How was OW1 rentable ? Free updates, decreasing playberbase since Role Queue, OWL completely failed.
Yeah WoW was/is declining but WoW is still probably making much more money than any other Blizzard( only) games.
And yeah they want more money, for sure, that’s what a company does.
The dev team for OW1 was about 100 people in 2016. Its development started in 2013 with 75 people. Now, it seems they are 300 people which is massive.
Just take those numbers, takes an average wage and you’d get an idea on how much it costs and so how much money it needs to be interesting.
So OW2 needs to make a ton of money just to keep the game cruising ; especially since the seasonal content is huge. I know a lot people would argue about that but each season of OW2 contains much more content of any OW1 update.
Was rentable. Each quarter more players and stable userbase. Look their finnancial reports and 3rd party measurements. OW1 were fine in the finnancial side, although the morale of the playerbase wasn’t high wasn’t declining on numbers. In fact increased year over year.
Not exactly, while their model provide more revenue, also costs more and were tied to multiple projects like: 2-3 mobile games, expansions, updates and classic.
Their playerbase was bleeding and the new content wasn’t great enough to stabilize. They had 2-3 mobile projects related to Warcraft franchise that got canceled and the only one who actually thrived to see “some light” is the rumble.
The cost increased on employees but at same time decreased due those employees didn’t need to focus on OW1 also. OW1 was barely costing anything to them, generating revenue to actually pay and enable ow2 development. All the content we have til now are related to ow1 era when they released echo. That’s how much work they actually put on new stuff, while their time were more spent on engine upgrades and customization.
The decision of 5v5 was rushed, although were tested several times in the past. The f2p was abruptly introduced tho.
Their development team changed sizes through history, their team were dynamically allocated. They had on ow1 times more than 100-170 workers on ow1 for some periods of time. While others about 40-80’s range.
The “increase” was more related to their team working on both pvp and pve, meaning 2 projects who would be side by side for a time and then, merged in one client eventually.
The money they had, even abandoning it since 2019-2022. They had enough revenue for it. They didn’t had was cohesion on decisions. Internal problems and poor communication.
Pair that with activision extending it’s tentacles on the team and Jeff pretty much getting old and most likely saturated.
He had his own set of problems, but shielded the team for a long time. The development took time due internal problems on decisions and visions, but also due pandemic. Leaks suggested that OW2 would be released at end of 2020 or beginning of 2021.
They didn’t had money problems, although the abk wanted maximize the profit. The decision of f2p were related to reduce the barrier and maximize profit. Not because they couldn’t pay the bills. Considering the troubled development and critics around PvE not exactly being “great” the sentiment scalated and they took that decision to get more money if PvE fails.
If you see the OW 2 pvp launch pretty much you would see several anticustomer practices and loosening the grip when performance dropped. Considering the MAUs increase not being linked to actual big boost on revenue. The phone backlash, the sale at the end of the season, several monetization technniques being revisited. So,on…
Also their MAUs aren’t only based on OW2, but also with d4 beta and wow expansion release.
Is fine for them to want more money, but is a mistake to consider that ow1 wasn’t profitable or actually made them lose money. You could argue they could get more money, but lose? Nah, they were fine. Even more considering how badly they pay their workers to begin with.
I don’t know any site that actually tell the playerbase size. But I remember the queue times becoming longer, even for supports from 2020. Activeplayer (dot) io doesn’t go back before 2020 and I don’t know how much it can be trusted.
About financial reports, its not told game by game so impossible to know from where the money comes.
There’s a mention in a 2020 quarters talking about 10 millions MAUs. MAUs doesn’t mean money. Especially since 2020, I’m not sure how much people would buy lootboxes. Its also not meaning they are new players. But it means people were still interested in OW.
About wages. It doesn’t matter on how people work, since they work on OW franchise, it counts towards OW budget.
The dev team size changed, for sure. But when it gets lowered, its mainly for money reason as human resource is what costs the most. As OW was sold as “game as service”, lowering the dev team size means the game earning expectations are getting lower.
I’ve never said they lost money… I said OW1 wasn’t rentable. OW1 didn’t make enough money anymore if you prefer.
With the massive recruitment for OW2, which asks for more money, I doubt that they just took earnings from OW1 only, to build OW2.
And that’s why, imo, everything felt so rushed. They needed money to prevent any loss ; so they get an Early Access cause that’s why Early Accesses are for : to make money while the working goal ain’t reached yet.
Cause yeah, OW1 still costed them something : worlwide servers, with maintenance still costs money, added to that Overwatch league. If OW1 earning are getting very low since : no new content, no more lootboxes purchases, it would have come to a point where the game would have lost money.
If OW1 was making enough money, why would have they started OW2 rather than keeping OW1 updated ?
