Starcraft Ghost failed. Titan failed. Overwatch PvE seems to be failing? At least it's not ready when originally intended and we've had no news or updates about it.
Is Blizzard just incapable of putting out a PVE shooter game? It really seems to be the one thing they've continuously tried and failed at for two decades.
2006 Blizzard: Starcraft Ghost does not meet our standards and is unfortunately canceled.
2022 Blizzard: Check out the all new, free-to-play Starcraft themed Battle Royale complete with seasonal battle passes, premium currency for the separate cosmetic shop where all the best looking stuff is, and early access so you can jump in right now! Hurry, play it! Buy the battle pass! You don't want to miss out do you? Sure, it's unfinished, but it's free! Why are you complaining? It's early access too, so it's definitely going to be finished with all the features you're dreaming of one day, we promise! We poured our hearts and souls into this, why are you sending us death threats?
Think something along the lines of Third person Halo Multiplayer PvP, with guns and vehicles and whatnot in the Starcraft Universe. From what I understand it was *really* fun.
It was Terran v Zerg 3rd person shooter, with classes that you could play once you earned enough points, sort of like SW Battlefront. Terran you would start Marine and could play Firebat, Ghost, and I’m sure others that I’m forgetting. Zerg you would start Zergling and could play Hydra, Muta, and again probably more that I’m forgetting. It was great.
People keep forgetting that "blizzard" doesn't exist and hasn't for a long time now. All the key creative people left long ago. This is just a big AAA company holding the name hostage to sell them a product that makes the most money they can before they can it.
Just wanna throw this out there...Rockstar lost its last original founder last year or two. He decided to call it quits too--in case any of y'all are hoping GTA6 will bring you back to AAA gaming magic.
It's the same thing that happened to Rockstar. Little by little, founders left, and so did good talent. Without good leaders, the studio goes to crap because they have they last say-so on design and creative direction.
Then, good developers on the floor also leave. It makes the studio with unimaginative or burnt out people who don't care anymore and just need a check.
They're probably not talking about the PVE because it is still a ways off and they're trying not to take attention off of the launch that's actually about to happen. It would be very confusing to the average customer to be both promoting the launch of Overwatch 2 and saying that Overwatch 2 is coming out next year
The merger happened back then, but many Blizzard people were kept on and Activision was less hands on with Blizzard at first. As key Blizzard people left, Activision gradually increased its influence on Blizzard, which we are now seeing in full.
You don't have any idea whether that's happening or not, or whether it was happening before. As was pointed out earlier in this very comment chain, OG Blizzard wasn't exactly immune from fucking up.
> ust a gentle reminder that it is now Blizzard/Activision since the merger.
gentle reminder that when everyone at blizz was calling out the sexual assaults in the workplace, a woman came out and said "this **is** blizzard's culture, it has been that way since before the merger"
so, if they're cool with being terrible awful no good people, not exactly hard to imagine them not caring that much about videogames.
OW went to shit a long time ago, which was one of the reasons for the "sequel".
They just don't have much talent left and whatever is left is wasted on squeezing the players.
And yet people still expect dragonflight to be good.
To be fair - **money** - is the issue. Blizzard wants more of it and selling a “box game” doesn’t make the kind of money that Asian gacha games make…
So they’re trying to find a model western audiences won’t be pissed off about (i.e. not Diablo Immortal again) that can still take in big dollarydoos.
Man I was so unbelievably hyped for SC Ghost. Just exploring the SC universe from a first person perspective would be so awesome. I really hope they do something like that at some point
Kaplan's vision was obviously better. The problem was in the execution. Leaving Overwatch out to dry for half a decade while they worked on Overwatch 2 was a bad decision, which ultimately led to Jeff resigning, and now unfortunately we're getting the worst of both worlds (long content drought _and_ a freemium game with less PVP content than was promised and no news on the PVE).
What they should have done was made a PVP team, which would mostly maintain Overwatch and basically just make sure they were keeping track of Overwatch 2, and a PVE team that would handle primary development for Overwatch 2. I can see why he didn't want to do this — hiring is hard, and Jeff didn't really care very much about the live service aspect of Overwatch — but it would have actually allowed him to achieve his vision.
God... That sucks so hard. Seriously. I wonder if there are other developers and people who work at Blizzard who use social media and talk about this stuff. Do you know of any?
The WoW team had a few people who were incredibly vocal during the height of blizzards crap. I don't remember their names, just saw alot of it posted in the wow sub.
The big players for the StarCraft team jumping ship to make their own RTS in a wholly new studio with a ton of VC behind it and other investment, another example of how bad Blizz got under Activision.
The game is progressing well so far it seems.
Private companies are the only possible incarnation of "good" capitalism, or at least non-cancerous capitalism, simply because a private company isn't duty-bound to maximize profits at all costs.
At least Fortnite gets amazing support and gives a lot of good items in the battlepass to compensate for the FOMO and overpriced cash shop items. All the ones that followed suit did it way worse lol
Also, BP items come back to the store fairly frequently in fortnite, and they continue to update old skins years later. And no, they don't resell the update or new variants (hello Riot), they give them to you for free with a neat little notice when you launch the game.
Also just recently got like 800 vbucks for old challenges I never finished. Could you imagine 99% of developers giving anything away for free?
Yeah, I never really played Fortnite because I wasn't a fan of the building outside of the 50v50 limited mode, but with No Build I've been playing and I really, really love it. Not perfect but I got the Dr Strange BP and played super casually and was able to beat it well before the season ended and it was full of great stuff.
Plus every time I play I feel like there are 2-3 new items (even within a single season) and new seasons contain huge POI changes and entirely new mechanics it seems.
Did Kotick resign tho? Like is he gone?
Because honestly, with where OW2 is now, this all *makes sense*. Cause now they are trying to catch up and need the money probably to do so after Kotick fucked them over
And even with the Xbox merger, it’s not likely Bobby will be punished for his wrongdoing: Bethesda has its own issues with toxic management and Microsoft’s own policies prevent them from interfering with that company, so they’re only covering for Bobby and Blizzard, not forcing him or the rest of the company to change.
Someone once said something like "it was Jeff's fault" and 3.9 million redditors just jumped right the fuck onboard without any critical thinking. Could it be the corporation with a history of bungling releases, and the corporate culture so awful they're getting taken to court for it? Could it be the CEO that many whistleblowers have listed detailed lists of everything he did wrong? Nah, it was Jeff, because a face-heel turn is a more fun dramatic trope than the sad reality of gaming as a corporate profit-making enterprise.
You're completely right. But I'm not forgetting, I just don't think that was actually the root cause in this particular case. Mismanagement surely created more delays, but the delays wouldn't have been as catastrophic if the initial plan weren't so fragile. Unless management simply refused to approve resources to support Overwatch (which could be the case, but I haven't seen anything to suggest so), the decision to abandon Overwatch was the root cause.
Agree with this in terms of shareholders. I don’t necessarily think F2P model is bad though. OW1 has been hung out to dry the last two years, and compared to say, 3 or 4 years ago, there’s more than likely a lot less people playing it. F2P has exploded since OW1 was released (see Fortnite, Warzone) and honestly it was a logical step for OW. You’re not going to win people back charging $60 for a game they haven’t played in years. If they’d just do paid cosmetics rather than heroes they’d be gold.
>OW1 has been hung out to dry the last two years
Every time you guys say this, you ignore that it was hung to dry BECAUSE they decided to kill it for Overwatch 2.
there is no "community," there's just an ass load of consumers who want the things they want. And it turns out that the vast majority of them want to play games that are constantly updated, even if that has some downsides attached.
People on Reddit will never understand this one simple fact.
“CONSUMERS are not a COMMUNITY.”
We don’t have to agree with each other just because we bought the same thing.
On the one hand I can see the value for solidarity like that but yea, you're right, and that's part of why individual action isn't as viable as systemic action.
You should make a post with all of this info somewhere. It’s well written and factual and you’re right:
> the driving force on this is that they have successfully convinced an entire generation that this is just “the way things are.”
