Nearly five years after his abrupt departure from Blizzard Entertainment, former Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has publicly addressed the reasons behind his exit, pointing to growing corporate pressure to prioritise revenue over game development.
Kaplan, who spent 19 years at Blizzard and helped create one of the studio’s biggest franchises, left the company in 2021. Speaking in a recent interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, Kaplan said the company’s increasing focus on profitability and monetisation created tensions with the development team’s original vision for Overwatch.
Overwatch League Shifted the Focus
Kaplan explained that the early plan for Overwatch centred on expanding the game through new storylines, seasonal events, and gameplay updates.
However, he said Blizzard’s growing investment in the Overwatch League shifted the company’s priorities.
“Where it got away from us is that there was a lot of excitement about Overwatch League, like too much,” Kaplan said.
According to him, the league was heavily marketed to investors and team owners with ambitious expectations about its future success.
“They were pretty much selling the Brooklyn Bridge, that Overwatch League was going to be more popular than the NFL,” Kaplan said.
The franchise-based esports league struggled to meet those expectations and eventually shut down in 2023.
Rising Monetisation Pressure
As the esports initiative began to face financial challenges, Kaplan said pressure increased within Blizzard to generate more revenue through in-game purchases and other monetisation strategies.
That shift, he said, redirected development resources away from expanding the core game experience.
“My parents always said the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Kaplan said. “That was the Overwatch League, and it ended up being an albatross.”
Emmanuel Umahi
A Breaking Point With Leadership
Kaplan also described a meeting with Blizzard’s finance leadership that he said marked a turning point in his career.
During the meeting, he was told that Overwatch would need to generate a significant amount of recurring revenue each year. According to Kaplan, he was warned that failure to meet those financial targets could lead to large-scale layoffs.
“What ultimately broke me and my Blizzard career was I got called into the CFO’s office,” Kaplan said. “He told me Overwatch had to make a specific amount of money every year, and after that it needed recurring revenue.”
Kaplan said the executive warned that as many as 1,000 employees could lose their jobs if those targets were not met, placing the responsibility on the game’s leadership.
At the time, the chief financial officer of Activision Blizzard was Dennis Durkin, though Kaplan did not name the executive during the interview.
Leaving Blizzard
Kaplan departed Blizzard in 2021, two years before the release of Overwatch 2.
Reflecting on the decision, he said the separation was emotionally difficult and that he only later realised how deeply the experience had affected him.
“Separating from Blizzard was one of the most painful things,” Kaplan said. “I didn’t realise how broken I was until recently — the mourning and grieving I had gone through.”
Despite the difficult departure, Kaplan said he hopes developers recognise their value and remain cautious about giving up creative control to executives focused primarily on profits.
“Developers should know their worth and not hand over the golden goose to people who don’t deserve it.”
Emmanuel Umahi
