Former Overwatch lead Jeff Kaplan has claimed that, due to financial pressures brought on by the Overwatch League, he was given an ultimatum by then Blizzard CFO, Dennis Durkin. That ultimatum was, essentially, ‘make sure Overwatch meets certain revenue goals, or 1,000 developers would lose their jobs’.
In an interview with Lex Fridman, Kaplan described the situation as “the biggest f**k you moment I’ve had in my career” and what “broke” both Kaplan personally, as well as his career at Blizzard. The exact figures on these revenue targets was left redacted, due to a confidentiality agreement Kaplan signed that is seemingly still in effect.
These pressures apparently go above and beyond the typical burdens of live service game development, as Kaplan claims it was The Overwatch League which added additional strains to the game.
As Kaplan explains it, the huge amount of investment money poured into The Overwatch League led to resources spent on features like Twitch integration, a spectator camera, and more. After all, the Overwatch League was sold to investors – according to Kaplan – as ‘an industry-changing affair’.
“Where it got away from us is that there was a lot of excitement about Overwatch League, like too much. It got overmarketed to the people buying the teams,” Kaplan told Fridman. “They went on this roadshow where they had a deck, and you can put anything in a deck and sell anything, and they were pretty much selling the Brooklyn Bridge, that Overwatch League was going to be more popular than the NFL.
“Originally the business model was going to be that they were going to do in-person events, and there’s going to be big ticket sales and merch and all of that. I think really quickly everybody learned we can’t do in-game events when we have a London team and a Shanghai team… how does this work? So that fell apart super quickly. The merch was good but it wasn’t going to be making NFL money, whatever insanity people thought that was going to be.
Kaplan described Overwatch plans going “out the window” as a result. These investors and Blizzard would look to the game itself to pick up the slack, to sell more, to give the esports venture more and more. “That pressure comes onto the team, and the pressure to ship Overwatch 2, and then all the care and love that we had for the live game and the live service – like let’s make events, new heroes, new maps – we’re losing all these resources.”
Jeff Kaplan, looking back at his time at Blizzard, said: “I had believed that I would never work in any place but Blizzard, I loved it, it was a part of who I was, and I thought that I was a part of it. And I literally thought I’d retire from the place. I never thought the day would come, but that was it. Luckily for Blizzard, that CFO is no longer there.”
Kaplan now is working with a small team at independent studio Kintsugiyama, which recently revealed The Legend of California. This open world survival game is set to release in Early Access sometime this year.