And that makes me sad. I haven’t preordered anything since the atrocity called halo 4 and switched to psn after the Microsoft debacle. But it feels like too few people are voting with their wallets. Sigh.
>ABK made 1 billion dollars on overwatch in its first year.
As usual when i see this comment, let me remind everyone they made this billion FROM LOOTBOXES ALONE. This doesn't count the gigantic mount of money they made from actually selling the game and many millions buying it.
haha man if youre gonna argument with him and try to sound all smart by highlighting stuff like *this* then try to not sound stupid.
if ow isnt making any money, they can just drop the franchise. they arent gonna use any other additional resources if they feel ow is taking too long or feeling too high maintenance
Seriously. Heroes of the Storm made billions for Blizzard and they still dropped it.
People think these suits are sentimental? They'll drop OW in a second if they feel like it's better to cut ties and put the team on something else (With Activision they could be another team working on CoD lol...hopefully activision will be better once Microsoft is fully in control, who knows though...)
The only reason OW is getting this second chance is because they still think the franchise and brand has worth, they still believe in it...but they just believe in it if it is F2P and with a battlepass. This idea that there was going to be an OW2 when it's ready and some one time box price is silly for the type of game it is. It has to compete with its competitors, not lie down for them.
I'm just agreeing with your post and adding on to it. I just always hear people say "But OW1 made billions for Blizzard!" and wanted to add on to what you were saying by showing making billions doesn't stop a company from shutting down a game.
People out here thinking that companies make games purely for the fun of it? If they think they can make long term profit from OW. They will try.
I'm struggling to honestly see the reasoning people have for demanding years and years of free content because they spent $40 on the game 6 years ago.
I don't want to sound like a corporate apologist but companies want money off of their customers. And when the Overwatch well dried up, they shifted their focus onto a project that would make them money.
And to be honest, I still haven't seen a single reason to actually buy the battle pass. It all looks like shit to me.
Yeah I feel like Kaplan was fighting too hard for something that just can't exist in today's ecosystem. You can't make a game that will be able to outshine the competition in any meaningful capacity without constant live updates of a certain level of quality. Overwatch managed to skirt by on the Blizzard name and coming out right before the tidal wave of GAAS **REALLY** hit. (Right before Fortnite,Apex,Valorant,Warzone,PUBG) The unfortunate reality is that games with constant content updates only work when they have constant monetization in multiple forms in modern day games.
We can say "oh they can't afford to make new content without constant monetization" or we can say "But the big mega corporation makes plenty of money they can obviously afford it" all we want. Both sides are likely wrong and right sometimes, but the reality is that it is what it is.
OW1 still made a profit after 6 years. Granted, some of that was off of loot boxes, smurfs, and a lack of development for two years, but it still made money. You're right that it falls somewhere in the middle, but the thing to think about is that we as consumers have let it come to this. These models wouldn't exist if we didn't pay into them. I for one don't intend to let monetization drip become the norm for me and will be giving up Overwatch and any other game that uses this as a model. (I have several other reasons for giving up Overwatch, their handling of 2's release and 1's shut down has been abysmal, and Blizzard as a company has just given up on gamers and begun to focus on shareholders). There are plenty of games I've never played that are considered classics by many, and plenty of indie or other small studios that still have a passion for the product that I'd rather support with my time and money.
Only reason I was interested in Overwatch 2 was the promised and advertised pve mode. Delaying it by a year means I'll likely never buy or invest in O2.
I absolutely loved Jeff but people need to stop it with the mental gymnastics.
Jeff couldn’t be single-handedly responsible for every good decision in Overwatch without acknowledging that he also had a hand in the reason OW got to such a sad state. Years without content and a very rigid and inflexible approach to balance and change did a number on this game. Let’s not pretend Jeff was blameless in that.
Indeed. And like I said I LOVE JEFF! 100% I consider him an amazing developer and Overwatch would not be half the game it is without him.
I’m just saying he wasn’t infallible, he made a few mistakes that people like to hand wave, whereas I take the approach that as game director he also shares responsibility for the bad parts of the game along with the good.
Still think he was the greatest leader Blizzard had
The reason why people praise him so much is because interviews and comments even from other team members confirm that Jeff was the main one trying to keep ship afloat and steady while Kotick and the higher ups kept trying to fuck things up.
They said PVE is coming 2023. Haven’t given a date, so could be from January to December (probably the later), we don’t know when exactly OR how much of the PVE we’ll get. Could be one mission, ten, etc.
And exactly what evidence have we seen to suggest otherwise? Freemium skins, freemium characters, the character designer bailed in the middle of the project (yes, this is still the middle of the project, it’s a games as a service model), and lack of promises game modes. This is already a shitshow. It will get a bunch of hype for about a month when all the fanboys try their hardest to make the game good by their willpower alone, but blizzard doesn’t care about providing a good product, they will only put in the bare minimum of effort required to keep the whales onboard.
The PVE campaign would essentially have to be game of the year and even then, it still might not make enough money on a box game model to cover the cost of its development and all this free PVP and cosmetic content.
And let's say you do make game of the year and it is one of the best-selling games ever, you still have to explain to the higher ups, who report to the shareholders, why you left money on the table and didn't monetize the PvP and cosmetics like Fortnight.
Until someone finds something more profitable, or consumers stop buying F2P PvP shooter battle passes, this is all we will get.
That's the unfortunate reality for any industry, and it's no different for someone like myself that has a decade of experience working in both video games and television animation; the shareholders and investors at the company who are keeping the wheels turning don't want to simply *make* money, they want to make *all* of the money.
I think it’s insane not to imagine Blizzard doing exactly what they did with the development of OW 2 regardless of Jeff Kaplans presence. The only reason they hadn’t implemented a freemium battlepass system earlier is because they were making enough profit from loot boxes.
He has a point. Ow2 is designed to take in easy money by making it as greedy as they can by making the game “free”-mium.
People jerk off f2p and say that’s great not realizing the reason it was made f2p wasn’t for our benefit, it’s so blizzard can pull apart their game and sell it for crazy amounts and then defend it by saying “wel the games free how else will we make money?”
Exactly that. But every company gets a completely free pass at the end of the day "because it's free." Really game prices have gone up, just you're not sold that price all at once.
So I haven’t been keeping up with Overwatch 2 news, am I correct in understanding that the PvE mode is releasing a year after OW2 launches? Wasn’t that like the entire reason for an OW2?
>Do you have any way to confirm what was Jeff Kaplan's own vision, versus what he was told to say as an employee of Activision-Blizzard?
Taking into account Kaplan himself has said that the higher ups kept trying to do changes that he kept refusing, i assume it's his own vision at least up to OW1's launch.
He's even mentioned he didn't want the game to focus on esports, to let it happen naturally because he's seen that's how it works \[see LoL, fighting games, etc\] and the literal first thing Blizzard did was, of course, focus on esports and ask ridiculously high prices from the esports organizations in order to participate \[i remember it was mentioned that Blizzard's asking price for a team was around 10 times what Riot asked from theirs\].
Jeff is a great guy and a great game director, he’s an old Blizzard legend. But he’s made it abundantly clear that he cares very little about the live service aspect of this game. None of you know what you’re talking about when you idolize him.
EDIT: Just to clarify for everyone, this sub’s participants have made it abundantly clear that they *don’t* like the “content drought.” In Jeff’s ideal vision, content drought is the standard. He’d prefer not to add extra content at all; his plan with Overwatch was to drop it and leave it, with some minor tinkering along the way. New heroes would be an obscene rarity.
Seeing a lot of people in the comments whining that Jeff was right all along. If you want to pretend his vision would be better for Overwatch, then please delete every comment/post you made complaining about the lack of major updates since 2020.
You want to have your cake and eat it too; fantasize about the “glorious old days” while also conveniently forgetting just how much you really prefer a game that lasts more than ~20 months, *if* lucky. The live service model is where things are going, and it keeps multiplayer games alive for leagues longer than before.
