When Overwatch 2 has some egregious, predatory monetization scheme (microtransactions, paid skins, weapon skins, battle passes, etc.), this community will 100% deserve it.
At Blizzcon 2019, part of the pitch for OW2 was that it would be connected to OW1. Both games would have shared PvP, including all new maps and heroes for free. And all OW1 content would carry over to OW2. This was a very consumer friendly choice, which is why it was part of the pitch. And Jeff fought hard for it.
But people hated it. The response was overwhelmingly negative. People called it “just an expansion” and a “money grab.” Jeff gambled that giving players all this stuff for free would generate enough goodwill to offset the potential revenue from keeping the games fully separate, like every other franchise does. But it didn’t work. It made people mad.
IGN interviewed Jeff after Blizzcon 2021, and he voiced his frustrations on this exact topic. He tried to do something extremely consumer friendly, and Blizzard got destroyed by the community for it. And now the one guy standing between you and Activision’s money vacuum is gone.
This community taught Activision a valuable lesson. There’s no point in trying to be good to your players, since they’ll just get mad anyway. Might as well treat your players poorly, and make a lot more money doing it.
So congratulations, everyone. You did it. Take a bow. Whatever comes next, we’ll deserve it. When you’re crying about microtransactions and battle passes and $20 skins, don’t blame Activision. This is what you taught them to do. And the guy who would have fought for you is long gone.
Paying 15€ for that Pink Mercy skin already felt very wrong but it’s one of the rare times I did it because it was for a good cause.
If I’m forced to pay to get the better looking skins otherwise I’m left with ugly skins then screw you I’ll keep the default skin. Skins are a very good way to appeal to the players and make them want to spend money but if every skins are locked behind a paywall, then it’s just very annoying and I don’t want to spend 2000€ for some cosmetics. That’s cool because I didn’t want to.
None of the things you are talking about at are all related to one another. If Blizzard decides to implement predatory microtransactions that is 100% their own decision and not anyones fault.
Where did you read that the community made him leave? Where did you read that everyone was against him and did not have goodwill towards him. We call him Papa Jeff for a reason. We loved everything he said and supported it just wanted more developer improvements to the game. Some people were upset but Jeff knows that many of the community love him.
huh that’s not how i remembered it went down, for the most part it wasn’t negativity, it was incomprehension over what was going to be ow2 and what we’re going to pay for, not necessarily negativity
This is from the IGN interview, after Blizzcon 2021:
Jeff Kaplan: We feel like it’s super important to keep the community together. That’s one of our biggest goals. It’s so odd to me because if we were to rewind to BlizzCon 2019 and I were to just say, “Hey, we’re making Overwatch 2, it’s a sequel. It’s going to have all of this amazing PvE content, story missions, hero missions, all-new PvP maps. We’re going to add new heroes. We’re going to change how a bunch of PvP works. See you later, Overwatch 1 people, hope you buy Overwatch 2!” The weirdest part is everybody would just go, “Oh, they’re making a sequel.”
But the second you go, “Let’s try to be a little bit cooler about what we do with the community,” we actually get destroyed by that very community. It’s something I hope in some ways influences people to think about how they want to be treated as a community. Maybe there are some ways that we can do things that are better, cooler, both from the game company standpoint, but also from the community standpoint. Because the reaction we got was very much like, “No, treat us like we’ve always been treated before.” And it’s like, well, that’s what this behavior is going to lead to if we’re not careful.
Thats not negativity. Thats a misunderstanding of the marketing and branding. He points to certain examples but he also always says very good things about the community. Should we ignore the good parts also?
Yes maybe there were other undisclosed reasons why he left but It’s not on the same level of claiming we bullied him out of the industry because we all complained and now Activision is gonna ruin the game and it’s our fault bc we are so negative
This is not some wild guess I’m making. The reaction was negative, that’s not up for debate. Jeff was frustrated at that response – also not up for debate. He came right out and said it. If the argument is that “people weren’t negative,” then this conversation isn’t going anywhere, because you are simply wrong.