Blizzard confirmed in a September 5 interview that not only will its loot-chasing action-RPG Diablo IV get long-term support in the form of its quarterly seasons, but the game will also receive a new paid expansion every year.

Read More: Diablo 4‘s Next Season Looks Pretty Gruesome In New Trailer

Rod Fergusson, general manager of the Diablo franchise, said as much to Dexerto, telling the gaming publication that the team’s vision for the game stretches for a while. In fact, Fergusson expressly said Blizzard is focused on Diablo IV for “years and years,” stating that the first season was merely the foundation for its future.

“So, as we look at our quarterly seasons, and we look at our annual expansions, those are the things that we’re really focused on for our live service,” Fergusson said. “We’ve got plans, we have storylines that go well into the future. We’ve got plans. We’re always leapfrogging our seasons, and leapfrogging our expansions, so it’s something we are going to do for a long time. We’re excited. When you look back and realize that there were 11 years between [Diablo III] and [Diablo IV], that feels like we didn’t live up to our players, our community, and what they deserve. That’s something we are rectifying in [Diablo IV] with our seasons and our expansions.”

In this way, Diablo IV’s expansion cadence will mirror Bungie’s Destiny games, particularly Destiny 2, which normally gets new content in the form of free seasonal updates and paid annual expansions. While there are no specifics yet on what new content Diablo IV will see introduced in its expansions, both Diablo II and Diablo III saw new areas, new storylines, and new character classes introduced in the one expansion each game received. Most recently, the mobile spin-off Diablo Immortal got a hot vamp knight, the first new class Blizzard has introduced to the series in nine years. Your move, Diablo IV.

Kotaku reached out to Activision Blizzard for comment.

Read More: Diablo 4‘s Inventory Situation Is Pretty Crummy

Season of the Malignant, Diablo IV’s first content drop that started on July 20, wasn’t exactly well-received by the community, with some fans complaining that the battle pass is quite stingy, and a pre-season patch receiving widespread rebuke for making the game even grindier. So sharp was the criticism that the company not only apologized for the derided changes to the game but also promised to never release such a patch again. With the second content drop, Season of Blood, kicking off on October 17 and coming with a bunch of meaningful tweaks to storage management and status effects—among other things—here’s hoping Blizzard finds its groove.

When speculation rife that Microsoft expects to finalize its purchase of Activision Blizzard this week, and COD: Modern Warfare III out in a month, it seems people have been wondering when Activision’s games will start appearing on Microsoft’s Game Pass. According to a tweet from Activision Blizzard, it should be some time next year.

The entire debacle of Microsoft’s attempts to buy Activision Blizzard feels it has been clogging up gaming news for years. In fact, it all started only last January, but followed hot on the heels of months of grim and gruesome reporting on the heinous working conditions at the developer’s various studios. This week could see that enormous, shitty chapter come to a close. Presumably so another enormous, shitty chapter can start.

But still, more games on Game Pass!

“As we continue to work toward regulatory approval of the Microsoft deal,” said Activision Blizzard on X, “we’ve been getting some questions whether our upcoming and recently launched games will be available via Game Pass.”

The Verge reported on Friday that Microsoft is getting ready to close the $68.7 billion deal, with October 13 thought to be the Big Day. Of course, this is all being held back by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which is the one international regulator that managed to decisively block the deal. However, being the UK’s CMA, it did it in the most cack-handed way, blathering on about unfair market control of cloud gaming, or some-such abstract technicality.

This complete whiff, entirely ignoring the concerns of, you know, Microsoft forming an actual monopoly, ensured a pathway for the two corporations to renegotiate arrangements such that it would avert the CMA’s peculiar strategy, and a couple of weeks ago it was provisionally stated it had succeeded. We should be finding out this week if the CMA is entirely satisfied, and given that’s likely to be the case, signet-ring-bearing hands will shake and overpriced Champagne shall be popped, as a bunch of extraordinarily rich people stand to get even richer.

