Overwatch Director Jeff Kaplan Explains Why He Left Blizzard

"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 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."

"The eventual establishment of the Overwatch League, a franchise system where teams sold for millions of dollars each, ended up being a 'house of cards' that the company couldn't deliver on. Activision Blizzard had reportedly projected $125 million in revenue from the venture to start, money that never materialized before the league was eventually shut down in 2023."

"When the league couldn't deliver the profits to team owners that the company had promised, there became mounting pressure to use in-game microtransactions to help boost esports revenues. The result was resources that could have been put into new content and keeping the game dynamic being poured into esports monetization opportunities instead."

Jeff Kaplan, a 19-year Blizzard veteran and Overwatch director, departed the company in 2021 due to corporate mismanagement and profit pressures. Activision Blizzard heavily promoted the Overwatch League as a franchise system, overselling its potential to team owners with unrealistic projections of $125 million in initial revenue. When the league failed to generate promised profits, the company shifted focus toward in-game microtransactions and esports monetization rather than developing new content. This diverted resources away from Kaplan's original vision of maintaining the game through regular world events and updates, ultimately creating an unsustainable business structure that collapsed when revenue targets weren't met.

Read at Kotaku