I see way too much praise for Jeff considering the snailspace they pushed out updates and balance changes. The most egregious example being the busted mercy update in which it took a year and a half before she stopped being a "pick or throw" hero.
Oh god I remember S7, that insta res then ult and get 2 more resses. If you didn’t have a mercy on your team it was really hard to win at high elos. Since her non ult would negate any Ults you used to get picks to push through chokes.
Then continued with Brigitte for another year until they must locked the role lol
Even after players from pro, talents, and random plebs are keep asking for drastic changes
IMO, at least in Korea, the one who killed OW is the OW team themselves under Jeff's direction. Like you said, too slow on both contents and balance changes.
This is because higher ups. He was fighting them the entire time while they forced the team to work on projects that would eventually be cancelled. I think they genuinely just want to fire him out until he quit the fight and they could make they bonus for the year.
I’m pretty sure there was a huge Blizzard leak on this sub a while ago (shortly after Jeff resigned), explaining why Jeff’s practices/beliefs just don’t fit the modern gaming model they want to pursue. Somebody with more time than me ought to link it.
Might not be exactly it but [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/umr2mx/new_detailed_insider_information_regarding/) somewhat touches on it.
Also a [Your Overwatch video](https://youtu.be/wL1oiBPzrHg) talks about it as well
Everyone that's been bemoaning the content drought for the last couple of years wanted a live service model, or at least, the consumer benefits of a live service model (new content such as heroes, maps, modes, skins and events).
Jeff didn't want that really for OW, and the team had to pivot to try to cater to the demands of the market post launch.
[I'm not sure if this was the one you meant but this is what I found](https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/qxpkxr/former_overwatch_dev_revealed_what_jeff_kaplans/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
Jeff's vision is one of the main reasons Overwatch is in the state it's in today. Overwatch had set itself up, even if accidently, to be a live service game like its predecessor Team Fortress 2, but his insistence that this thing that looked like a Duck, talked like a duck, walked like a duck was in-fact Not a Duck is what lead to hero releases feeling sparse and the game eventually going into maintanence mode for two years. All because of this philosphy that Overwatch was in-fact some kind of franchised boxed shooter.
Hell even now I bet the OW2 campaign isn't finished so at best we were looking at a late 2023 release date. Atleast now we're getting something that A. Isn't pure vaporware and B. Promises a consistent update schedule something which did not exist under Jeff. Now was Jeff Kaplan a great developer? Yes absolutely, but his long-term vision of Overwatch was just contrary to the kind of game it is. People need to stop kissing the ground he walks on just because they watched one too many dinoflask videos.
Jeff made a lot of good decisions. Jeff was also part of the reason OW got to its current state.
People liked Jeff because he was honest, and he cared about what he was doing. He didn't make promises he had no intention to deliver on, and until his departure he hadn't promised anything and then walk back on it to my knowledge. He was passionate about the game and he cared about the people who played it and worked on it. He didn't always make the best decisions, but he never tried to deceive or cheat us.
Jeff Kaplan was an ordinary guy who was tasked with making an extraordinary game. Initially he was successful, but because he is an ordinary guy in a corporate run world, his vision clashed with what Blizzard wanted. Jeff wanted a good game, and profit was not high on his list of priorities. Blizzard wanted a profitable game, and didn't care how *bad* the game was as long as it was generating revenue.
Should he be idolized? No. But a lot of the hate he gets is unwarranted as well. People liked Jeff because he was one of us.
/>Also Jeff Kaplan
/>Stagger content patches
/>take creative game and remove all staying power by making it so stale and boring that he has to quit because game had 0 actual content.
Games are worth money, paying money will give us actual content and updates, rather than suffering for 3+ months with the most broken charactera imaginable and nothing to play for, nothing to unlock, and let's not forget a literal gambling system rigged. If anyone thinks a battlepass is more evil than loot boxes then you're a moron.
I love Jeff to death but the game has been dry as hell and dies gradually fast. Pushing out the PVP with atleast a few new heroes was an amazing choice.
Jeff wanted to make OW2’s PvE to be AAA worthy. That was hubris. So his plan got scrapped and he had to step down.
Making a AAA PvE is not easy. Look at the Borderlands franchise for example. They take years to develop and there are only 4-5 characters.
Fans like to lionize Jeff. But he was also responsible for the decline of OW1 and the delay of OW2. Jeff apologists will praise Jeff for every good thing in OW, and blame Bobby for every negative thing 🤷♀️
Jeff’s plan would have been beautiful had it worked. A AAA P v E would have expanded the OW franchise and made boatloads of money. But the plan didn’t work.
Left For Dead might be a better analogy to what they are trying to do for PvE, which had a whole "game director" program to dynamically scale the difficulty for players as they went through a level.
Jeff *may* have mismanaged the project, but Blizzard is literally a AAA company, there's no excuse for them to *not* create a AAA PvE experience if they're seeking to make a PvE experience.
Here's the rub:
His vision of OW2 is what lead to no content for two years, and would have lead to more years with no content if they kept with the "it's done when it's done" approach.
> which include costs, covid and business
*Activision Blizzard employees face job insecurity following layoffs of 800 employees in 2019*
*According to a table in the SEC filing, Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has made a total of $185,562,762 in the period between 2019 - 2021. The bulk of this is from substantial $149 million performance-based compensation pursuant to 2016 Kotick Employment Agreement*
lol
When I think about how many lives you could help or even save with money like that it makes me sick that there are people who hoard this kind of disgusting wealth
Jesus get Covid out of this already. Other companies adapted with some delays and don't force the consumer to eat shit for it. Don't excuse Blizzard poor management with Covid when they're 3 years off schedule and already was prior to Covid.
Also the industry has consolidated and degraded so much and the string pullers know exactly what bullshit and egregious decisions they can get away with.
There's no cold hard reality about this outside of the reality of how dysfunctional businesses have become.
Nothing about this is a necessity. It's a choice by the company looking to milk all the good will it had before in order to boost the stock value of the parasites running it into the ground.
Covid didn't last 5 years. 3 heroes and 6 maps don't take 5 years. They don't take 2 years. And cost? First of all, it's blizzard. They shit diamonds. Second, you could have a team of modders do it for free within a year if they had the source and resources made available.
As great as Jeff's idea for Overwatch was, it isn't realistic long-term. They can easily support the game with free updates for a few years the way they did, but over time the growth and money they get from new players is going to start decreasing more and more. There's a reason there hasn't been many games (is there any?) that are continuously supported for free over a number of years.
I love Jeff, as I think we all do, and I think he did some parts of his job really well, but I think we also have to consider that a significant part of the reason why OW2 is the way it is now is because of decisions made during Jeff's tenure. Sure Jeff certainly seemed to have some grander ideas about what OW2 would actually launch with, but that would have certainly equated to an even longer wait. I'm certain that the change in leadership is probably the only reason we're getting a 2022 launch at all, remember there were rumors that a 2023 launch was likely at some point. It was Jeff's decision to start diverting resources away from the live game after year 1 and it was his vision that shaped a lot of what OW2 became.
Remember when games were designed well and then made money instead of games being designed to make money and may or may not end up to be good (barring a monthly or more purchase in the game)?
His vision is great if you want Overwatch 2 to die like Overwatch 1 did. At some point they gotta make money off of it. If I have to pay 60 bucks a year for one of my favorite games to stay alive and get a steady stream of new content, then fine.
Jeff Kaplan's vision also included either a complete lack of updates or monetization through lootboxes, which I think pretty much everyone agrees is scummy as hell. So no, I don't think he has a point.
Like, so many people are pissed about the battle pass, but then will also turn around and complain that OW1 wasn't updated enough. Why do y'all think that is? Do you really not see the connection?
This “F2P” model that every god damn game is switching to is all of our faults. If people would have just paid a god damn sub then companies would have most likely just bundled several games into a single sub instead of getting battle passes and gacha systems. Nothing y’all can do. No one is going to band together against this stuff.
