Blizzard's Fatal Mistakes That Led to Its Downfall

Gaming Journalist Jason Schreier is promoting a tell-all book on the Rise and Fall of Blizzard Entertainment, a story that Overwatch is at the hinge point of as the game that underwent the transition away from the core principles that built Blizzard to begin with, into the most mishandled IP in gaming history.

AMA

YOUR OVERWATCH:

[poonnanie]

Good to see you back Freedo, hope all is well

[vestaexe]

It's crazy how much money they could of make with Overwatch. Series, PvE toys etc... They literally had a gold mine. All they had to do is make the community happy THAT'S IT! They literally f'd up that bad.

[TimelostGamer]

So to sum it up
The game and blizzard as a whole was ruined by corporate monkeys
Man.

[iyxon]

Overwatch is SERIOUSLY the biggest bag fumble in video game history, and this video only supports that statement

[kiritoalt]

moral of the story

*MARKETING PEOPLE STAY AT MARKETING STUFF*

[micahfoster]

I love the Freedo-Dev lore that has slowly been creeping out over the years. By 2030 we are gonna hear that Freedo and Jeff Kaplan had a boxing match over hero bans.

[LordShadowZ]

Basically just confirming what we already knew. Corpos who understand nothing about video games, how they're made, and how to maintain a community and good will to keep customers coming back, forcing their idiocy onto the developers who make them and pushing them out of the company, burning everything to the ground. The AAA industry is rotten to the core.

[charaznable]

Freedo! Glad you're back. Hope you're doing okay?

[tns]

The thing I miss most is video updates of Jeff from the Overwatch team and subsequent Dinoflask videos...

[eckroattheeckroat]

A lot of hating on Kaplan in the comments. You know why there hasn't been a new overwatch box literally every year since release like CoD? Kaplan's a big big part of why. Wonder why they don't sell the new heroes? Or sell the new maps? Again Kaplan isn't the whole story, but he's a big part of it. Remember when they spent all that time giving us capture the flag and 6v6 lock out, but didn't make them default game modes because it didn't feel "like overwatch"? Yeah, Kaplan's why. CoD players were/are dropping $60/70 dollars a year to buy basically the same game over again; no one blinks. We're talking something like 8 games or more at this point for over 300 dollars. You are still playing a game you dropped 60 dollars on nearly a decade ago, and everyone loses their minds when they try to charge 20 dollars for a lame skin that you can literally just not buy and continue playing anyway. Yes, you can blame Kaplan for slowing development, but you should also thank him for standing in the way of activision shovelling cash-grab garbage out every year and also halting wildly predatory pay-to-win monetization. The Kaplan hate is wildly misplaced.

[AbbyOW]

Hope you're doing okay big man, missed your content. <3

[TsuchiGamer]

Crazy how the C suite people were all greedy and focusing on money at the time, but now look at ABK, barely standing on its legs. Sure it might make money now but imagine the Good Will, OW fans, WoW fans, Starcraft etc and general GOOD FAITH they lost in the last 10 years

they could be THE company
but now look at them

[phredbookley]

"Somehow we got the worst of both product management strategies." Bruh. Right there. That's it right there. ( At about 8:50 ish )

[NSeaBear]

So what's next for you? Overwatch is at the end of its life. Will you continue to cover it? Will you swap games? Loved your videos for as long as I played OW (bought the game day 1) thank you for all your videos!!

[nubastyle]

Overwatch had a WORLD WIDE FOLLOWING That could've been as big as Marvel! Just couldn't prioritize and work together properly.

Now that Marvel Rivals is coming out, they know its overwith and now lashing out.

[TsuchiGamer]

Flying by the seat of its pants at the hands of CEO mindsets really just crushed this IP. It's so sad

PvE, animated series, and any good faith just destroyed because Bobby and Business heads seeped into the dev's business

[tailgrowth]

I remember reading something, I wish I could remember who wrote it or the term they called it, that examined the importance of maintaining goodwill and trust with your consumers. Because stuff like this happens in so many industries, not just gaming or entertainment: A company creates a product or service that people really like. Then, over time, in order to make more money they change features to make it worse. This doesn't backfire on them immediately; they still have so much goodwill from their loyal base, or just the inertia from previous support and lack of motive to stop using the product, and they don't really lose customers for that decision. This emboldens them to push things further and make more and more decisions that upset the consumers, but aside from grumbling and slight losses it still doesn't drive people away. Then eventually the company hits the last straw, and consumers abandon it in droves, finally fed up from the growing sentiment that has been building all this time. So the company panics and backpedals and reverses some of their unpopular decisions, but do the customers come back? No. Because that trust they had with the product is gone, and in reality they had dropped the company emotionally a long time ago. The "last straw" was not the one moment that broke them, it was simply their action to leave for a competitor finally catching up to their desire that had been there for much longer. That goodwill cannot be won back by simply reversing the past few negative decisions, it takes SIGNIFICANTLY more than that to rebuild the trust that had been whittled away for so long, and some customers will never return....

[joshuax]

this really make me regret support OW,
well at least it was fun for the 1st 4-5 year

[verguco]

so overwatch was pretty much death since 2019 when ow2 was announced but we didnt realized, basically blizzard has done nothing since and will do nothing, the only thing they have left is stupid overpriced collab skins, even 6vs6 test is doomed, new developers suck at balancing, 5vs5 never worked at all

[csly]

I just knew there would be an Arcane type Netflix show for OW. I thought Kaplan mentioned it was in the plan at one point. I can't believe how much they destroyed their own game.