Therefore, for what reason OW2 would be still around in 10 years ? I mean, it could be ofc but since OW1 didn’t last that long… I’m not so sure OW2 would hold it.
Or why would they start already working on OW3 ? Even with millions of players, we don’t know exactly how much OW2 earnings/costs or has cost especially since PvE is still in the works.
Queue times got longer on several points on ow1 history. Mostly on holidays or other blizzard games events or even huge games releases.
The active io had data, at least in the past between 2019-2022. Showing a steady, but slow, increase. Also other things I think, statista too.
Lootboxes were fairly “bought” while OWL credits were somewhat popular due it’s skins being iconic and often not being able to buy all of them just by watching the streams.
The overall MAUs can be traced with infos like their decline on wow, the annoucements and news towards di, d2r, wow expansions and other games.
Not exactly. Folks at blizzard often shift on other projects. Because at some point certain kind of professionals aren’t needed on that project for awhile while on other projects are needed. Is more tied to what they can do on the current project and be allocated to another in need. Which is why we hear reports of folks working on other blizz titles for awhile.
Also wasn’t true. They didn’t need any more money they opted to want more money, what they “need” and what “they want” are two different things. They laid off several folks, not only because the harassment case. Recruited and integrated too. Vicarious behind d2r is a example of that, they worked on crash and tony hawk prior to it.
The game wasn’t making finnancial debt, due ow1 keeping the bills in check. If that was the case they would be more open about it, which Aaron itself reinforced on the annoucement.
Ow1 model wasn’t perfect but didn’t made debt. Ow was one of the most rentable franchises of them. So, they did enough money, they just wanted more.
They took personnel from several teams and project, like they always did. The budget from OW came from several sources like the budget of anygame from them also came from several sources.
Saying that OW1 and OW2 made “debt” or “negative” revenue is not truthful at all. Due being one of their franchises who actually grew even after “left to rot”.
Everything felt rushed because they rushed the freemium methodology. Which wasn’t meant to the game to begin with but also the 5v5 change which performed similarly to their “enforcement/implementation” of RQ. They didn’t planned prior to “do it” they just worked as “live wire” fixing the fires on the go.
They used early access to pretty much not being held accountable by offering a downgrade version on almost every aspect. Similarly to their back-offs on illegal shop pratices on some countries, the phone requirement, the anti-customer heavily non rewarding system and half baked “prizes”.
Ow2 was supposed to merge ow1 and ow2 in a single client after some time coexisting with each other on separate clients, which they change on feb-march stream.
Right now we have a client using the pvp portion with the features that ow2 would supose to bring. But overwatch2 itself was meant to be PvE and merge both clients when was ready.
The cost mostly was paying for google cloud deal. The removal of lootboxes cut their revenue, no more ability to buy ow1, made the watchpoint pack being able to be sold as “full price” which shouldn’t.
The transition of no more lootbox or ability to buy the game. Made them lose some money, sure. But that was at 2022. In the middle of it they came up with “watchpoint pack”.
That is easy. They planned to release ow2 at 2020-2021. But covid made things get messier.
The “one year time” they could deal with it. Due their in game content was planned 1 year in advance. So, when ow2 release at 2020 they would come with an year worth of content.
The decision were more related to their “TED” which was an upgraded engine. Making 2 versions of the same thing would halt and delay too much, they had confidence of releasing at the end of 2020, beginning of 2021. Covid epidemic dealt a huge blow, the content was halted instead of released, they didn’t communicated well, delays kept happening.
Things get messy. After working on both things on the new engine, they couldn’t exactly port to ow1, until the engine was ready. Certain things would only work on the new one and the old one could be ported to the new one.
The confirmation of that, was the first beta at 2022. When they used ow1 assets on ow2 engine.
The engine upgrade was meant for both pvp and pve. At 2020 they would release both clients on the same engine. Bringing new content. After some time they would merge both.
In the end was a decision made prior to covid, didn’t measured the impact of covid, took too much time for them to fix their schedule, controversies at blizz and the “morale” being often being dropped.
The limbo of having content, holding to release together with pve, the new engine changes(which were rushed to release pvp right now and have a ton of problems).
Their risk management and planning gone south really fast, the sturborness of Jeff didn’t helped the case, although delayed 5v5 and f2p change. He even stated that would be 6v6 months prior the “leadership change”.
Ow1 being abandoned was result of internal problems paired with covid. Due their plan was to speed up the engine upgrade and pve portion, but kept doing pvp improvements.
After echo release, most of their content on OW2 were content planned at 2019-2020. Simply, this content got halted to 2022.
I would step a bit further and say that ramattra and shambali temple are the only 2 things that “are actually” new from 2020-2021 onwards on their “pipeline”. That and those crossdeals.
Not gonna lie.