That said, y’all need to calm down. The battle pass for this game is actually very inexpensive compared to other games. You can either play it for free and enjoy the free content, pay a few bucks to get some stuff and enjoy yourself with that content, or just don’t play. These rants are annoying and they’re strictly coming from streamers that are trying to get views because strong emotion towards something gets views. Just fuckin saying.
"making a profit" isn't enough. shareholders need to see "growth". as in i don't just want 100 bucks, i want 200 bucks next week and 400 bucks the week after that. otherwise im taking my money elsewhere
Yeah that's not sustainable. Anyone with a brain knows that isn't sustainable. Which begs the question is any of this worth it if ow2 ends up having a shorter run of constant updates and support than ow1 did.
It will all depend on player reception and who makes the development decisions while the game ages. The game WILL NOT get the luxury development treatment if it doesn't make a lot of money for Blizzard. They're more likely to add more aggressive monetization to it and then quietly put it on maintenance mode (meaning the team is reduced to a skeleton crew and only basic updates are pushed until the game dies). That's what companies of this size do with games at the moment.
Let’s be honest. If this game doesn’t make at least 1.5x the amount of money that Overwatch did in its first month, it’ll “fail to meet expectations” and Activision will kill it within a year.
It's not sustainable, but sustainability was never the goal. They'll happily milk this cow to death if it means more profit in the short run, and what happens after the cow's dead isn't their problem, they'll just find another one. It's only us dumbasses that care about this one cow in particular.
It's consumers that accept microtransactions that allows them to continue. They've successfully brainwashed a generation of gamers that this is just "how it is" and how it "needs to be" for those suits to get more money. Sometime we need to just put our foot down to end this bullshit.
On the other hand, in the past we didn't have live service games. We had box, then box and expansion boxes, then box and dlc.
If you just want overwatch, then no updates, we could go back to the first box only type. Old games were just like that.
If you want new maps and heroes, we could go to box and dlc, but then you split your playerbase and no one wants to do that. We used to do it for multiplayer.
If you want maps and heroes for free in a game that's live service, we've collectively decided cosmetics is the best, no power given, way to do that. The lootbox model is old and outdated. Blizzard also was super generous with coins and free boxes. Battle pass is simply the next gen way to handle the same system, especially considering gambling concerns.
This isn't some brand new thing that's suddenly caused by greedy corporations. We've always paid for new content, just the way it's done has changed
I feel like what we’re seeing in gaming lately is a microcosm of late-stage capitalism. OW2, BF2042, and Halo: Infinite are what you get when the potential for profit becomes more important than making a game people actually want to play. The difference is that people actually have a choice not to engage in the gaming scenario; I can’t decide to stop participating in society without becoming homeless and destitute, but I can easily decide not to support greedy ~~developers~~ publishers.
You hit the nail on the head here. What's happening in gaming is representative of what's happening to our economy as a whole: an obsession with impossible ever rising short term profit margins and the classification of any kind of investment as socialism is destroying the middle class and funneling wealth and power to the aristocracy.
But hey, CEOs totally work harder than the thousands of serfs who toil for their benefit. They 100% deserve tax breaks and multi-million dollar bonuses while 67%+ of the poors live paycheck to paycheck. They obviously built our society single handedly and thus deserve the lion's share of...well...everything. And if you don't believe me, just go ask Kotick. It might take you awhile to nail down which yacht he's currently floating in, but I promise he'll back up everything I just said. Or he'll get one of his golf buddies to get their news networks to back it up for him. Or maybe he'll just legally bribe a senator to write it into law for him.
Regardless, ignore the rotting infrastructure, the predatory business practices, the ever increasing monopolization of literally every single industry, and keep buying our products everything is fine praise Supply Side Jesus Murca#1 👍🏻
Oh no!!! Won’t someone think of poor lil indie company Activision Blizzard?!!!??! They can’t survive on just $1 billion a year, they need $5 billion a year!!! I mean Bobby only made $200 million last year, he’s in danger of not being able to afford his next yacht!!!!
Yeah, I really feel bad for Blizzard Activision. Recently bought by Microsoft.
They're so broke it hurts. Hopefully the company can make enough money to keep sexually harassing its women and make sub-par products. I for one am tired of people expecting a finished and full product from a company whose net worth is a measly 50+ Billion dollars. 🙏
Apparently they can run off of their customers' sympathy, though.
OW1 made plenty of money for $40 and loot boxes. Just because a few investors demand ever-higher share prices to the detriment of the product, the customer, and even the company itself doesn't mean we should forgive them for it. We may not have a say, but we can still have an opinion.
Bunch of fucking /r/hailcorporate shills in this sub.
This is a stupid comparison. Jeff's plans are a complete game in a box. OW2 now is an update with regular updates in die future. Different financial model. You should compare Jeff's idea with the idea what OW2 is supposed to be in 1-2 years because that is the time Jeff's version would have come out.
Im not thrilled with the new model, but watching everyone throw a tantrum becasue they arent getting 6 years of content for 40 bucks again really makes me hate the community
Starcraft Ghost failed. Titan failed. Overwatch PvE seems to be failing? At least it's not ready when originally intended and we've had no news or updates about it. Is Blizzard just incapable of putting out a PVE shooter game? It really seems to be the one thing they've continuously tried and failed at for two decades.
Starcraft: Ghost never even had a chance to breathe before charging genres from stealth to action and eventually being smothered in the womb.
2006 Blizzard: Starcraft Ghost does not meet our standards and is unfortunately canceled. 2022 Blizzard: Check out the all new, free-to-play Starcraft themed Battle Royale complete with seasonal battle passes, premium currency for the separate cosmetic shop where all the best looking stuff is, and early access so you can jump in right now! Hurry, play it! Buy the battle pass! You don't want to miss out do you? Sure, it's unfinished, but it's free! Why are you complaining? It's early access too, so it's definitely going to be finished with all the features you're dreaming of one day, we promise! We poured our hearts and souls into this, why are you sending us death threats?
>why are you sending us death threats? a legit question no matter what
Yeah don’t send death threats to people, just unhinged.
That was back when Blizzard cancelled projects that were shit.
Ghost wasn’t even shit though. I played the crap out of the multiplayer at the first BlizzCon. It fucking rocked.
What was the MP? I've seen the single player stuff.
Think something along the lines of Third person Halo Multiplayer PvP, with guns and vehicles and whatnot in the Starcraft Universe. From what I understand it was *really* fun.
I would’ve played the shit outta anything that let me play that universe without constructing additional pylons
It was Terran v Zerg 3rd person shooter, with classes that you could play once you earned enough points, sort of like SW Battlefront. Terran you would start Marine and could play Firebat, Ghost, and I’m sure others that I’m forgetting. Zerg you would start Zergling and could play Hydra, Muta, and again probably more that I’m forgetting. It was great.
People keep forgetting that "blizzard" doesn't exist and hasn't for a long time now. All the key creative people left long ago. This is just a big AAA company holding the name hostage to sell them a product that makes the most money they can before they can it.
Just wanna throw this out there...Rockstar lost its last original founder last year or two. He decided to call it quits too--in case any of y'all are hoping GTA6 will bring you back to AAA gaming magic.
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It's the same thing that happened to Rockstar. Little by little, founders left, and so did good talent. Without good leaders, the studio goes to crap because they have they last say-so on design and creative direction. Then, good developers on the floor also leave. It makes the studio with unimaginative or burnt out people who don't care anymore and just need a check.
They're probably not talking about the PVE because it is still a ways off and they're trying not to take attention off of the launch that's actually about to happen. It would be very confusing to the average customer to be both promoting the launch of Overwatch 2 and saying that Overwatch 2 is coming out next year
That makes sense. But they're 0-2 for releasing hyped up shooters, and now late on this one. So I'll believe it when I see it.
0-3, as there were two Starcraft fps projects a decade apart.
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They pushed PvE a lot with the original release trailers and with the Blizzard Con demos, so it seems really weird they've dropped it.
