Overwatch creator opens up on why he left Blizzard: "We're going to lay off 1,000 people and that's on you"
Jeff Kaplan, who had been the face of Overwatch since its inception in March 2016, finally opened up and candidly explained his reasons for leaving Activision Blizzard in 2021. It all boiled down to a blunt meeting with Activision Blizzard's then-CFO that culminated in his exit from the company altogether.
If you played Overwatch during its heyday, Jeff Kaplan was the game’s public face, talking about all the latest developments, upcoming heroes, and updates at the time. In a recent interview, Jeff Kaplan sat down with Lex Fridman on his podcast and discussed how the hype around the Overwatch League gradually pulled the game’s core identity off course.
Kaplan stated that trouble started brewing when the Overwatch League was launched in 2017. The hype was immense. He explained, “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. They went on this roadshow where they had a deck – and people can put anything in a deck and sell anything – and they were pretty much selling the Brooklyn Bridge, that the Overwatch League was going to be more popular than the NFL.”
These grand promises to multimillionaire investors soon started to eat away at Overwatch’s actual game development. The team had to work on spectating tools, Twitch integration, and team skins instead of the usual new hero designs, maps, or events.
Kaplan further stated, “And so all your plans for Overwatch content at that point kind of go out the window. You’re not working on new world events, you’re not focused on Overwatch 2, you’re just treading water.”
As expected, the Overwatch League’s in-person events and pay-per-view tickets didn’t sell at levels comparable to the NBA or the NFL, which put pressure on the developers. Merchandise sales helped, but they weren’t enough to meet investors’ expectations and the previously marketed promises.
Jeff continued, “Originally, the business model was going to be that they were going to do in-person events, and there were going to be big ticket sales and merch and all of that. I think, really quickly, everybody learned we can’t do all in-person events when we have a London team and a Shanghai team… like, how does this work? So that fell apart super quickly.”
The final nail in the coffin was a meeting that still bothers Jeff Kaplan to this day. He was called into the CFO’s office and given an ultimatum to meet 2020 revenue targets, which were later pushed to 2021. The executive told Kaplan that missing revenue milestones would mean terminating 1,000 employees, and it would all be Kaplan’s fault.
Jeff Kaplan expressed himself thoroughly, recalling the incident and saying:
“What ultimately broke me and my Blizzard career was I got called into the CFO’s office, and he sits me down and he gives me a date that 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 to have 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*ck-you moment I’ve had in my career; it felt surreal to be in that position.”
Kaplan hoped he would work at Blizzard and even retire there, but that unfortunately didn’t pan out, as he exited the company on April 20, 2021, just before Overwatch 2 was released.
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