On August 10, 2023, Blizzard released their free2play game Overwatch 2 on Steam: it was a fiasco. Even today, the game has terrible reviews with only 15% positive ratings and is considered one of the worst releases from a major studio on Steam. An employee now says: The fiasco was the fault of then-CEO of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotick.
How bad was the release of Overwatch 2? It was really bad:
Overwatch 2: This is Mauga, the crazy laughing tank who always takes headshots
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Launching without assistance was Bobby Kotick’s decision alone
This is what a Blizzard employee says: On December 29th Andy Belford, a former senior community development manager at Blizzard, tweeted. Belford left Blizzard in September 2023 and is currently looking for a new job.
He says his team warned senior leadership months in advance that Overwatch would be review-bombed:
“We begged for more information, more details and more resources to help with all the expected trouble – all were flatly refused.”
The community team was supposed to handle all the trouble on Steam, which Belford didn’t want his employees to do.
When he asked who made the decision to release Overwatch 2 on Steam without providing more help to the community team, the answer came: “Bobby Kotick.”
Shit always flowed downwards, ending up with poorly paid employees
Belford says: Kotick has established a terrible culture at Activision Blizzard. Shit flowed from top to bottom and ended up with the lowest paid, most overworked employees. Management was too busy dealing with the wild instructions from above that kept changing direction and made no sense:
In the end, the management level didn’t care about the players’ experience. It was all about the next earnings call with the investors and investors.
This is what lies behind it: There have been some of these reports coming out now after Kotick’s departure that boil down to “Kotick is a ruthless businessman and has no love for games or his employees.”
To be fair: Blizzard brought the Overwatch 2 shitstorm on itself with the decision to release an Overwatch 2 because of the PvE and then cancel the PvE.
Even if Kotick had listened to Belford and assigned more people to moderation, the shitstorm would have come with the Steam release, they could probably have handled it a little better: Overwatch 2 is on Steam and is directly one of the worst games of all time – 86% negative