Ow1 was pvp, ow2 was pve, both would coexist to make a single client, which some folks could consider call it as ow3 when got merged.
Their plan was, make both clients work as standalone versions then, integrate after some time.
The issue was, took too much time and they got their engine “half-way through”. So decided to “release” the 2019 content planned to 2020 in roughly 2-3 parts as seasoned content. Which honestly speaking was a good idea on the f2p approach, the execution were plainly bad tho.
So, if you check the ow1 content release history you would see that what they gave us up season 2-3 were mostly their “planned 2020” content. Due all maps were showed on similar date range on videos as they held ow1 content.
They could had done the engine transition to ow1, but being a box game and the engine not exactly “ready” they opted to avoid the legal problem. 5v5 changes could had been used on experimental card to tweak those changes. Sadly the new heroes would be nightmarish to port to the old engine. That way they could had more content and bought more time.
On the other hand, ow1 was constantly on sale and if those changes were bad enough would backlash really fast and potentially affect their revenue.
That insecurity, troubled development. Made them to just throw stuff as ow2 nametag and delete ow1. The “crossplay” link which was working fine at ow1, took more than a month to remove the “notification” of account merge.
So, if they could release at 2020 we would have a better game release, at same time, most likely the PvE would be a flop. Due the negative reviews of it around that date. The covid, insecurity and conflicts on the development made this current situation.
From 2022 til now, they pretty much tried to fix so many things that ended not validating or fixing most of their problems who emerged from those fixes.
Add activision, legal consequence, harassments, investigations made things got even more messier.
Wasn’t one problematic factor, but the sum of several problems converging on bad decisions, planning and lack of communication.
Is sad to see how they reach this point, at same time. Folks are hoping they get their things together, otherwise would have the same fate as sc2 and hots.
Can’t find anything older than 2020 on activeplayer.
Statista, I have found nothing after 2018 and it suggests that there was 6 times more players in 2018 than 2016… Its kinda weird actually. Especially since it shows 40 millions in 2018 and devs stated at OW2 release that 25 millions of players is their peak record. So Statista is wrong.
Assumption. Tbh, I’ve seen no one buying lootboxes with real money on OW1 past the 1st year of its existence, neither content creators or other players.
Not sure about OLW credits tbh. I have barely see those skins in OW1, in 6 years of playing it.
Not mentionning that OWL numbers went just down since its creation.
Since they have one team dedicated to OW, it still counts toward the project… When Hans Zimmer makes music for a movie, he is paid by the movie budget, right ? If Team 4 has borrowed people from other Blizzard studios, that’s just shows OW2 has been created with the help of money from other games. So again, how would it mean that OW1 was so rentable ?
Games aren’t “needed” to be created beyond the money they make… OW isn’t an author project done for the sake of art, it is done to make money. Cause with money, you make people work. That’s the difference between an art and an industry and Blizzard and almost every video game companies are about the industrial side of it.
Again… I’m not saying OW was a debt… They cut it off before. I mean, you really think that company would publicly says “we lost a lot of money” ? Such a company would immediately die cause investors would leave it already. If you look at financial reports, which is built to reassure and encourage investors, they mention Overwatch only when it does good and they don’t get that much in details. Silence is meaningful sometimes.
So we agree that OW1 didn’t make that much money (as I assume you speak about OW2).
I’ve never used the words “debt” or “negative” revenue. And I’m not speaking about OW2. We’ll know about OW2 performance in 2024, not before.
OW being one of their best franchises… Blizz has 4 franchises for 10 years.
Yeah but why do they rush if they have enough money ? I mean, OW2 could have been released in 2023 with PvE already included, right ? But they chose to make an early access, exposing them to backlash. Why, if not to make money quickly ? They would have won more money by delaying and polishing their game ; but later. People have waited SC2 for 10 years, D4 for 9 years. Why OW2 had to be released in 2022 and not in 2023 ?
I don’t recall any info about that. The release date was announced in june 2022. do you have any source about a 2020 release ?
By looking up if I could find some info about release in 2020 I found that Blizzard actually cut costs in 2019 ; reducing the HotS team size, meaning the company was looking for money. (source Kotaku: With Activision’s Influence Growing, Blizzard Is Cutting Costs).
Funnily, its the year they announced OW2.
SC2 is something else. This game made its money. Imo, if there’s no SC3 planned, its the same reason why we had no War4 : there’s another game making more money. D3 has crushed SC2. WoW crushed War3. And that’s the same reason why no Half Life 3, why no L4D3, why no Team Fortress 3, since Dota2 release.
It just shows that Blizzard goes for the money since 2004 (and nothing wrong with that ; games cost a lot of money). But its a thing to keep in mind when Blizzard announces a game : they look at the money it can make.
