In 2021, Jeff Kaplan—a veteran of Blizzard Entertainment and the head of Overwatch development—left the company. Five years after his departure, he gave a lengthy interview to podcaster Lex Fridman, where he shared memories about his resignation.
Jeff Kaplan
As Kaplan admitted, he was largely driven to leave by Blizzard's financial ambitions regarding Overwatch.
According to him, red flags began to appear in 2017, when the company decided to launch the Overwatch League. At that time, Blizzard had high hopes for the esports league and aggressively promoted it—at one point, managers even predicted that the Overwatch League could become more popular than the NFL. However, in the end, the league turned out to be a "burden." Money that could have been spent on developing Overwatch itself was being diverted to fulfill commitments to esports sponsors, and these costs weren't always recouped.
If Kaplan is to be believed, when Blizzard managers realized that the Overwatch League would not yield a windfall, they turned their attention to monetizing the game. As the developer recalls, his team was put under increased pressure to boost revenue. It even came to the point of threatened mass layoffs.
"Ultimately, my career at Blizzard fell apart after being called into the CFO's office. He sat me down, gave me a date—it was 2020 at the time, later postponed to 2021—and said: 'By this time, Overwatch must earn [removed]*. Each following year, it must generate a stable income of [removed]*. If it doesn't, we’ll lay off a thousand people, and it’ll be your fault.' That was the worst moment of my entire career," Kaplan stated.
Currently, Kaplan is working at Kintsugiyama studio on a multiplayer shooter titled The Legend of California, which is set in California during the Gold Rush. The game is expected to enter early access on PC later this year.
*Specific figures are not disclosed due to a non-disclosure agreement.