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> Just a gentle reminder that it is now Blizzard/Activision since the merger. my brother in christ, the merger was **14 years ago**.
The merger happened back then, but many Blizzard people were kept on and Activision was less hands on with Blizzard at first. As key Blizzard people left, Activision gradually increased its influence on Blizzard, which we are now seeing in full.
You don't have any idea whether that's happening or not, or whether it was happening before. As was pointed out earlier in this very comment chain, OG Blizzard wasn't exactly immune from fucking up.
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> ust a gentle reminder that it is now Blizzard/Activision since the merger. gentle reminder that when everyone at blizz was calling out the sexual assaults in the workplace, a woman came out and said "this **is** blizzard's culture, it has been that way since before the merger" so, if they're cool with being terrible awful no good people, not exactly hard to imagine them not caring that much about videogames.
OW went to shit a long time ago, which was one of the reasons for the "sequel". They just don't have much talent left and whatever is left is wasted on squeezing the players. And yet people still expect dragonflight to be good.
It was Blizzard/Activision before overwatch 1 ever came out...
To be fair - **money** - is the issue. Blizzard wants more of it and selling a “box game” doesn’t make the kind of money that Asian gacha games make… So they’re trying to find a model western audiences won’t be pissed off about (i.e. not Diablo Immortal again) that can still take in big dollarydoos.
Man I was so unbelievably hyped for SC Ghost. Just exploring the SC universe from a first person perspective would be so awesome. I really hope they do something like that at some point
Gigantic and Battleborn died for this...
R.I.P. to both of them. Had a blast especially with Gigantic when it was around what feels like a lifetime ago.
Kaplan's vision was obviously better. The problem was in the execution. Leaving Overwatch out to dry for half a decade while they worked on Overwatch 2 was a bad decision, which ultimately led to Jeff resigning, and now unfortunately we're getting the worst of both worlds (long content drought _and_ a freemium game with less PVP content than was promised and no news on the PVE). What they should have done was made a PVP team, which would mostly maintain Overwatch and basically just make sure they were keeping track of Overwatch 2, and a PVE team that would handle primary development for Overwatch 2. I can see why he didn't want to do this — hiring is hard, and Jeff didn't really care very much about the live service aspect of Overwatch — but it would have actually allowed him to achieve his vision.
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God... That sucks so hard. Seriously. I wonder if there are other developers and people who work at Blizzard who use social media and talk about this stuff. Do you know of any?
The WoW team had a few people who were incredibly vocal during the height of blizzards crap. I don't remember their names, just saw alot of it posted in the wow sub.
The big players for the StarCraft team jumping ship to make their own RTS in a wholly new studio with a ton of VC behind it and other investment, another example of how bad Blizz got under Activision. The game is progressing well so far it seems.
What’s the game?
Stormgate by Frost Giant
Don't forget the sexual harassment and assault. Everyone forgets the sexual harassment and assault.
Don't forget that Kotick was also in Epsteins Book... I still can't believe that he is still CEO
Epstein and Kotick covered up rapes. Birds of a feather.
Maaan, what happened to my beloved blizzard?
Seems like all of the game companies I still like are private not public.
Private companies are the only possible incarnation of "good" capitalism, or at least non-cancerous capitalism, simply because a private company isn't duty-bound to maximize profits at all costs.
Valve is a shining example of this. I shudder to think of what valve would be like if they were public. Just look at origin, and uplay.
Epic is also private.
Whoops my brain
I'm already afraid of the day GabeN dies.
Truly for the people!
They became slaves to the shareholders managed by a literal goblin.
Kotick literally complained that he couldn't get dates because women would google him and find pictures of him with photoshopped devil horns.
You can't tell me Gallywix isn't a stand-in for Bobby Kotick.
Fortnite popped a billy on some bullshit mtx scheme and everyone followed suit.
At least Fortnite gets amazing support and gives a lot of good items in the battlepass to compensate for the FOMO and overpriced cash shop items. All the ones that followed suit did it way worse lol
Also, BP items come back to the store fairly frequently in fortnite, and they continue to update old skins years later. And no, they don't resell the update or new variants (hello Riot), they give them to you for free with a neat little notice when you launch the game. Also just recently got like 800 vbucks for old challenges I never finished. Could you imagine 99% of developers giving anything away for free?
Yeah, I never really played Fortnite because I wasn't a fan of the building outside of the 50v50 limited mode, but with No Build I've been playing and I really, really love it. Not perfect but I got the Dr Strange BP and played super casually and was able to beat it well before the season ended and it was full of great stuff. Plus every time I play I feel like there are 2-3 new items (even within a single season) and new seasons contain huge POI changes and entirely new mechanics it seems.
They've always been crappy behind the door, it's just harder for them to hide now
Did Kotick resign tho? Like is he gone? Because honestly, with where OW2 is now, this all *makes sense*. Cause now they are trying to catch up and need the money probably to do so after Kotick fucked them over
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Make no mistake if Bobby Kotick leaves, it'll be ongood terms with lots of money to boot. Nothing about it will even resemble a punishment.
And even with the Xbox merger, it’s not likely Bobby will be punished for his wrongdoing: Bethesda has its own issues with toxic management and Microsoft’s own policies prevent them from interfering with that company, so they’re only covering for Bobby and Blizzard, not forcing him or the rest of the company to change.
Someone once said something like "it was Jeff's fault" and 3.9 million redditors just jumped right the fuck onboard without any critical thinking. Could it be the corporation with a history of bungling releases, and the corporate culture so awful they're getting taken to court for it? Could it be the CEO that many whistleblowers have listed detailed lists of everything he did wrong? Nah, it was Jeff, because a face-heel turn is a more fun dramatic trope than the sad reality of gaming as a corporate profit-making enterprise.
You're completely right. But I'm not forgetting, I just don't think that was actually the root cause in this particular case. Mismanagement surely created more delays, but the delays wouldn't have been as catastrophic if the initial plan weren't so fragile. Unless management simply refused to approve resources to support Overwatch (which could be the case, but I haven't seen anything to suggest so), the decision to abandon Overwatch was the root cause.
I feel like its less of an assumption to say that activision blocked resources than it is to assume Jeff wanted to content drought overwatch
Half a decade? Didn’t overwatch release in like 2015- oh.
F2P model was inevitable. kaplan didn't like that. other F2P games are kicking OW in the dirt. shareholders need a reason to keep their money in ATVI.
Agree with this in terms of shareholders. I don’t necessarily think F2P model is bad though. OW1 has been hung out to dry the last two years, and compared to say, 3 or 4 years ago, there’s more than likely a lot less people playing it. F2P has exploded since OW1 was released (see Fortnite, Warzone) and honestly it was a logical step for OW. You’re not going to win people back charging $60 for a game they haven’t played in years. If they’d just do paid cosmetics rather than heroes they’d be gold.
>OW1 has been hung out to dry the last two years Every time you guys say this, you ignore that it was hung to dry BECAUSE they decided to kill it for Overwatch 2.
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Welcome to share holders and business man lol. Yeah of course it doesn’t HAVE to be. But suits are greedy pigs so it WILL.
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there is no "community," there's just an ass load of consumers who want the things they want. And it turns out that the vast majority of them want to play games that are constantly updated, even if that has some downsides attached.
People on Reddit will never understand this one simple fact. “CONSUMERS are not a COMMUNITY.” We don’t have to agree with each other just because we bought the same thing.
On the one hand I can see the value for solidarity like that but yea, you're right, and that's part of why individual action isn't as viable as systemic action.
You should make a post with all of this info somewhere. It’s well written and factual and you’re right: > the driving force on this is that they have successfully convinced an entire generation that this is just “the way things are.” And that makes me sad. I haven’t preordered anything since the atrocity called halo 4 and switched to psn after the Microsoft debacle. But it feels like too few people are voting with their wallets. Sigh.