OW2 exists cause there were a lot of fans around the world but OW1 was in a dead end financially. That’s why they mentionned it in a 2020 report : to tell investors its worth to invest into OW2 cause there were still players around OW1.
Since 2019, OW stayed on for the few fans and thanks to the money coming from other games. Meanwhile, they invested more money into OW2 hoping to make cash from the millions of fans of the franchise and create new ones. If OW2 fails to do it, OW franchise would die. Blizzard ain’t making an OW3 for the love of art or for the love of players…
Sorry for the late response, I had some things IRL that made me busy. Just to make you know, I’m enjoying the discussion and I wanted to complete the post instead of “split” in parts.
Well, that I can’t argue for or against, I saw some increments in the past but I would need to actually look to find if the sources are still out there. Maybe Waybackmachine can help? Dunno. I can try to find later more data from older posts, news and references, but would take some time if you’re interested on go deeper on that topic.
Not exactly assumption, I know some folks who bought that. If you ask me if I agree on them buying it, my answer was NO, but I personally know folks who bought and were more common than I would like to say.
Also the OWL content, several folks bought on situations of multiple skins and all stars due not having enough OWL credits, some folks actually said that on forums. Most of this crowd couldn’t permit themselves to not having everything or didn’t had the time for it, paired with the “whole remix” thing giving those crowds opportunity. The “completionist” behavior of owning everything from a single hero or all heroes were pretty common on OW1 era. Folks who bought OWL content I think is “fine” due they paid for something they actually wanted instead of lootbox RNG. Still, is their money and they should spend as they want.
They’re paid as “employee” not as “team x employee”. That’s why they divide as “blizz branch, activision one and king one”. Although nothing actually prevents them to allocate blizzard employee on a king product by example. Vicarious and Proletariat were from Activision and today are mostly blizzard.
Would be if his revenue were higher than the associated cost of the personnel they allocate.
Think this way: If each employee was about 10k for them having 70 on OW would require 700k, if the game made a 2.7m in a year would mean about 1.7m to be spent in other resources and stuff like that, imagine that 1m was their expense on it. Would reflect 700k of profit.
Then, another project like HotS: with 10 employees, requiring 100k as expense, but their return was like 300k. That would leave it to 200k before the other resources that could be I dunno 500k cost. Would reflect a debt of 300k. Which OW profit could be used to solve that and still having 400k.
One thing is to make a game and get money from it, never stated otherwise. The difference of the “amount” needed and the “amount” wanted differs to the point that, the needed was achieved while the wanted was just more. So, in the end, they didn’t needed more, they just opted to have more. Which is fine, but doesn’t make their finnancial needs not being fulfilled just they wanted more.
Actually they would say, if they actually need money. Folks who didn’t, either gone bankrupt or simply faded away. While the current state of ABK isn’t great, they’re performing somewhat fine. Which they also were performing fine aside of WoW who was quarter by quarter decreasing.
You please investors in 2 ways: good performance or showing how you’re going to change the tide on the current poor prospect. Which none of the cases OW had that, although OW2 PvE had negative reviews overall and OW1 spent too many time on “halt state”. So for that I can see them enforcing this approach to avoid potential problems in the future, still doesn’t make “OW1 making them lose money, instead just made them not make more money from it.” Is the difference of the reasoning behind it, while I agree that this change could had avoided them to lose money the scenario, maybe wouldn’t due the current backlash. But saying that they were losing money isn’t truthful due not happening, neither state that if they kept the old monetization with some tweaks would end on money loss either. Due both scenarios not happened, we can simulate and take guesses but not state.
The change, could or not reflect on less or more profit. Generally speaking reflects on more tho, but that needs to be aligned to several changes to enable it be profitable, otherwise SC2 and HotS would repeat itself.
I speak from both, due were 2 projects. One rentable (OW1) and one using the resources of OW1(OW2 PvE). The halt made the revenue from OW1 to be allocated to what we have now (OW2 PvP). So they effectively had 3 OW. One left to rot providing money, One PvP being worked on speding that money and One PvE being worked on speding that money.
When you consider that:
You made me consider that what “kept” OW was WoW/Activision, which would not a truthful statement. Due, like I mentioned they were enough to cover their costs even with the “issues on OWL”. That’s how much “profitable” OW still were, although OWL done some huge blow in their budget and could made them lean even more to f2p.
So, my point was related to it, which OW was profitable and most likely helped other blizzard products by doing so. If wasn’t your intent, I misinterpreted you in there. Which is why I maintained this “approach”.
Also, most of their franchises they actually reduce the team size and development by a ton after the year one. That happened with pretty much all their titles. Including OW1.
They rushed due the relevance of OW1 being diminished, the game couldn’t receive the new stuff due their engine not ready for it making their development time increase and that could lead to more time without news.
