‘We’ll Lay Off a Thousand People’: Blizzard CFO’s Outrageous Threat Was the Last Straw for Overwatch Director

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Jeff Kaplan, a veteran of nearly two decades at Blizzard, recently shared why he decided to leave the company in 2021.

This excerpt is taken from a longer conversation with Lex Fridman, where Kaplan discusses his career, including his time leading the development of the first Overwatch game.

We’ve time-stamped the moment he talks about what motivated his resignation in the video below:

Kaplan remembers a conversation with Blizzard’s CFO where he was given a 2020 deadline. He was told that Overwatch needed to reach a specific revenue goal that year, and similar financial targets would be set for each following year. The exact figures discussed in that conversation have been kept confidential.

My boss basically said if we didn’t hit our goals, a thousand people would lose their jobs, and he made it clear it would be my fault. The pressure is insane!

Kaplan described the situation as a deeply upsetting and career-defining moment of disrespect. He added that the experience felt incredibly strange and unreal.

Having worked on many games, I often heard suggestions like, ‘Fortnite has a team of 1400 people, so if we hire that many and make our game free-to-play, we’ll be successful, won’t we?’ I always thought I’d only work at Blizzard, but that kind of thinking made me realize it was time to leave.

It’s a lot to ask of any single person, so we understand why Kaplan decided to leave.

Earlier in the interview, Kaplan mentioned they might have gotten a little ahead of themselves with the hype around the Overwatch League. It was a really big idea – basically trying to turn Overwatch into a major esports thing with city-based teams that could sell for serious money, but maybe they built it up too much.

In the end, the Overwatch development team wasn’t able to make everything work, and the project ultimately fell apart despite their efforts.

Someone also suggested making a sequel, hoping to continue the financial success of the first game. It earned $1 billion in its first year, and there was significant pressure to maintain that level of revenue.

Overwatch is recovering after the rocky start of Overwatch 2. Now just called Overwatch, the game is gradually regaining players, though it faced significant challenges for a while.

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2026-03-12 19:07