The hero shooter's former Game Director dishes on Blizzard's decision to announce Overwatch 2 in 2019

Former Blizzard game director Jeff Kaplan left the company five years ago, but the studio's Overwatch fumbles are still fresh in his mind, judging by frank remarks he shared during a podcast. In it, the former face of the hero shooter described what was happening behind the scenes leading up to Blizzard's surprise announcement of Overwatch 2. Kaplan said there was deep dysfunction at the executive level within the company.

Kaplan appeared on an episode of Gaming World Interviews, and the conversation inevitably turned to his time at Blizzard and his "really sad" departure from the company — and everything that led up to that decision.

"I never in a million years thought I would ever quit... that's how important it was to me," Kaplan said.

The early days of Overwatch were happy, Kaplan said, but things changed after the game became successful. Suddenly, executives at Blizzard and Activision started taking an active interest in its ongoing development. Once former Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime left the company, Kaplan opined, Overwatch's creators started to lose control of the game's direction at the hands of a "revolving door" of clueless executives.

Fans may recall that Overwatch was originally billed as a long-term, live-service shooter that would keep improving without needing a sequel. Instead, Overwatch fans found themselves in the middle of an unexplained content drought. Kaplan alleged that this sudden shift in priorities happened because the team was told they couldn't design new heroes for the game.

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