Overwatch Director Jeff Kaplan Leaves Blizzard after 19 Years - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 20 April 2021 / 1,670 Views
Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan announced today he is leaving Blizzard after 19 years at the company. Aaron Keller, who is a Blizzard veteran and founding developer of the Overwatch team, has been promoted to game director for Overwatch 2.
"I am leaving Blizzard Entertainment after 19 amazing years," said Kaplan. "It was truly the honor of a lifetime to have the opportunity to create worlds and heroes for such a passionate audience. I want to express my deep appreciation to everyone at blizzard who supported our games, our game teams and our players. But I want to say a special thanks to the wonderful game developers that shared in the journey of creation with me."
Kaplan added, "Speaking of Overwatch 2, development is continuing at a good pace. We have an exceptional vision we’re executing on, the reaction from many of you to the updates we shared at BlizzConline thrilled us, and we have exciting reveals planned for this year and beyond as we ramp to launch. We’ll be sharing more frequent updates about Overwatch 2 progress and new features in the live game with you all very soon.
"While I have no pretenses about filling Jeff’s shoes, I’m excited to step into the game director role and continue to be part of a team that’s putting all of its heart, talent, and focus into the next iteration of Overwatch, and I’m honored to continue serving this incredible community."
Overwatch released in May 2016 for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, while a sequel, Overwatch 2, was announced in November 2019.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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I guess you could say Jeff's watch is over.
Blizzard was already going down the drain, and this just adds to it
If Jeff's gone, that makes it sound like Overwatch 2 is going through hell.
With another former WoW dev gone, that just means all we have left now is Ion and "you think you do, but you don't" J. Allen Brack.
Blizzard is practically dead at this point. All the founders are gone, former vet WoW devs gone, and now a former WoW vet dev/Overwatch gone.
Fuck you Bobby.
hopefully he goes to a studio that can use his assets!
Boy, Blizzard are bleeding talent aren't they?
Have been telling this for some time now. Blizzard is a shell of its former self. Their deal with Activision simply broke the company. I remember back in the days when every game they released was an event for me. Now I don't even care about any of their output.
That and they only released games when they were absolutely READY.
Now they will release a game that is anti-consumer (Diablo 3) or bug ridden (WarCraft 3 reforged), or games that don't stand up to their prequels (StarCraft 2) and are happy to even release games that are content light. (Overwatch.)
But even badly executed titles like Diablo 3, StarCraft 2 and Overwatch were still supported and fun to play.
I can't wait for Diablo 2 remastered and Overwatch 2.
Your so right about games being READY. I remember when I heard about WOW I was really into MMOs at the time and a lot of MMO just sort of sucked. When I heard about WOW I knew it was going to take over the genre. Told all my friends and they all played the beta and immediately left every MMO they were playing.
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