Former Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan opened up about a conflict with Blizzard leadership over the premature announcement of Overwatch 2 at BlizzCon 2019. According to him, at that point the team still didn’t understand what the sequel would ultimately become, nor had they decided on its business model. Despite this, company executives insisted on a public presentation of the project.
Kaplan shared this in an hour-long interview with Gaming World Interviews, in which he also looked back on working on World of Warcraft, the cancelled MMO Titan, and his final years at Blizzard. The developer currently heads the studio Kintsugiyama, which is working on the Western action game The Legend of California.
According to Kaplan, the announcement of Overwatch 2 became one of the catalysts for a serious clash with company leadership. The developer recalls that he personally opposed the decision to reveal the game to the public, believing the project was not yet sufficiently formed.
“I picked a big fight with leadership. I went into their office and asked: ‘What are we even doing? We don’t even know what this game is going to be, we don’t know what its business model will be. This is a huge mistake.’”
The developer was further frustrated by the decision to announce Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV simultaneously. In his view, having two major announcements at a single presentation robbed both games of the chance to enjoy their own moment in the spotlight. Kaplan believes Blizzard’s new leadership was attempting to show that the company was still capable of delivering major projects.
“They had a lot to prove as new leaders. They wanted to show: ‘Blizzard is back, Blizzard is still on top.’ And I thought: ‘You’re *** idiots.’”
However, the conflict surrounding the announcement was only part of a broader set of issues. Kaplan states that between 2018 and 2021, work on Overwatch was accompanied by ongoing disputes with Activision Blizzard leadership. According to him, new executives were constantly joining the company and meddling with the team’s creative decisions.
One of the consequences of this approach was an extended hiatus in releasing new heroes for the original Overwatch. The developers were forbidden from fully focusing on new characters because main resources had to be diverted to creating the sequel. As a result, players received substantially less new content over several years.
Kaplan notes that he previously determined the game’s development direction himself, but starting in 2018, he gradually lost the ability to make key decisions. After three years of constant disagreements, he reached the conclusion that he could no longer steer the franchise the way he felt was right.
“I no longer felt that I had any say. Previously, I could say: ‘I am the game director, and I am the one who sets the direction of the game.’ But starting in 2018, I lost that right. After three years of fighting for it, I realized that this company now belonged to corporate executives. There was no longer a place for me at Blizzard, and I was tired of fighting. I didn’t want to put my name on a project I didn’t believe in.”
Ultimately, the developer left Blizzard in 2021. Earlier, he also mentioned that one of the most distressing moments of his career was a threat from an Activision Blizzard executive to lay off around a thousand employees if Overwatch failed to generate a certain level of profit for the company.