Diablo II players, but puzzlingly stops short of a personal apology to Brevik, going on to further explain the reasoning for the outburst and instead apologising to the greater community for the unprofessional outburst.

We made Diablo III because we believe in the Diablo games. We think the gameplay is awesome, the world is compelling, and it's the game we all wanted to play. Because we believe in it, we'll continue to stand by it and make it better. We are committed to making Diablo III the best Diablo game to date, and we hope you'll continue to help us do just that.

Saying that, I'd like to apologize to all of you, the players in our community. You deserve better than my reaction to Dave's comments. You deserve more honest communication about the game and what we're doing to make it a more awesome experience for us all. We care about Diablo very much, and appreciate your passion for it. Without you, we wouldn't be able to do this, and for that I can't thank you enough.

Read the full post over on battle.net.

Everytime I read "Brevik" I think of someone else. Sucks to have that name right now.

This message is nice, but it isn't nearly as authentic as "Fuck that loser!". Obvious PR speak designed for damage control.

I want to know why Blizzard haven't sacked his ass - if there's anything good left in Blizzard they would, imo.

Too little to late for me since it took what? 4 or 5 days for the apology to come out. 1 thing that really pisses me off is when someone starts an apology and then says but. They try and justify themselves in the same sentence. That defeats the purpose of the apology to me. If this was the lead project manager/dev at an EA company people would still be out for blood. Just because it's blizzard doesn't let them off the hook for such an outburst when the person it's directed at is being kind and simply saying D3 went in a different direction than he would of taken it.

Even with this "apology" it still doesn't make me want to ever buy a blizzard game again.

I'm not going to write off a whole company with an otherwise sterling record because of one asshat. Their games have the best art, music and storylines of any company I know of and I'm still looking forward to their future releases. Heart of the Swarm looks excellent.

@ eski. All preorders. They could've put anyone in the world at the reigns and it would've been a huge success (money-wise). It's the games before it that deserve the credit there.

I was looking up when jay wilson actually joined blizzard and found this on diablowiki.net

Jay Wilson is the Game Director of Diablo III. As the project lead and a good communicator, Jay is the most frequently-interviewed member of the Diablo III team, and his quotes fill the content articles of this wiki.

a good communicator

Fuck that loser.

Wilson goes on to explain that the current team does still have some of the heart of the original creators, explaining how their lead programmer "built the basis of the Diablo III engine while at Blizzard North" and how most of the team were avid Diablo II players

Heh, that's like saying we love to play cricket, we've got a whole team of guys that love to watch the guys on TV play cricket, one of our top guys had an ICC ranking in the nineties, so it just follows naturally our outfit deserves to simply claim the Ashes urn, right?

DM I believe Jay Wilson use to be a RTS director, I'm not exactly sure if I'm correct here though so don't count me on it.

Probably because they felt that Jay took their rose-coloured glasses and twisted them in half and snapped them in two, when he chose to voice his response to criticism.

Who gives a shit? The people who actually are Blizzard fans.
You clearly are not.

Do you not realise the guy speaking is the heart and soul of Diablo? Ignorant idiot.

I love how khel the blizzard fanboi comes along and presumes that jay wilson DIDN'T kill a baby and drink it's blood. do you even have any evidence to show he didn't?

this is entertainment... i love it...!!

it's not an mmo.

Is it not massive, not multiplayer, or not online?

Is it not massive, not multiplayer, or not online?

By that logic every game ever made that has ever been played by more than a single person is a multiplayer game. :P

Well ... yes.

Let me rephrase, a total playerbase of more than 1.