The project started to not have bright future. Which made them to take the decision of invest on OW PvP portion to maintain the game relevance. The promise that Blizzard made started to get old and not entirely show much progress in 2 years. Paired with the game constantly at sale and “not exactly good remix events”. The morale were decreasing and the annoucement of OW2 didn’t helped due being divisive take.
OW2 PvP decision was a cry to disrupt the current development problem and try to take another approach, instead of delivering complete experience and an actual upgrade they done a downgrade with no pricetag on it and made the playerbase effectively “understand” the state of the game. At same time reducing the “need” to deliver something polished due the f2p and early access stamp.
They rushed too much OW2 PvP due the delivery date they couldn’t afford to lose, due several “silences and bad news” at the company those years. They let their community down several times, controversies and pretty much they were clear that wasn’t “ready”.
The early access and f2p was a form to deliver their incomplete game without receiving harsh backlash paired with less “legal” bindings as they did on the Box version and Lootbox approach, increasing their available markets. Due some countries banning lootboxes.
Both Sony and Microsoft stores for their consoles had leak on the year of the release. At 2020 was Sony and 2021 was MS. Or the opposite, but both stores “had at some point” that later were “removed”.
One of them was from Brazil, I think the Sony one, the other I don’t record properly. But those were from the official stores themselves.
HotS were pretty much dead at this point SC2 followed not much later. Those franchises weren’t much profitable and for that made sense. Both adopted the “f2p” system, which made folks fearful due the poor performance of OW2 launch being at risk of the same fate eventually.
Yes, at 2019 they cut those costs. But not exactly “looking for money”, but avoid unnecessary expense. If you have a game that wasn’t profitable enough for several years, makes sense to abandon it.
They did that on d2 lod at 2002-2003. Even if a single dev stayed on it up to 2010 if I record correctly. Similar stuff happened to other games. If they didn’t needed that specific function is common practice to lay off. Due several employees working on projects and not always they’re needed on others. Even when they lay off folks they also were hiring. They spent some portion of 2019, 2020 and 2021 doing that. While at 2022 I didn’t looked to it, but I heard about some kind of IP/project they were planning.
They laying off folks doesn’t exactly mean they needed money, due at those times abk actually bought-merged several studios too, like Proletariat and Vicarious Visions. So, the "redundant’ contigent needed to leave at some point. That’s normal. Microsoft “buyout” would reflect that too later down the road if the “deal” go through.
RTS genre were in decline, the shift to f2p made the last nails on the coffin. Didn’t helped much on the long run to be “interesting” investment.
They always change their IP focus on something else or work more on the most rentable ones. WoW was their golden egg for too long, which when started to crumble things got messy really fast.
Yes, I agree. What halted this change was the old crowd from “old days”, if would be for better or worst product we will never know for sure. But the “frog” was been boiled through several years for sure.
I would rather expect something new happen, even on indie initiative or from the old crowd on those ex-employee studios. Either way, is some kind of “end of an era” in gaming. Blizzard made “impact” on several genre with their innovative and unique “attention” to details. While coding skills weren’t exactly top tier, their products made folks be passionate due devs themselves being passionate about it and “fair practices” being adopted or at least were at some degree.
To me its an assumption to think that a lot of people bought Loot boxes and OWL content, especially after 2019. There were probably people who kept buying OWL yes. The question is were they enough to keep OW rentability ? Since OWL viewership has declined and since the more people played, the less interesting the lootboxes became, my guess is that less and less people bought them.
Its also an assumption from me, since Blizz would never show their numbers.
From what I know, and I may be wrong ; budget are done before the production starts. This means, the producers and headquarters know how much a project gonna cost. Of course, the cost can vary (usually it gets higher) for many reasons. The thing is, a game, as a movie, is paid before making money.
So if the game costed, lets say 40M$, it has to make even more money at the release. If you look at the movie industry, a movie like Dark Phoenix is considered as not rentable with a budget of 200M$ and a revenue of 250M$ worldwide. Profitability suggests that the game would make you gain money and just not refund your budget.
In that way, I’d agree that OW was rentable. Pretty sure they sold enough OW1 copies during the first 2 years to cover the whole pre-release development cost.
But since the game got updates afterwards and they were delivered for free, the number of copies sold/lootboxes diminish as people would’nt pay or wouldn’t play anymore.
And this is when OW1 has been, imo, not rentable enough anymore.
Yes but since Blizz has traded stock, if you promise an earning and the game fails to reach it or to get beyond ; its considered as a failure and can make the stock price lowering, making company losing money.
That’s where the difference being “rentable” and “enough rentable” kicks in. I’m pretty sure OW didn’t make money loss ; I think OW didn’t make enough and thats why they chose to set OW2 instead of updating OW1.