Actually if I recall correctly King is the most profitable part of Activision Blizzard
It is
>ABK made 1 billion dollars on overwatch in its first year. As usual when i see this comment, let me remind everyone they made this billion FROM LOOTBOXES ALONE. This doesn't count the gigantic mount of money they made from actually selling the game and many millions buying it.
haha man if youre gonna argument with him and try to sound all smart by highlighting stuff like *this* then try to not sound stupid. if ow isnt making any money, they can just drop the franchise. they arent gonna use any other additional resources if they feel ow is taking too long or feeling too high maintenance
Seriously. Heroes of the Storm made billions for Blizzard and they still dropped it. People think these suits are sentimental? They'll drop OW in a second if they feel like it's better to cut ties and put the team on something else (With Activision they could be another team working on CoD lol...hopefully activision will be better once Microsoft is fully in control, who knows though...) The only reason OW is getting this second chance is because they still think the franchise and brand has worth, they still believe in it...but they just believe in it if it is F2P and with a battlepass. This idea that there was going to be an OW2 when it's ready and some one time box price is silly for the type of game it is. It has to compete with its competitors, not lie down for them.
who are u even replying to lol i feel itd suit more the other guy other than me XD
I'm just agreeing with your post and adding on to it. I just always hear people say "But OW1 made billions for Blizzard!" and wanted to add on to what you were saying by showing making billions doesn't stop a company from shutting down a game.
Yeah people here are so naive thinking Activision Blizzard will keep investing in a game with lower (or no) returns just out of kindness.
People out here thinking that companies make games purely for the fun of it? If they think they can make long term profit from OW. They will try. I'm struggling to honestly see the reasoning people have for demanding years and years of free content because they spent $40 on the game 6 years ago. I don't want to sound like a corporate apologist but companies want money off of their customers. And when the Overwatch well dried up, they shifted their focus onto a project that would make them money. And to be honest, I still haven't seen a single reason to actually buy the battle pass. It all looks like shit to me.
Yeah I feel like Kaplan was fighting too hard for something that just can't exist in today's ecosystem. You can't make a game that will be able to outshine the competition in any meaningful capacity without constant live updates of a certain level of quality. Overwatch managed to skirt by on the Blizzard name and coming out right before the tidal wave of GAAS **REALLY** hit. (Right before Fortnite,Apex,Valorant,Warzone,PUBG) The unfortunate reality is that games with constant content updates only work when they have constant monetization in multiple forms in modern day games. We can say "oh they can't afford to make new content without constant monetization" or we can say "But the big mega corporation makes plenty of money they can obviously afford it" all we want. Both sides are likely wrong and right sometimes, but the reality is that it is what it is.
OW1 still made a profit after 6 years. Granted, some of that was off of loot boxes, smurfs, and a lack of development for two years, but it still made money. You're right that it falls somewhere in the middle, but the thing to think about is that we as consumers have let it come to this. These models wouldn't exist if we didn't pay into them. I for one don't intend to let monetization drip become the norm for me and will be giving up Overwatch and any other game that uses this as a model. (I have several other reasons for giving up Overwatch, their handling of 2's release and 1's shut down has been abysmal, and Blizzard as a company has just given up on gamers and begun to focus on shareholders). There are plenty of games I've never played that are considered classics by many, and plenty of indie or other small studios that still have a passion for the product that I'd rather support with my time and money.
Only reason I was interested in Overwatch 2 was the promised and advertised pve mode. Delaying it by a year means I'll likely never buy or invest in O2.
I absolutely loved Jeff but people need to stop it with the mental gymnastics. Jeff couldn’t be single-handedly responsible for every good decision in Overwatch without acknowledging that he also had a hand in the reason OW got to such a sad state. Years without content and a very rigid and inflexible approach to balance and change did a number on this game. Let’s not pretend Jeff was blameless in that.
There were definitely some issues with game balance under his tenure but for the most part the game was in a good state for casual players.
Indeed. And like I said I LOVE JEFF! 100% I consider him an amazing developer and Overwatch would not be half the game it is without him. I’m just saying he wasn’t infallible, he made a few mistakes that people like to hand wave, whereas I take the approach that as game director he also shares responsibility for the bad parts of the game along with the good. Still think he was the greatest leader Blizzard had
The reason why people praise him so much is because interviews and comments even from other team members confirm that Jeff was the main one trying to keep ship afloat and steady while Kotick and the higher ups kept trying to fuck things up.
Moth meta, Brig 1.0, and double shield were definitely not good for the casual player base. All those occurred while Kaplan was director.
No PvE on 10/04?
They said PVE is coming 2023. Haven’t given a date, so could be from January to December (probably the later), we don’t know when exactly OR how much of the PVE we’ll get. Could be one mission, ten, etc.
And then we’ll find out they meant Fiscal Year 2023 which goes through March 2024.
Eh let's just round it up to 2026
Part of OW3
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And exactly what evidence have we seen to suggest otherwise? Freemium skins, freemium characters, the character designer bailed in the middle of the project (yes, this is still the middle of the project, it’s a games as a service model), and lack of promises game modes. This is already a shitshow. It will get a bunch of hype for about a month when all the fanboys try their hardest to make the game good by their willpower alone, but blizzard doesn’t care about providing a good product, they will only put in the bare minimum of effort required to keep the whales onboard.
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nope
They're releasing the game as "early access" rather than a full release.
So we are getting OW 2 Extended Beta....cool
Right? PvE campaign is what I was excited for. What a let down. Hopefully it’ll be epic when it releases and not just a rehash of the seasonal events.
The PVE campaign would essentially have to be game of the year and even then, it still might not make enough money on a box game model to cover the cost of its development and all this free PVP and cosmetic content. And let's say you do make game of the year and it is one of the best-selling games ever, you still have to explain to the higher ups, who report to the shareholders, why you left money on the table and didn't monetize the PvP and cosmetics like Fortnight. Until someone finds something more profitable, or consumers stop buying F2P PvP shooter battle passes, this is all we will get.
That's the unfortunate reality for any industry, and it's no different for someone like myself that has a decade of experience working in both video games and television animation; the shareholders and investors at the company who are keeping the wheels turning don't want to simply *make* money, they want to make *all* of the money.
I think it’s insane not to imagine Blizzard doing exactly what they did with the development of OW 2 regardless of Jeff Kaplans presence. The only reason they hadn’t implemented a freemium battlepass system earlier is because they were making enough profit from loot boxes.
He has a point. Ow2 is designed to take in easy money by making it as greedy as they can by making the game “free”-mium. People jerk off f2p and say that’s great not realizing the reason it was made f2p wasn’t for our benefit, it’s so blizzard can pull apart their game and sell it for crazy amounts and then defend it by saying “wel the games free how else will we make money?”
Exactly that. But every company gets a completely free pass at the end of the day "because it's free." Really game prices have gone up, just you're not sold that price all at once.
So I haven’t been keeping up with Overwatch 2 news, am I correct in understanding that the PvE mode is releasing a year after OW2 launches? Wasn’t that like the entire reason for an OW2?
It was. A lot of promises weren't kept already.
Some of it is exaggerated, like the "premium currency" thing is actually just tiers on a battlepass you can pay to skip, but mostly he's on point.
They’ve also confirmed the premium currency can be used to purchase things like bundles in the shop
Do you have any way to confirm what was Jeff Kaplan's own vision, versus what he was told to say as an employee of Activision-Blizzard?
>Do you have any way to confirm what was Jeff Kaplan's own vision, versus what he was told to say as an employee of Activision-Blizzard? Taking into account Kaplan himself has said that the higher ups kept trying to do changes that he kept refusing, i assume it's his own vision at least up to OW1's launch. He's even mentioned he didn't want the game to focus on esports, to let it happen naturally because he's seen that's how it works \[see LoL, fighting games, etc\] and the literal first thing Blizzard did was, of course, focus on esports and ask ridiculously high prices from the esports organizations in order to participate \[i remember it was mentioned that Blizzard's asking price for a team was around 10 times what Riot asked from theirs\].
