Back in 2021, Jeff Kaplan, one of the longest-tenured employees at Blizzard, left the company after 19 years working on the early versions of World of Warcraft and more specifically, creating the world of Overwatch. This was during the development of Overwatch 2. Many in the industry and the community may have been wondering why he left. Now, in an interview with Lex Fridman, Kaplan talks about why he left.
According to Kaplan, there were two main reasons for his departure. One was the introduction of the Overwatch League – a global esports league for the game made up of permanent city-based teams like a professional US sport. Kaplan noted that while he felt the League was a good idea with good intentions, it got too complicated and overmarketed.
“The weirdest part about Overwatch League is I believe in it. I helped pitch it along with some other people. We thought it was the future of esports and doing regional-based teams, ensuring minimum player salaries and player protections. There was a lot of very good about Overwatch League.”
He added: “The team’s part of the dream was more like regional-based player protection, [to] try to make esports more of a first class citizen, because there were all these stories about shady teams screwing their players over. Where it got away from us was there was a lot of excitement about Overwatch League – like, too much so – and then it got over-marketed to the people buying the teams.
“They went on this roadshow where they had a deck – and you could 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. And we got a bunch of billionaire investors in these teams.
“And when 2018 started, for example, the day got back they said: ‘We’ve signed this huge deal with Twitch for streaming of Overwatch League, like a media rights deal. And that means here’s all these commitments we made for Overwatch League.’
“[It was] like in-game stuff that had to exist, integration with Twitch, camera control and that kind of stuff. The other part of it was a bunch of skins, uniforms for all the teams, which was not just getting the art in the game, but there was huge technical challenges to how all that worked and was efficient and hit the right memory footprint and all of that kind of stuff.
“And so all of your plans at that point kind of go out the window. You’re not going to work on new world events. You’re not really even focused on Overwatch 2, you’re just kind of treading water.
“There was a lot of of talk of ‘oh God, the deal didn’t go well and we’ve got to do make goods to make the deal better for them’, and I’m like ‘just give them some money back’. You know, if the deal isn’t what people wanted, putting it on us, the Overwatch team, to support this beast?
“It was a great idea that the wrong instincts… I don’t know how to phrase this in a way that’s not damning, but there was too much focus on ‘let’s make lots of money really fast’, and a lot of people got dragged into it.”
The second reason and the one that pushed Kaplan to leave was an ultimatum that was made to him by Blizzard’s CFO.
“And what ultimately broke me in my Blizzard career was I got called into the CFO’s office,” Kaplan explains. “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 just the biggest ‘fuck you’ moment I had in my career. It felt surreal to be in that condition. As somebody who’s worked on a lot of games, made a lot of games, you get in these meetings where they’re like: ‘Fortnite has 1,400 people working on it, if you just hire 1,400 people and make it free-to-play we’ll make that money, right?’
“I had believed I would never work any place but Blizzard. I loved it. It was a part of who I was, and I felt I was a part of it. And I literally thought I would retire from the place, I never thought the day would come. And that was it, I was like, ‘we’re done here’. Luckily for Blizzard, that CFO is no longer there.”