What exactly is going on with Overwatch? Significant updates for the original game have largely dried up and the co-op-focused Overwatch 2, first announced back in 2019, remains largely under wraps with no release date in sight. Well, now we have another rather large red warning flag – Overwatch director and public face of the franchise, Jeff Kaplan, has quit Blizzard. We don’t know why Kaplan has opted to move on after nearly two decades with Blizzard, although he did share a short goodbye message.
I am leaving Blizzard Entertainment after 19 amazing years.
It was truly the honor of a lifetime to have the opportunity to create worlds and heroes for such a passionate audience. I want to express my deep appreciation to everyone at blizzard who supported our games, our game teams and our players. But I want to say a special thanks to the wonderful game developers that shared in the journey of creation with me. Never accept the world as it appears to be. always dare to see it for what it could be. I hope you do the same.
Longtime Blizzard employee Aaron Keller is taking over as head of the Overwatch team, and according to him, the upcoming sequel is proceeding “at a good pace”…
Speaking of Overwatch 2, development is continuing at a good pace. We have an exceptional vision we’re executing on, the reaction from many of you to the updates we shared at BlizzConline thrilled us, and we have exciting reveals planned for this year and beyond as we ramp to launch. We’ll be sharing more frequent updates about Overwatch 2 progress and new features in the live game with you all very soon.
Blizzard is going through a bit of a rough transition period right now. The company has been hit with layoffs and is reportedly under pressure from the Activision branch of the company to churn out more regular content. Both Diablo IV and Overwatch 2 were announced at BlizzCon 2019, but both games seem to be progressing rather slowly. Hopefully, Overwatch 2 comes together properly without the series’ longtime mastermind at the helm.
Overwatch is available now on PC, Xbox One, PS4, and Switch, and is playable on Xbox Series X/S and PS5 via backward compatibility. Neither platforms nor a release date have been announced for Overwatch 2.