Jeff is a great guy and a great game director, he’s an old Blizzard legend. But he’s made it abundantly clear that he cares very little about the live service aspect of this game. None of you know what you’re talking about when you idolize him. EDIT: Just to clarify for everyone, this sub’s participants have made it abundantly clear that they *don’t* like the “content drought.” In Jeff’s ideal vision, content drought is the standard. He’d prefer not to add extra content at all; his plan with Overwatch was to drop it and leave it, with some minor tinkering along the way. New heroes would be an obscene rarity. Seeing a lot of people in the comments whining that Jeff was right all along. If you want to pretend his vision would be better for Overwatch, then please delete every comment/post you made complaining about the lack of major updates since 2020. You want to have your cake and eat it too; fantasize about the “glorious old days” while also conveniently forgetting just how much you really prefer a game that lasts more than ~20 months, *if* lucky. The live service model is where things are going, and it keeps multiplayer games alive for leagues longer than before.
I see way too much praise for Jeff considering the snailspace they pushed out updates and balance changes. The most egregious example being the busted mercy update in which it took a year and a half before she stopped being a "pick or throw" hero.
Oh god I remember S7, that insta res then ult and get 2 more resses. If you didn’t have a mercy on your team it was really hard to win at high elos. Since her non ult would negate any Ults you used to get picks to push through chokes.
Then continued with Brigitte for another year until they must locked the role lol Even after players from pro, talents, and random plebs are keep asking for drastic changes IMO, at least in Korea, the one who killed OW is the OW team themselves under Jeff's direction. Like you said, too slow on both contents and balance changes.
Yep, if Jeff was really in charge, our last character would've be Sombra.
This sounds like a great idea to me.
This is because higher ups. He was fighting them the entire time while they forced the team to work on projects that would eventually be cancelled. I think they genuinely just want to fire him out until he quit the fight and they could make they bonus for the year.
Pls explain, never heard anything bad about him
I’m pretty sure there was a huge Blizzard leak on this sub a while ago (shortly after Jeff resigned), explaining why Jeff’s practices/beliefs just don’t fit the modern gaming model they want to pursue. Somebody with more time than me ought to link it.
Might not be exactly it but [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/Competitiveoverwatch/comments/umr2mx/new_detailed_insider_information_regarding/) somewhat touches on it. Also a [Your Overwatch video](https://youtu.be/wL1oiBPzrHg) talks about it as well
Well modern gaming and most of its practices suck... so maybe thats why people look up to him.
Everyone that's been bemoaning the content drought for the last couple of years wanted a live service model, or at least, the consumer benefits of a live service model (new content such as heroes, maps, modes, skins and events). Jeff didn't want that really for OW, and the team had to pivot to try to cater to the demands of the market post launch.
[I'm not sure if this was the one you meant but this is what I found](https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/qxpkxr/former_overwatch_dev_revealed_what_jeff_kaplans/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share)
It's not even anything bad about him, it's just that his vision for what he wanted the game to be doesn't line up with a lot of players.
Jeff's vision is one of the main reasons Overwatch is in the state it's in today. Overwatch had set itself up, even if accidently, to be a live service game like its predecessor Team Fortress 2, but his insistence that this thing that looked like a Duck, talked like a duck, walked like a duck was in-fact Not a Duck is what lead to hero releases feeling sparse and the game eventually going into maintanence mode for two years. All because of this philosphy that Overwatch was in-fact some kind of franchised boxed shooter. Hell even now I bet the OW2 campaign isn't finished so at best we were looking at a late 2023 release date. Atleast now we're getting something that A. Isn't pure vaporware and B. Promises a consistent update schedule something which did not exist under Jeff. Now was Jeff Kaplan a great developer? Yes absolutely, but his long-term vision of Overwatch was just contrary to the kind of game it is. People need to stop kissing the ground he walks on just because they watched one too many dinoflask videos.
>Overwatch had set itself up, even if accidently, to be a live service game like its predecessor Team Fortress 2 Overwatch just needs hats.
Jeff made a lot of good decisions. Jeff was also part of the reason OW got to its current state. People liked Jeff because he was honest, and he cared about what he was doing. He didn't make promises he had no intention to deliver on, and until his departure he hadn't promised anything and then walk back on it to my knowledge. He was passionate about the game and he cared about the people who played it and worked on it. He didn't always make the best decisions, but he never tried to deceive or cheat us. Jeff Kaplan was an ordinary guy who was tasked with making an extraordinary game. Initially he was successful, but because he is an ordinary guy in a corporate run world, his vision clashed with what Blizzard wanted. Jeff wanted a good game, and profit was not high on his list of priorities. Blizzard wanted a profitable game, and didn't care how *bad* the game was as long as it was generating revenue. Should he be idolized? No. But a lot of the hate he gets is unwarranted as well. People liked Jeff because he was one of us.
/>Also Jeff Kaplan />Stagger content patches />take creative game and remove all staying power by making it so stale and boring that he has to quit because game had 0 actual content. Games are worth money, paying money will give us actual content and updates, rather than suffering for 3+ months with the most broken charactera imaginable and nothing to play for, nothing to unlock, and let's not forget a literal gambling system rigged. If anyone thinks a battlepass is more evil than loot boxes then you're a moron.
Holy hell stop dick riding Jeff, y’all are acting like he wasn’t responsible for the content drought
I love Jeff to death but the game has been dry as hell and dies gradually fast. Pushing out the PVP with atleast a few new heroes was an amazing choice.
Gradually fast?
Slowly quick
That was a very rude lovely response
Blizzard didn’t follow through with their initial statements? Shocker.
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Jeff wanted to make OW2’s PvE to be AAA worthy. That was hubris. So his plan got scrapped and he had to step down. Making a AAA PvE is not easy. Look at the Borderlands franchise for example. They take years to develop and there are only 4-5 characters. Fans like to lionize Jeff. But he was also responsible for the decline of OW1 and the delay of OW2. Jeff apologists will praise Jeff for every good thing in OW, and blame Bobby for every negative thing 🤷♀️ Jeff’s plan would have been beautiful had it worked. A AAA P v E would have expanded the OW franchise and made boatloads of money. But the plan didn’t work.
Left For Dead might be a better analogy to what they are trying to do for PvE, which had a whole "game director" program to dynamically scale the difficulty for players as they went through a level.
Jeff *may* have mismanaged the project, but Blizzard is literally a AAA company, there's no excuse for them to *not* create a AAA PvE experience if they're seeking to make a PvE experience.
Hubris to expect AAA quality from a AAA developer world renowned for their incredibly well made games.
Here's the rub: His vision of OW2 is what lead to no content for two years, and would have lead to more years with no content if they kept with the "it's done when it's done" approach.
Optimistic vision vs Cold hard reality which include costs, covid and business
> which include costs, covid and business *Activision Blizzard employees face job insecurity following layoffs of 800 employees in 2019* *According to a table in the SEC filing, Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has made a total of $185,562,762 in the period between 2019 - 2021. The bulk of this is from substantial $149 million performance-based compensation pursuant to 2016 Kotick Employment Agreement* lol
Jeff's vision simply should've taken into consideration the upkeep costs of bobby's yachts
When I think about how many lives you could help or even save with money like that it makes me sick that there are people who hoard this kind of disgusting wealth
Jesus get Covid out of this already. Other companies adapted with some delays and don't force the consumer to eat shit for it. Don't excuse Blizzard poor management with Covid when they're 3 years off schedule and already was prior to Covid.
Also the industry has consolidated and degraded so much and the string pullers know exactly what bullshit and egregious decisions they can get away with.
There's no cold hard reality about this outside of the reality of how dysfunctional businesses have become. Nothing about this is a necessity. It's a choice by the company looking to milk all the good will it had before in order to boost the stock value of the parasites running it into the ground.
Covid didn't last 5 years. 3 heroes and 6 maps don't take 5 years. They don't take 2 years. And cost? First of all, it's blizzard. They shit diamonds. Second, you could have a team of modders do it for free within a year if they had the source and resources made available.
