Overwatch Game Director on Overwatch 2’s BlizzCon 2019 Announcement: “You’re *** Idiots”

Former Overwatch development lead Jeff Kaplan says he clashed with Blizzard management over the decision to announce Overwatch 2 at BlizzCon 2019 before the team knew what the sequel would become or settled on a business model.

Kaplan said company leadership nevertheless insisted on presenting the project publicly. He opposed the announcement because he believed the game had not yet taken sufficient shape.

Kaplan discussed the conflict in an hourlong interview with Gaming World Interviews, in which he also recalled working on World of Warcraft and the canceled MMO Titan, as well as his final years at Blizzard. He now heads Kintsugiyama, the studio working on the Western action game The Legend of California.

According to Kaplan, the announcement was one of several sources of serious conflict with company management.

I had a big fight with management. 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 is going to be. This is a huge mistake.”

Jeff Kaplan, developer.

Kaplan was also unhappy with the decision to present Overwatch 2 and Diablo IV at the same time. In his view, announcing two major games at the same presentation deprived both of their own moment in the spotlight. He believes Blizzard’s new leaders were trying to show that the company could still make major games.

They had a lot to prove as new leaders. They wanted to show: “Blizzard is back, Blizzard is still at the top of its game.” And I thought, “You’re *** idiots.”

Jeff Kaplan, developer.

Kaplan said the announcement dispute was only part of a wider set of problems. He claimed that work on Overwatch from 2018 to 2021 involved constant disagreements with Activision Blizzard management. New executives regularly joined the company and interfered with the team’s creative decisions, he said.

One consequence was a long gap in the release of new heroes for the original Overwatch. Developers were not allowed to devote their full attention to new characters because they had to focus most of their efforts on the sequel. As a result, players received significantly less new content over several years.

Kaplan said he had previously set the game’s direction himself, but gradually lost the ability to make key decisions starting in 2018. After three years of disagreements, he concluded that he could no longer guide the franchise in the way he thought was right.

I no longer felt like I had the ability to make any decisions. I used to be able to say, “I’m the game director, and I’m 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.

Jeff Kaplan, developer.

Kaplan left Blizzard in 2021. He previously said one of the most unpleasant episodes of his career came when an Activision Blizzard executive threatened to fire about 1,000 employees if Overwatch did not generate a certain amount of profit for the company.

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