But they didn’t want to shutdown OW1 cause some people were still playing it. And also because Blizzard likes to keep their servers up for a very long time.
Because of trading and investment system, a company that says they do need money is a very bad sign. Every companies want more money of course but if they tell negative news, it makes investors running away, which lead to more money loss…
It is what happened with all the 2021 affair ; the shares dropped just because of the bad news, even if it’s not related to the game quality (source : cnbc).
I feel that they’re not needing money as the coffers would be empty but rather than the numbers are going down and if it goes on, they gonna end up firing people and enter a deadly spiral.
Blizzard isn’t at their best indeed and that’s probably why suddenly they start new projects : OW2 and Diablo 4. The strategy is to attract investors : they show that OW fans are still around in 2020 (without any details) to convince people to keep investing cause OW2 gonna have ton of earnings. Same for D4 (especially since Immortal seems to have failed).
Blizz could have just announced OW1 updates if it was still rentable. Critics are a different thing that doesn’t really matter for earnings : despite the reviews, OW2 has much more players, much more potiental earnings. That’s why Blizz communicates about numbers of players in their financial reports, they don’t communicate about metacritics score (except in trailers, but trailers are for players, financial reports are for investors).
Yet, Blizz are smart enough to understand that for the long term profit, its a good idea to have good critics and they try to fix it (and that’s really clear with OW2 where they try to listen to the community).
Well SC2 is still around 10 years after so it didn’t even repeat itself, it just has been updated but the project kinda stayed the same. The game has become F2P instead of SC3. OW1 could have been F2P but they’d rather build a “2”. Even Kaplan stated there was a lot of dicussions about OW model : F2P or full price to play, etc etc. It is revelant imo, that Blizzard designers and producers didn’t agree immediately about OW rentability.
About HotS ; I don’t really know its story but I feel the game failed harder than OW and its maybe because HotS didn’t hold up expectations that OW1 wasn’t a F2P.
Well, imo, since 2019, OW wasn’t doing enough money to both keep its servers up and creating OW2 ; especially since it was the same team working on the both games at the same time (OW1 still had updates and maintenances, but no new content).
Imo, once they announced OW2 and that OW1 wouldn’t have new content ; its when OW1 budget was cut off to avoid debt. The servers upkeep wasn’t seen as rentable anymore, meaning you have to inject money from elsewhere as its “dead” money. So it was probably out of question to pay to add new content that wouldn’t earn that much money.
That’s probably where we don’t agree. I think the servers upkeep costed more than what OW1 earned since 2019 and you seem to think that OW1 was still rentable, that the game was still making enough money to keep the servers up and to satisfy investors.
I’m not really sure what part of OW1 engine couldn’t handle for OW2. I mean, OW1 engine could hold 5v5 and had PvE. I don’t really buy that “engine” excuse as Dota2 has changed engine smoothly ; no Dota 3, just a big update. I think Fortnite has changed Engine too and nobody talks about a “2”.
The only thing that come to my mind that justift the “new game” for “new engine” is that OW2 uses a more recent DirectX / Windows library but I feel like engines can be updated “on the fly” since almost 10 years.
PvE is planned for this year, OW2 early access started on October. I don’t see any reason if not money for that early access ; we could have waited 6 months more.
Especially since OW2 early access had backlash and also, “early access” words weirdly disappeared, so its very confusing. (My guess is that they’ve seen a lot of players didn’t want to play an “incomplete” game so they removed it)
Found it. Playstation brasil indeed tweeted about a release in 2020. Not sure how “official” or verified this was… I wonder why Sony would announce a date before the devs, especially since the Blizz isn’t depending from Sony. It might have been just an assumption to sell PS4 rather than a verified information. Like all those website listing games, sometimes even before any official announcement (ie Amazon Italy listed Bloodborne 2 in 2018 src : bloody-disgusting (dot) com : Amazon Italy Leaks ‘Bloodborne 2’?! )
When your money balance’s going down you have 2 choices : cut off the cost or make money coming. Cutting off has an immediate effect but on the long term, the good way is to make games that’ll make a ton of cash.
And here’s why OW2 was decided imo : its a game as service, so it can be released “quickly”. Most of content is already here. It was the most recent IP and fans were still around.
About SC2, I’d say that when OW was released, “team based shooter” was in decline too. I mean : no valorant, TF2 was 9 years old and CS:GO was 4 years old. Only R6 Siege has been released around OW afaik. (Paladins comes in 2018)
Again we don’t know the effect of becoming F2P. Iirc, SC2 is also held by contracts by ESL. In 2019, they signed for 3 years even if there was no more tournament at Blizzcon.
