I’ll admit I’ve never been the biggest Blizzard fan, but I remember being in the audience at BlizzCon when the original Overwatch was revealed and thinking there was something there – a project that would end up meaning a lot to a lot of gamers. And for a while, that’s exactly what they had. So even I was disappointed with the decisions they made regarding the free-to-play shooter’s IP.

As we all know, things kept getting worse. But I think a lot of players felt that way; At least Jeff Kaplan, the game’s lead director, made a serious effort. Unfortunately, Blizzard didn’t have the best time overall, as there were various scandals and other problems. So it wasn’t really a surprise when he finally announced his departure in 2021. The only real question was where the tipping point was.

Today we have that answer. Yesterday, Kaplan appeared on the Lex Fridman Podcast to talk, among other things, about his new game Legend of California. During the five-hour cast, he talked about his career and the history of Blizzard. Part of that discussion centered on what motivated Kaplan to move forward.

The podcast reported in detail about his time at Blizzard. When it comes to Overwatch and his exit from the company, he hit some points. He identified the turning point as a moment when he was called into the CFO’s office and told: “Overwatch has to do something.” [a specific amount of money that can’t be made public due to a confidentiality agreement] in 2020 and then every year thereafter a recurring revenue of [a specific amount].” The CFO then went on to tell him that if these metrics were not met, a thousand people would be laid off and everything would “continue.” [him]“.

This all happened after Blizzard spent a lot of time boosting Overwatch’s esports scene, promoting a lot of ideas, and then realizing that not all of those ideas were viable after attracting investors to the project. So the focus shifted from making the game the developers wanted to make to what was going to make money.

I doubt any of this is much of a surprise. We may not have had access to all the information. But there was a lot we could see from the outside. So we hope Kaplan’s new project is well received.

For those wondering, it is an action-survival FPS set on the island of California, developed by Kintsugiyama and published by Dreamhaven. I have my doubts that it will be free to play, so we may not cover it much here. But you can look at it Steam page.