Overwatch 2launched onSteamthis year, making it the first time that the series has been available to purchase on the platform. However, this also coincided with several controversies surrounding the game, so when it wasn’t too surprising to see that it wasimmediately review-bombed.
In fact, it turns out that the devs knew this would happen too. According to Andy Belford, a former community development manager forOverwatch, the team “begged” management for more resources to cope with the expected avalanche of negativity, but were “flatly denied”. He goes further, saying that this order came directly from then-CEO Bobby Kotick, who refused to listen to the team’s concerns.
“When we planned OW2’s steam launch, my team warned (months in advance) that we’re going to be review bombed,” says Belford. “We begged for more information, more details, and more resources to help us with the anticipated influx, all flatly denied.”
He goes on, explaining that dealing with these negative reviews was not supposed to be part of their job. “Moderation of Steam was put on the community team (not a function of community at Blizz), despite my refusal to want to expose members of my team to that level of toxic content/posts. When asked whose decision it was to launch on Steam with no additional help: Bobby.”
Overwatch 2 still has overwhelmingly negative reviews on Steam. It has, however, risen from beingthe worst-reviewed game on the platform… to being the second worst-reviewed game on the platform.
Belford says this was a common occurrence at Blizzard, with the consequences of management’s decisions falling on the “lowest paid and most overworked individuals”.
At this time, players would have been complaining about thescaled-back story mode and PvE content- one of the main appeals of Overwatch 2. Really, there was no worse time to launch the game on Steam, and it seems that the community team was very aware of this.
Bobby Kotick left Activision Blizzard yesterday, after a controversial 32-year tenure. He joined Activision years before its merger with Blizzard, and after all this time, leaves without any developers coming forward with a good word to say about his leadership. Instead,others are coming forward with their own stories, as many in the industry hope to have seen the back of Kotick for good.
