Former Overwatch 2 Head Jeff Kaplan Explains Why He Let Blizzard

I admit to never being the biggest Blizzard fan, but I remember being in the audience at BlizzCon when the original Overwatch was revealed and thinking they had something there – a project that would end up meaning a lot to a lot of players. And for a while, they had just that. So, even I was disappointed with the decisions they made regarding the free-to-play shooter IP.

As we all know, things just got progressively worse. But, I think a lot of players felt like that; at least Jeff Kaplan, the game’s lead director, was making a genuine effort. Unfortunately, Blizzard as a whole wasn’t having the best time, with various scandals and other issues. So, it wasn’t really a surprise when he finally announced his departure in 2021. The only real question was what the breaking point was.

Today, we have that answer. Yesterday, Kaplan appeared on the Lex Fridman Podcast, partially to discuss his new game, Legend of California. During the five-hour cast, he discussed his career and Blizzard history. Part of that discussion was about what it was that made Kaplan decide to move on.

His time at Blizzard was covered a lot during the podcast. As far as Overwatch and his departure from the company went, he hit on quite a few points. What he identified as the breaking point was a moment when he was called into the CFO’s office and told that, “Overwatch has to make [a specific amount of money that can’t be made public due to a confidentiality agreement] in 2020, and then every year after that it needs a recurring revenue of [a specific amount].” The CFO then went on to tell him that if these metrics weren’t met, a thousand people would be laid off and it was all “going to be on [him]”.

This all came after Blizzard spent a lot of time hyping up the Overwatch esports scene, promoting a lot of ideas, and then realizing not all of those ideas were doable after bringing in investors for the project. So the focus shifted from making the game the devs wanted to make to doing whatever it was determined should bring in cash.

I doubt any of this comes as a big surprise. We may not have had access to all the information. But there was plenty we could see from the outside. So, here’s hoping Kaplan’s new project does well.

For those wondering, it’s an action survival FPS set on the island of California, being developed by Kintsugiyama and published by Dreamhaven. I have my doubts it will be free-to-play, so we may not cover it much here. But you can check out the Steam page.