Take this with a pinch of salt but overwatch content creator “ClearTogether” claims to have anonymous contact with developer at blizzard, she tweeted:
So I was told by someone at Blizzard who wishes to remain anonymous that the Overwatch2 PvE would have ABSOLUTELY happened, had it not been for the harmful and unpopular RTO policy that was recently enforced by Blizzard’s CEO.
I don’t have the full picture of the situation but this person wanted me to make it known to the community what’s exactly to blame for this.
So if you want to be upset with anyone about this, it’s Blizzard’s CEO Mike Ybara. He implimented a terrible policy that was cruel, unwanted, and detrimental to the games he claims to care so much about. A policy which at any point he could have chosen not to implement.
Perhaps one could draw a connection between this and the departure of the Lead Mission Designer and Primary Designer of PvE progression systems last month.
UPDATE from ClearTogether
Hi, I went ahead and pulled the thread that was posted.
I posted about what I was informed by one person at Blizzard, I realize I didn’t verify my sources beyond that which I should have done.
Honestly wouldn’t be surprised. Every Blizzard employee was in an uproar on Twitter and pretty vocal about why it would be such a problem. Meanwhile, random people that don’t even live in the same state just called them lazy.
However, question is, how did RTO basically lead to an entire game mode being completely gutted?
Essentially, it was telling the employees that they had to stop working from home and return to the office. It was a sudden change with no debate and was effective basically immediately. Failure to follow essentially meant termination.
Work from Home started for multiple reasons, but a combination of Covid and learning your company’s work place is a den of degeneracy probably meant working at home was just overall better. Many employees voiced their opinions that the policy change was stupid. Mostly because a lot of people who worked there weren’t even in the same state.
Also, moving work you do from a computer at home to an office setup in any situation isn’t good.
I could very much be wrong here but considering the Lead PvE Progression (Talent/Skill Tree) developer quit in April, it is plausible that Blizzard opted not to hire a replacement to continue his work and just outright cancel it instead.
policy of making workers who may not necessarily have to go to the office go back anyways
There’s a few reasons for this; some cities offered tax/grant incentives for it, some C-level guys just want people to use the office space they pay for, and for many it’s just that managers feel useless without actually seeing their peons.
Tons of Blizz employees have been quitting over this, including the main story/writing guy for OW2 who did not even live in California and only ever worked from home.
The problem is it probably isn’t JUST that person.
They’ve been doing some massive layoffs since 2019 and the layoffs just kept coming. Here’s a snippet from 2021.
I’d suggest people to look it up and look into it because it’s kind of hard to figure out how many people were even axed before the RTO policy happened. Because I was under the impression, before this happened, they were under a shoestring budget for the current amount of devs.
Then RTO happened and I was worried what little workforce they had left was going to be tackled yet again.
This claim has no credibility, and also a solid reason to lie and try to get fans to pressure Blizzard into letting them stay home. RTO is not the reason 4 years of development went down the toilet.
Aaron Keller: We knew this was going to be the direction of pve 1.5 years ago.
Blizzard 3 months ago: Blizzard employees have to be back in the office by July.
Blizzard employee who wants to keep working from home: YOU GUYS IT’S ALL THE RTO CAUSING EVERYTHING YOU HATE, I HAVE NOTHING TO GAIN FROM THIS PRESSURE THEM TO LET US STAY HOME.
Mouthbreathers: Overwatch did nothing wrong it’s all Kotick’s fault, our dev team is full of innocent lambs!
How is RTO even a reason if they were working from home all this time?
I heard that it hasn’t even taken effect yet and we have the roadmap already with the mode being canceled 1,5 years ago.
RTO is return to office and anyone who (imo) does not want to come back into the office can quit and find something else.
RTO had zero reasons PVE was canceled. This is someone’s idea to try to give bad press to Blizzard to allow them to continue to work from home. I’m not defending Blizzard, just providing some common sense thoughts behind this.
I wouldn’t say it was just RTO, but they have been firing and having people leave before then and probably way more massive in 2021-2022.
It’s probably bogus especially since HOW wasn’t stated. But this wouldn’t be the first time management screwed up projects or made people leave when we are talking about the Overwatch team. The amount of times it happens begins to add up.