Overwatch series creator and former Blizzard Entertainment veteran Jeff Kaplan has reappeared in the public space after several years of silence. The developer presented his new project, the multiplayer survival game The Legend of California, and also gave an interview in which he spoke in detail about the reasons for leaving Blizzard after 19 years of work.
Kaplan joined Blizzard in the early 2000s and worked as a tester for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and later became game director of World of Warcraft and lead developer of Overwatch.
According to Kaplan, parting with the studio was a heavy personal blow for him.
He admitted that he still has warm feelings for Blizzard. However, after leaving, the developer realized how painful this moment was for him: he compared the experience to the process of grief and admitted that he could not come to terms with the idea that he no longer worked in the studio where he planned to spend his entire career.
One of the key episodes that prompted him to leave was a meeting with the financial management of Activision Blizzard. According to Kaplan, the financial director set him a tough goal for the annual revenue of Overwatch, threatening mass layoffs if the game did not reach the required indicators.
Kaplan said that he was given a specific date and amount of income that the project had to bring. Otherwise, according to the manager, the company could fire about a thousand employees, and responsibility for this would be assigned to him as the project manager.
Although Kaplan did not name the financial director, at that time this position was held by Dennis Durkin, who left the company in May 2021 - a month after Kaplan himself left.
After leaving Blizzard, Kaplan founded the studio Kintsugiyama. The name is inspired by the Japanese art of Kintsugi, in which broken ceramics are restored with gold. According to the developer, the idea symbolizes people from the industry who have experienced difficult professional moments, but have only become stronger.
