"I literally thought I'd retire from the place"
Before Blizzard's free-to-play multiplayer shooter Overwatch 2 arrived on the scene, there was the original paid experience led by game director (and fan favourite) Jeff Kaplan.
You might recall how Kaplan made an abrupt exit from the company behind Diablo and Warcraft in 2021, after almost 20 years of service. It left a lot of fans concerned about the future of Overwatch at the time, and now he's finally broken his silence in the latest episode of Lex Fridman's podcast.
In one segment, Jeff mentions how things apparently went downhill because of the commitments to the professional Esports competition "Overwatch League". When Activision Blizzard was unable to meet investor expectations, the onus was placed on the development team, which led to "the pressure to ship Overwatch 2".
Kaplan supposedly hit his own breaking point when he found himself in a meeting with Activision Blizzard's CFO at the time, claiming he had to make so much money or future lay-offs would be on him. Here's the transcript courtesy of PC Gamer, and you can watch this segment of the interview in the video below (note: the redacted figures are due to a confidentiality agreement):
"What ultimately broke me and my Blizzard career was I got called into the CFO's office and he sits me down and he says—he gives me a date which at the time was 2020 and was going to slip to 2021, but at the time it was 2020—and he said: 'Overwatch has to make [redacted] in 2020, and then every year after that it needs a recurring revenue of [redacted]' and then he says to me 'if it doesn't do [redacted] we're going to lay off 1,000 people, and that's going to be on you.' And that was the biggest f**k you moment I've had in my career, it felt surreal to be in that condition."
Kaplan goes on to say he loved Blizzard and expected to retire there, but realised "that was it" for his career at the company. He also mentions how "luckily for Blizzard", the same CFO (who is not named in this podcast) is no longer there. PC Gamer notes Dennis Durkin was CFO between 2019 and May 2021, and Armin Zerza was in the role until 2025.
Overwatch 2 most recently dropped the number from its title, as the team believes it's a "timeless game", according to Blizzard president Johanna Faries. In saying this, the title remains free-to-play and the collaborations with IP outside of the Blizzard universe continue. The latest one is a crossover with NieR: Automata.
As for Kaplan, he's now working on a new game called The Legend of California - an open-world action-survival shooter set in California during the gold rush era.
In case you missed it, Overwatch was announced for the Switch 2 last month and will be releasing at some point this year.
Liam is a news writer and reviewer on Nintendo Life. He's been writing about games for more than 15 years and is a lifelong fan of many iconic video game characters.
