Back in 2002, Jeff Kaplan joined Blizzard Entertainment to work on World of Warcraft, which was released two years later. He was then appointed director of the expansions The Burning Crusade and Wrath of the Lich King. In 2009, he joined Project Titan, which would end up becoming Overwatch.
Unfortunately, things ended badly for Kaplan, who decided to leave Blizzard in April 2021. He discussed his departure in an interview with Lex Fridman, during which he explained his resignation and the event that “broke” his career at the company.
In particular, he pointed out that the Overwatch League had drained a large amount of resources. This affected the development of Overwatch 2, and Blizzard sought to generate revenue as quickly as possible. The American company therefore put a lot of pressure on Jeff Kaplan.
“What ultimately broke me and my Blizzard career was I got called into the CFO’s office 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 the biggest fuck you moment I’ve had in my career, it felt surreal to be in that condition. As someone who’s worked on a lot of games, made a lot of games, you get in these meetings where they’re like ‘Fortnite has 1400 people working on it, so if we just hire 1400 people and make it free-to-play, we’ll make that money, right?’
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 is now working on a survival FPS called The Legend of California.