So even if the SC2 tournament viewerships numbers are under OWL stats according to escharts website ; it might be enough to keep SC2 floating (especially since they kept adding content to SC2 until 2019 or 2020). Unlike Overwatch, SC2 had many tournaments and not directly organized by Bliizard, they were paid just to allow use of their game and trademarks. Afaik, Overwatch has not very much tournaments outside of League and World Cup.
Stormgate is a RTS made by ex-SC2 developpers.
I don’t know if Kaplan plans to do games in the future.
But we never know, Blizz can still suprise people with some new IP or good news.
I mean, sure can be considered assumption, although I would say that were more common than we give a credit. Although the revenue states that they didn’t had finnancial problems with OW. I’m not saying that were enough to please stakeholders just saying that they didn’t lose money.
As far I know. Some are, not all of them. Due some risks and unintended expenses are bound to happen. Like the covid situation shifted how they worked and how their employees would keep working. But the initial budget is something that not always would reflect on the end, in case of OW2 I agree that their cost mostly increased due personnel and the time. Expenses on employees gets heavier on the cost of the project as the duration of the project gets out of control.
So, I agree with it. At same time that additional money were from several sources, like OW1 already good performance, the initial investment could had been enough but keeping the capital on hold is a bad business decision. So, they kept transfering resources to keep things working optimally and well.
Well, considering that you’re using a single movie, sure. Due inflation and other expenses related. Those values aren’t exactly great. Depending on how much time took to produce, the expenses related to cover worldwide and stuff like that.
Although in case of software, several of those stuff were already on the budget, also your budget is dynamic and from several sources including OW1 quartely performance, the value often is a stable value based on the budget. The value they spent on OW1 they got several times more on the first 3 years. Due the huge momentum the game had and was a finnancial sucess even until 2019, while it’s playerbase kept growing at 2021, when wasn’t f2p and didn’t had any new stuff for 2 years. The Strong performance since at 2016-2017 made them consider the PvE sequel.
That’s why, I mentioned. Both their playerbase and revenue were fine. Due 2019, having 1b in game purchases and at 2021 more 10m new players.
Sure, at some point their money would decrease, as any entrophy system. I would say that the announcement of OW2 at 2022 actually made the things sped up in terms of decline. Due blizzard often being tied to “polished” products and “release when it’s ready”. While their software lack on some quality department when considered “bugs”, “problematic launches” and stuff like that, They often are related with “fairness” and “overall good experience”.
Tbh, the OW2 were more negative than actually positive. Immortal were already negative itself, due “don’t you guys have phones?”
Both were bad prospects, but OW2 were meant to be a different thing than OW1, so the crowd didn’t bothered. Different audiences that eventually would be merged in a single client.
Immortal was fated to be a backlash anyways, yet was a huge finnancial success.
I would argue that in this case, they focused on profit instead of their core values. Several projects and folks who left are “repeating” similar stories about it. The most recent “state” in the company isn’t great either: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/culture/q-a-with-blizzard-leadership-on-return-to-office-bonuses-leaves-devs-fuming
I’m fearful about the future, not because devs don’t want to do good stuff or aren’t passionate, but because they each day are not motivated to do so.
I mean, they kept servers running like they did with D2. Doesn’t mean they’re focusing resources on it. HotS is still playable, but are in the same situation as SC2.
I would argue that designers and produces didn’t agree on what path and features the game could had. They could had gone to the idea of Diablo4, they could had gonne with approach of Diablo immortal, which is fairly similar to OW2 at launch. Not gonna lie. Right now is less anti-customer but still needs improvements.
About F2P and full price wouldn’t matter much, if they considered the in-game purchases model landing near to what we have now. On those days actually the full price would make more sense in the short term, due folks buying “watchpoint pack” which was mostly the same as full price. On later down the road the shift to F2P would be organic.
The game was great, but never performed well due the huge size of it’s competitors. Done their part on what they could do, but didn’t reach high heights, had it’s own identity but didn’t “fitted” on the genre, if was launched several years before could had been success but entered too late on the fray. OW1 didn’t failed, not even until 2021 due it’s playerbase increasing by 10million players, while 2022 was basically was burried not a failure.
Dunno about that, due 2019. They got 1b from microtransactions and at 2021 they had 10m new players.
So, while some folks had low morale about the future of the franchise, was stable enough. Even without new content it’s playerbase didn’t dropped, also 2019 they got some nice revenue.
That’s not entirely true, they cut the investment on it, but at same time we had remix events, the game was in a state to keep making them money until the release of OW2. Which due their “cycles” could mean they would get enough new content when launched the PvE portion. Covid happened, divergencies on what direction the game would take, controversies about the company emerged and morale inside were impacted.
At 2021 they said about 5v5 pvp at OW2 and kept folks interested and divided at same time. Although at 2022 the announcement of f2p made the huge blow on OW1 sales, due the lootbox removal and shortly after the innability to buy the game only keeping the “watchpoint pack” as way. Would be gauge of how much folks would be willing to pay to “start playing” and “the new stuff on OW2”. Some even considered Watchpoint pack as PvE.
