Disney reinforces its gaming leadership with industry veterans

Former Blizzard, Ubisoft, and Xbox members

Marco Wutz | Apr 9, 2024

Disney / Epic Games

Disney’s historically tenuous relationship with video games got a good deal more committed recently with the company’s $1.5 billion USD investment in Fortnite creator Epic Games.

The move “will bring together Disney’s beloved brands and franchises with the hugely popular Fortnite in a transformational new games and entertainment universe,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said at the time. “This marks Disney’s biggest entry ever into the world of games and offers significant opportunities for growth and expansion. We can’t wait for fans to experience the Disney stories and worlds they love in groundbreaking new ways.”

Reinforcing this commitment is an array of key hirings and promotions at the company. Sean Shoptaw has been promoted to executive vice president and will oversee Disney Games, so each of the newly hired games industry veterans will report to him.

Disney Games’ new senior vice president for product and development is Ray Gresko, former chief development officer at Blizzard Entertainment and one of the driving forces behind Diablo 3, Overwatch, and Hearthstone. His employment at Disney, in a way, closes the circle of his career, which began as a programmer at LucasArts, where he helped create several iconic Star Wars titles – a franchise now under Disney’s umbrella.

Bjorn Tornqvist has been named as the new vice president of games technology. He’s joined the company after close to two decades at Ubisoft Massive – again, there is a Star Wars connection as this is the studio currently making Star Wars Outlaws.

Already very familiar with Disney is Jay Ong, whose former stations include Xbox, EA Sports, and Blizzard Entertainment. He was most recently the chief of Marvel Games and will lead the global games licensing business at Disney Games, being responsible for all franchises. His successor at Marvel Games is Haluk Mentes.

“Under the leadership of Sean and Jay, Disney’s games business is perfectly positioned to deliver world-class storytelling in this medium,” said Disney consumer products president Tasia Filippatos in a statement. “We’re grateful to every member of the Disney Games team who has contributed to our success, and who will help shape the future of this industry through genre-defining entertainment.”

Published Apr 9, 2024

MARCO WUTZ

Marco Wutz is a writer from Parkstetten, Germany. He has a degree in Ancient History and a particular love for real-time and turn-based strategy games like StarCraft, Age of Empires, Total War, Age of Wonders, Crusader Kings, and Civilization as well as a soft spot for Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail. He began covering StarCraft 2 as a writer in 2011 for the largest German community around the game and hosted a live tournament on a stage at gamescom 2014 before he went on to work for Bonjwa, one of the country's biggest Twitch channels. He branched out to write in English in 2015 by joining tl.net, the global center of the StarCraft scene run by Team Liquid, which was nominated as the Best Coverage Website of the Year at the Esports Industry Awards in 2017. He worked as a translator on The Crusader Stands Watch, a biography in memory of Dennis "INTERNETHULK" Hawelka, and provided live coverage of many StarCraft 2 events on the social channels of tl.net as well as DreamHack, the world's largest gaming festival. From there, he transitioned into writing about the games industry in general after his graduation, joining GLHF, a content agency specializing in video games coverage for media partners across the globe, in 2021. He has also written for NGL.ONE, kicker, ComputerBild, USA Today's ForTheWin, The Sun, Men's Journal, and Parade. Email: marco.wutz@glhf.gg