Read More: Hold Onto Your Butts, Microsoft’s Massive Activision Blizzard Deal Is Finally Happening

“While we do not have plans to put Modern Warfare III or Diablo IV into Game Pass this year,” continues that Activision tweet, “once the deal closes, we expect to start working with Xbox to bring our titles to more players around the world.” So when? “And we anticipate that we would begin adding games into Game Pass sometime in the course of next year.”

It’s oddly slow, if anything. They’ll be the same company, and they’ve known they would been the same company for the last 20 months, so it seems strange that it’ll take another few months before Microsoft will be hosting what will suddenly become first-party games on its own streaming service.

There’s one small cloud hanging over their grey-suited celebrations: the FTC still has an appear in with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and that decision won’t appear until December. Should it succeed, it would then become about trying to undo the already sealed deal, which would be a whole other level of difficult, and no one surely believes the FTC has the teeth or the fight in it to win.

So, the industry shrinks yet again, with less competition, fewer major publishers attempting to outsell each other, and so less choice and worse prices for the gaming public. It doesn’t seem like the games industry can be far away from the monstrous and idiotic situation of the music industry, in the control of the Big Four record labels. It certainly seems unlikely that any regulatory bodies will be able to stop it, either way.

But you know, you can get next year’s COD on your subscription, so shhhhh.

The video game industry just got a lot smaller. The long and winding saga of Microsoft’s $69 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard has finally come to a close with the companies announcing the completed merger today following one last greenlight from regulators in the UK. Call of Duty is now part of Xbox and the tech giant has now surpassed Sony as the second biggest gaming company in the world, as gaming’s big march toward corporate consolidation continues.

In addition to the blockbuster military shooter, Activision Blizzard produces Overwatch 2, Diablo IV, and World of Warcraft. The acquisition will provide a raft of big games for Microsoft’s growing Xbox Game Pass subscription service, as well as make it a massive player on mobile with some of the biggest smartphone games in the world in Candy Crush and Call of Duty mobile. Microsoft signed a 10-year deal to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation, but has reserved the right to make other Activision Blizzard franchises exclusive to its Xbox platforms going forward.

The deal will also effectively expand Microsoft’s gaming business by roughly 10,000 employees. It’s not yet clear how many of them will remain, either due to redundancy layoffs or attrition of senior talent and executive level staff. Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick wrote in an email to staff today that he will stay on at the company reporting to Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer through the end of 2023.

Microsoft agreed to union neutrality with the Communication Workers of America last year, and starting 60 days from now Activision Blizzard employees will be able to get recognition of a union with majority support through a simple card check. Prior to joining Microsoft, the company had fought unionization efforts and recieved a number of labor complaints filed with the National Labor Relations Board.

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard first announced the groundbreaking merger back in January 2022. Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that Spencer approached Kotick about the deal after the publisher’s stock price collapsed following major game delays and continued reports of past sexual harassment and misconduct by some of its employees.

A July 20, 2021 lawsuit by the California Civil Rights Department alleged widespread sexual harassment and discrimination within Activision Blizzard. Then a bombshell Wall Street Journal report on November 17, 2021 claimed that Kotick was aware of multiple past sexual misconduct lawsuits against the company but failed to report them to its board of directors. Activision has called the report misleading and is currently fighting the Civil Rights Department’s lawsuit in court.

However, a day after The Wall Street Journal’s report was published, Spencer emailed staff within Microsoft that he was “evaluating all aspects” of Xbox’s relationship with Activision Blizzard. The next day, he approached Kotick about buying the embattled company. Those talks eventually culminated in a deal to buy the Call of Duty publisher for $95 a share, a 45 percent premium over what the company was worth following the sexual misconduct reports and game production delays.

The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg both reported at the time that Kotick was expected to resign after the deal closed, allowing him a graceful exit from the company he spent 30 years leading while the California lawsuit is still ongoing. Kotick also stands to make nearly $400 million from the sale via his stock holdings, over 20 times the $18 million settlement Activision Blizzard paid to the Equal Employment and Opportunity Commission over sexual discrimination allegations last year.