OW2 engine, was done to be backwards compatible. Anything that ran on OW1 engine was meant to run on OW2 engine, but not vice-versa.
They could had used the upgraded engine on OW1, I’m not saying they couldn’t. What they couldn’t do is port the things done on the new engine to the old engine.
My guess is that the new engine just wasn’t ready at that point, which they sped up it, to meet the OCT4 date. Due this rush, several problems, often related to the engine emerged.
The new engine has some perks that differs from the old one. Is more robust to handle certain stuff but also more “controllable” from them. They can enforce limits and loose those stuff more easily.
At same time they could implement the states(day/night, in map events, like sandstorms and stuff like that). The engine itself got upgraded to handle a dynamic PvE gameplay which is why at beginning would be 2 different clients at eventually would be merged to one.
OW1 was supposed to keep their own engine, until the new one be ready and replace it by importing OW1 inside of it.
The issue was the delays and those problems the time to do that and the content that was being held was done on the new engine and would make them work 2 times to port things that were already done for the new egine to work on the new one.
If they release date was kept was 2020/2021 the engine would be ready, PvE would be out already(probably a flop), those 2 clients would had been split and today we would have those 2 games inside of the same client as intended.
My guess is because the mommentum and the controversies around blizzard were all time high, their devs are bleeding out both with bad salaries but also with the issues of shifting back from WFH(work from home) measures. Which several employees between 2020-2023 were from several places accross the country.
Since both betas, was well known that the game wasn’t nowhere near to be “playable” or “good experience”.
But they decided not to back off, most likely due their pulling the plug on the way of buying OW1 and wanting to capitalize on “Watchpoint Pack”.
Diablo 2 Ressurrected suffered from a similar problem too, btw. But was better managed and was a box game.
Their page was also stating that, not only the tweet. I even saw the page itself at the time. After some time even some “leaked” talks mentioning delay for 2021. Which at 2021 if I remember correctly had some news at some Xbox page too.
I would take as “leak”, but considering that they always had 1year content “almost done” when they released stuff at OW1. Their shift to sped up the OW2 development would mean that they had 1 year of ow1 content on hold to be launched when PvE launched. That way they would buy time improve the engine and speed up PvE development.
If you see the maps announcements or “showcases”:
Paraíso, Circuit Royal, Gothenburg(not released), India(not released), New Queen Street - november 2019
Colosseo, Midtown - feb 2021 (blizzconline)
Esperança, Shambali Monastery - june 2022
They had Push planned at 2019, actually “ready”. They were toying with 5v5 due some footage of New Queen Street showed rein against 5. (can be strawman hat in this one, tho).
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I agree, the change makes sense on finnancial side, how was done didn’t. At same time they could had smoothly transitioned with keeping the box game system, remove the lootbox and implement battlepass with premium cosmetic features, they hooked their playerbase with “completionist” goals so, they could capitalize on that in less anti-customer way, which eventually when things were “stable enough” lift the box price and keep going. Using episodes on PvE as things similar to WoW Expansions by example.
The shift was too rushed and abrupt, not to mention being in one of the worst possible ways for the customer, they mostly used the carrot and stick methodology, intentionally or not we don’t know for sure, but it was a classic example of that.
OW was a snowflake product fitting a diverse niche of customers wanting diverse set of experiences, at same time not cattering to a single crowd but several ones. With good characters, animations and charisma that often were associated to Blizzard but also Disney/Pixar animations.
The game was simply cute and homecoming. At same time complex to the point of folks not knowing much about it making everybody to be on similar “boat”. There was nothing like that, it was a snowflake. Rip-offs tried to reuse and copy their formulae and failed.
Which led the game to become popular and won several awards for about 2-3 years.(2016,2017 and 2018).
The game was slowing down for sure, due it’s mommentum being reduced by, the annoucement of the halt on content, the blizzard controversies, covid, troubled development, tone deaf blizzard, owl it’s own issues and so on.
I didn’t knew, I know that Torchlight Infinite has the mind behind the idea of Diablo - David Brevik
I hope that he’s at least okay, he was a funny personna and as I heard an amazing individual. Even if some folks had some divergencies on how he worked.
Some time prior to his leave, he showed some signs of “health deterioration” but could be due the stress at the time.
I hope so, sadly I wouldn’t put my expectations as high as before. Due most of the folks who made the games I loved, aren’t in there anymore. At same time the reports from several of them created an image of how much influence activision holds on blizzard these days. Which I’m not gonna lie, I dislike to see their core values and missions being in this way.
I appreaciate, is always great to spend some time talking about things we like with folks willing to chat about it