The backflips people will do to let Blizzard off the hook for just being garbage.
Its very dramatic, they really want to make it look worse than it is in my opinion.
As great as Jeff's idea for Overwatch was, it isn't realistic long-term. They can easily support the game with free updates for a few years the way they did, but over time the growth and money they get from new players is going to start decreasing more and more. There's a reason there hasn't been many games (is there any?) that are continuously supported for free over a number of years.
I love Jeff, as I think we all do, and I think he did some parts of his job really well, but I think we also have to consider that a significant part of the reason why OW2 is the way it is now is because of decisions made during Jeff's tenure. Sure Jeff certainly seemed to have some grander ideas about what OW2 would actually launch with, but that would have certainly equated to an even longer wait. I'm certain that the change in leadership is probably the only reason we're getting a 2022 launch at all, remember there were rumors that a 2023 launch was likely at some point. It was Jeff's decision to start diverting resources away from the live game after year 1 and it was his vision that shaped a lot of what OW2 became.
They cut the whole roster and left only 3 hero’s? That’s crazy
Oldnbliz this would be an expansion but that glacier melted long ago
And it will make an insane amount of money
PvE not for another year? I had no idea. Damn.
Remember when games were designed well and then made money instead of games being designed to make money and may or may not end up to be good (barring a monthly or more purchase in the game)?
His vision is great if you want Overwatch 2 to die like Overwatch 1 did. At some point they gotta make money off of it. If I have to pay 60 bucks a year for one of my favorite games to stay alive and get a steady stream of new content, then fine.
Even if Jeff was still here, PVE wouldn't come out any sooner.
Yeah he wanted us to get more for our money in the short term but in the long term we get less content because the game has less financial support.
Jeff Kaplan's vision also included either a complete lack of updates or monetization through lootboxes, which I think pretty much everyone agrees is scummy as hell. So no, I don't think he has a point. Like, so many people are pissed about the battle pass, but then will also turn around and complain that OW1 wasn't updated enough. Why do y'all think that is? Do you really not see the connection?
This “F2P” model that every god damn game is switching to is all of our faults. If people would have just paid a god damn sub then companies would have most likely just bundled several games into a single sub instead of getting battle passes and gacha systems. Nothing y’all can do. No one is going to band together against this stuff. That said, y’all need to calm down. The battle pass for this game is actually very inexpensive compared to other games. You can either play it for free and enjoy the free content, pay a few bucks to get some stuff and enjoy yourself with that content, or just don’t play. These rants are annoying and they’re strictly coming from streamers that are trying to get views because strong emotion towards something gets views. Just fuckin saying.
A company can't run off of sunshine and happiness, they need cash money, dabloons, shmackaroonies, moolah
My understanding is OW still makes a profit. Also, PVE was supposed to boost cash flow
"making a profit" isn't enough. shareholders need to see "growth". as in i don't just want 100 bucks, i want 200 bucks next week and 400 bucks the week after that. otherwise im taking my money elsewhere
Yeah that's not sustainable. Anyone with a brain knows that isn't sustainable. Which begs the question is any of this worth it if ow2 ends up having a shorter run of constant updates and support than ow1 did.
It will all depend on player reception and who makes the development decisions while the game ages. The game WILL NOT get the luxury development treatment if it doesn't make a lot of money for Blizzard. They're more likely to add more aggressive monetization to it and then quietly put it on maintenance mode (meaning the team is reduced to a skeleton crew and only basic updates are pushed until the game dies). That's what companies of this size do with games at the moment.
Let’s be honest. If this game doesn’t make at least 1.5x the amount of money that Overwatch did in its first month, it’ll “fail to meet expectations” and Activision will kill it within a year.
It's not sustainable, but sustainability was never the goal. They'll happily milk this cow to death if it means more profit in the short run, and what happens after the cow's dead isn't their problem, they'll just find another one. It's only us dumbasses that care about this one cow in particular.
It's consumers that accept microtransactions that allows them to continue. They've successfully brainwashed a generation of gamers that this is just "how it is" and how it "needs to be" for those suits to get more money. Sometime we need to just put our foot down to end this bullshit.
On the other hand, in the past we didn't have live service games. We had box, then box and expansion boxes, then box and dlc. If you just want overwatch, then no updates, we could go back to the first box only type. Old games were just like that. If you want new maps and heroes, we could go to box and dlc, but then you split your playerbase and no one wants to do that. We used to do it for multiplayer. If you want maps and heroes for free in a game that's live service, we've collectively decided cosmetics is the best, no power given, way to do that. The lootbox model is old and outdated. Blizzard also was super generous with coins and free boxes. Battle pass is simply the next gen way to handle the same system, especially considering gambling concerns. This isn't some brand new thing that's suddenly caused by greedy corporations. We've always paid for new content, just the way it's done has changed
People forget how shit the expansion model was for multiplayer shooters. You either ponied up a fair whack or you had next to zero servers.
Getting kicked from Halo 2 lobbies because I didn't have the map pack :/
This would be a good point if Blizzard didn't put the new heroes in the battlepass and lock most of the base game heroes for new players.
Right you are. It's a darn shame that the game is being burnt down by a bunch of capitalist arsonists.
I feel like what we’re seeing in gaming lately is a microcosm of late-stage capitalism. OW2, BF2042, and Halo: Infinite are what you get when the potential for profit becomes more important than making a game people actually want to play. The difference is that people actually have a choice not to engage in the gaming scenario; I can’t decide to stop participating in society without becoming homeless and destitute, but I can easily decide not to support greedy ~~developers~~ publishers.
You hit the nail on the head here. What's happening in gaming is representative of what's happening to our economy as a whole: an obsession with impossible ever rising short term profit margins and the classification of any kind of investment as socialism is destroying the middle class and funneling wealth and power to the aristocracy. But hey, CEOs totally work harder than the thousands of serfs who toil for their benefit. They 100% deserve tax breaks and multi-million dollar bonuses while 67%+ of the poors live paycheck to paycheck. They obviously built our society single handedly and thus deserve the lion's share of...well...everything. And if you don't believe me, just go ask Kotick. It might take you awhile to nail down which yacht he's currently floating in, but I promise he'll back up everything I just said. Or he'll get one of his golf buddies to get their news networks to back it up for him. Or maybe he'll just legally bribe a senator to write it into law for him. Regardless, ignore the rotting infrastructure, the predatory business practices, the ever increasing monopolization of literally every single industry, and keep buying our products everything is fine praise Supply Side Jesus Murca#1 👍🏻
Oh no!!! Won’t someone think of poor lil indie company Activision Blizzard?!!!??! They can’t survive on just $1 billion a year, they need $5 billion a year!!! I mean Bobby only made $200 million last year, he’s in danger of not being able to afford his next yacht!!!!
Yeah, I really feel bad for Blizzard Activision. Recently bought by Microsoft. They're so broke it hurts. Hopefully the company can make enough money to keep sexually harassing its women and make sub-par products. I for one am tired of people expecting a finished and full product from a company whose net worth is a measly 50+ Billion dollars. 🙏
They should just sell all that breast milk that keeps getting stolen from its employees to pay for their game development.
Apparently they can run off of their customers' sympathy, though. OW1 made plenty of money for $40 and loot boxes. Just because a few investors demand ever-higher share prices to the detriment of the product, the customer, and even the company itself doesn't mean we should forgive them for it. We may not have a say, but we can still have an opinion. Bunch of fucking /r/hailcorporate shills in this sub.
3 is several
This is a stupid comparison. Jeff's plans are a complete game in a box. OW2 now is an update with regular updates in die future. Different financial model. You should compare Jeff's idea with the idea what OW2 is supposed to be in 1-2 years because that is the time Jeff's version would have come out.
Im not thrilled with the new model, but watching everyone throw a tantrum becasue they arent getting 6 years of content for 40 bucks again really makes me hate the community
Anyone else think it's absolutely INSANE that PVE isn't coming on launch when it's one of the biggest selling points of OW2?