Microsoft and Activision Blizzard had originally planned to close the deal by last July, but battles with regulators in the UK and U.S. almost killed it off. The Federal Trade Commission attempted to block the merger in federal court over the summer, leading to a week-long trial that ended up revealing an unprecedented amount of behind-the-scenes info about Xbox, Sony, and other gaming companies, including leaked plans for upcoming consoles and private emails between top brass.

The FTC’s legal case ultimately failed, however, paving the way for Microsoft to address remaining reservations with the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority. As part of a reworked plan to win approval, Microsoft agreed to sell cloud gaming rights for Activision Blizzard games in the UK to Assassin’s Creed publisher Ubisoft, preventing it from being able to withhold streaming licenses for hits like Call of Duty and Overwatch from competitors like Sony. While Microsoft ultimately prevailed with regulators, the unexpected level of scrutiny resulted in a number of compromises and an unusual level of transparency that both companies may not have been counting on when the deal was first announced.

With the acquisition fights done, the new challenge for Microsoft will be how to integrate the massive publisher into its existing gaming business. That process will take years as well, and no doubt include its own set of twists and turns. Microsoft’s purchase of Bethesda Softworks’ parent company ZeniMax in 2020 doubled the size of Xbox Game Studios. Activision Blizzard is almost five times bigger. Its next big game, Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3 (Amazon), arrives on November 2, giving Microsoft the biggest release of the holiday season.

Longtime Activision Blizzard CEO, Bobby Kotick, is almost gone, but not quite yet. Nearly two years after over 1,000 of his employees called on the controversial executive to resign, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer confirmed that Kotick will remain the head of the Call of Duty publisher until the end of 2023, to help with the transition as it begins officially merging with the tech giant.

“Bobby Kotick has agreed to remain in his role through the end of 2023, reporting directly to me, to ensure a smooth and seamless integration,” Spencer wrote in an October 13 email to staff. “We look forward to working together as a unified team and we will share more updates on our new organizational structure in the coming months.”

“I have long said that I am fully committed to helping with the transition,” Kotick wrote in his own email to Activision Blizzard employees. “Phil has asked me to stay on as CEO of ABK, reporting to him, and we have agreed that I will do that through the end of 2023. We both look forward to working together on a smooth integration for our teams and players.”

Kotick’s leadership at Activision has often been contentious, especially following a 2021 lawsuit by regulators in the state of California alledging a history of sexual harassment and discrimation at the company. Activision Blizzard has denied those claims and continues to fight the lawsuit in court. But the allegations and subsquent reporting became a catalyst for hundreds of employees at the company to speak out against the CEO, and even begin unionizing at some studios.

A November 2021 investigation by The Wall Street Journal alleged that Kotick was aware of serious sexual misconduct incidents at the company and did not always report them to the board of directors. Activision called the reporting misleading, but in the wake of the story gaming executives—including Sony’s Jim Ryan, Nintendo of America’s Doug Bowser, and Spencer himself—informed staff they were concerned about the allegations. The report also led over 1,000 Activision Blizzard employees to call for Kotick to resign amid large scale walkouts.

Instead, Microsoft swooped in to begin acqusition neogtiations. According to reporting by Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal, the mounting calls for accountability and unease among some members of the board of directors were a factor in convincing Kotick to move ahead with selling Activision Blizzard. It’s a deal that now looks set to provide him with a nearly $400 million windfall in the sale of company stock.

Even prior to the sexual harassment and discrimation allegations against the company, which spurred Kotick to announce a series of initiatives to make Activision Blizzard a more safe and inclusive workplace, developers working under him have often been critical of the executive’s vision for aggressively monetizing franchises with sequels and pricey in-game items. The annual production of blockbuster Call of Duty games has been blamed for poor working conditions among quality assurance testers, and extended periods of overtime “crunch” across the teams making them.

“We see the progress that they’re making that was pretty fundamental to us deciding to go forward here,” Spencer said of Activision’s plans to improve workplace culture in the wake of the California lawsuit, back when the merger was first announced in January 2022. More recently, Kotick had controversial comedian and former late night host James Corden come to Activision to interview him earlier this week. He told the Cats star that the company had a “magic” culture, and it was that magic that first attracted Microsoft to the acquisition in the first place.