So some people might not know but former head of team 4, Jeff Kaplan, was originally scouted by blizzard after making a, now semi famous, post about ever quest. It was roasting the dev team for letting the live game of Everquest languish while working on its sequel/expansion. He advocated for pulling team members from the sequel to fix the live game.
Does that sound familiar? It’s essentially what they did with Overwatch! By keeping a skeleton crew on the live game while focusing on the sequel, to prevent delays (oops), they have provided their community with a content drought and have effectively stalled the game.
I implore blizzard to pull team members from working on the sequel, who cares about delays, release it when it’s ready, as blizzard likes to say. Put an end to the content drought, release hero’s and maps in a beta or limited capacity. Be the hero’s of the bright future the world needs.
I can’t know for certain, but I like to think Jeff has long since eaten crow for that rant after having seen how hard it is to keep up development of a live game firsthand.
I also recognizes that Jeff is no longer a part of team 4, possibly being forced out for asking for too much time or for other reasons all together.
I get what they wanted to do was make a sequel where you got to keep all of the things you earned from the previous game, but if you look at Starcraft vs brood war, they really could have made/called OW2 an expansion, created a team to do pve and release 1-2 hero’s a year and everyone would have been much more satisfied.
CoD’s equivalent would be releasing new guns and doing major updates each year requires three teams. Blizz could have done 2 teams and we’d have accepted a OW2 that took 4-5 years as long as the live game received some kind of new content
Maybe but it must be weirdchamp to think that those issues happening down the hall from you (someone killed themselves FFS) aren’t affecting how you are working/feeling about the company etc
Do you think widespread sexual harassment that has led to a lawsuit with the largest superior court in the USA , major terminations of key leaders, and significant leadership turnover hasn’t materially affected operations around OW?
The only reported staff in OW’s dev team is Jeff, and he was never mentioned in any investigative report. As far as I am concerned, unless there is concrete evidence stating otherwise, the OW dev team AND Jeff Kaplan have no involvement whatsoever in this fiasco. Innocent before proven guilty.
Jeff was a senior vice president for years while the harassment was going on. He knew what was going on and did absolutely nothing about it except quit before the lawsuit was filed. Unless you somehow think it’s not the responsibility of senior executives of the company to protect their employees by implementing policies - oh wait, that’s exactly what the lawsuit by the DFEH is alleging that the senior executives failed to do and are therefore suing Blizzard for it.
That’s not a fact. That’s a speculation. Hell, if you referenced his statement when he left in his letter (something like ‘take care of the overwatch team’ or something like that), that would be better evidence than “He worked in this position, so he clearly knew”.
No he didn’t, and even if he did, VP does not have as much power as you think. His job was literally to report the status of the OW Team to the CEO and keep the OW Team busy. That’s what a Senior VP mainly does. In no way does he interact with other teams. Unless a victim comes forward and states “I told Jeff and he did nothing”, there is zero evidence of Jeff being complicit.
It was too late back when Jeff bailed. The whole company most likely saw the law suits coming and those who were smart ducked out before it got publicity. Frankly I don’t OW2 will be coming in 2022-2023. I get the feeling they will scrap it for something else when they find the game isn’t panning out the way they want it too. Especially with literally no interest from the average customer at this point.
If what you’re saying is true, then why did the suit that was settled claim this about the executive committee (Jeff was on this committee):
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title I of the Civil Rights Act of 1991
“Once Defendants knew or should have known of the sexual harassment of the adversely affected employees, Defendants failed to take prompt and effective remedial action reasonably calculated to end the harassment”
Seems like the State of California disagrees with your interpretation of what a VP is supposed to do. The lawsuit is very specific in the agency described by the Defendants
Once again, Jeff Kaplan had zero association with other teams. His responsibility was Overwatch, and Overwatch had zero problems. The ones responsible are the ones in charge of WoW and anyone higher up than them. So the CEO.
The lawsuit names the executive team as Defendants and says this about all members:
each Defendant participated in, approved and/or ratified the unlawful acts and omissions by the other Defendants complained of herein
Only a moron would think Jeff had anything to do with the allegations after multiple people said his team was one of the nicest teams they’ve been in. It isn’t the season for a circus, clown