According to Blizzard’s Senior Community Manager, the FORMER (it’s a pleasure to write!) CEO of Activision Blizzard King sent the free-to-play game to Steam to die.

With the advent of 2024, Bobby Kotick was finally removed as CEO of Activision Blizzard (replaced by Xbox Game Studios head Matt Booty). But in July, he agreed to let Blizzard games return to Valve’s digital platform after a long hiatus. The first game to appear there was Overwatch 2, but it was so poorly received by gamers that many gave it negative reviews, briefly making it the lowest-rated game on Steam to date, though the game isn’t bad enough to deserve it. Behind the critical “carpet bombing” was the canceled PvE mode: fans were angry at Blizzard for not delivering on its promise.

Following Kotick’s departure, Activision Blizzard employees were quick to criticize his management style. He was also accused by many of turning a blind eye to harassment and discrimination in recent years. In comparison, what Andy Belford, Blizzard’s Senior Community Manager, wrote on Twitter paints Kotick in a very different light. Here’s what he wrote about Overwatch 2: “Breaking my silence to share a fun fact: When we were planning Overwatch 2’s Steam launch, my team warned (months in advance) that we were going to get review bombed. We begged for more information, more details, and more resources to help us with the expected influx, all of which were flatly denied. The moderation of Steam was assigned to the Community team (not a community function at Blizz), despite my refusal to expose members of my team to this level of toxic content/posts. When asked whose decision it was to launch on Steam without additional help: Bobby.

This is just one example of the culture Kotick fostered at AB: shit flowed downstream, usually landing on the lowest paid and most overworked people. Management was too busy reacting to wildly changing directions and decisions that made no sense. In the end, the player experience/worker meant nothing to the C-Suite and executive leadership. It was all about the quarterly earnings call,” Belford wrote.

Bad management never leads to good (except for their own wallets).

Source: WCCFTech