{"id":16564,"date":"2026-07-16T10:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T17:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=16564"},"modified":"2026-06-20T11:00:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-20T18:00:16","slug":"nastiness-in-the-game-development-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=16564","title":{"rendered":"Nastiness in the game development world"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The CFO at Blizzard came in to director Jeff Kaplan, head of the hugely successful Overwatch franchise:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He said\u00a0&#8216;Overwatch has to make [redacted amount of money] in 2020 and then every year after that it needs a recurring revenue of [a redacted amount of money]\u2019. And then he says to me, \u2018if it doesn\u2019t do [a redacted amount of money] we\u2019re going to lay off 1,000 people and that\u2019s going to be on you\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That was just the biggest \u2018fuck you\u2019 moment I had in my career.\u00a0I literally thought I would retire [at Blizzard]. I never thought the day would come. That was it, I was like, \u2018we\u2019re done here\u2019.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kaplan quit in 2021. The CFO is no longer there. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/were-going-to-lay-off-1000-people-and-thats-going-to-be-on-you-ex-overwatch-director-jeff-kaplan-says-redundancy-ultimatum-led-to-his-blizzard-exit\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.rockpapershotgun.com\/were-going-to-lay-off-1000-people-and-thats-going-to-be-on-you-ex-overwatch-director-jeff-kaplan-says-redundancy-ultimatum-led-to-his-blizzard-exit\">Read more of his interview here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In my experience during the late 90&#8217;s and early 2000&#8217;s, the game industry (and a lot of software world) has  far too many of these very kinds of interactions. It&#8217;s a sad reality; but an important one to show to the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The CFO at Blizzard came in to director Jeff Kaplan, head of the hugely successful Overwatch franchise: He said\u00a0&#8216;Overwatch has to make [redacted amount of money] in 2020 and then every year after that it needs a recurring revenue of [a redacted amount of money]\u2019. And then he says to me, \u2018if it doesn\u2019t do [a redacted amount of money] we\u2019re going to lay off 1,000 people and that\u2019s going to be on you\u2019.\u00a0 That was just the biggest \u2018fuck&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=16564\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cool"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-4ja","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16564"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16564\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16565,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16564\/revisions\/16565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}