Overwatch in trouble
This week, video-game titan Blizzard Entertainment changed the business model for the shooter Overwatch 2, decoupling the game’s heroes from the paid battle pass. The seemingly drastic move led players and observers to ask: Is Overwatch 2 a failure?
Twice a year, employees at Blizzard receive bonus checks based on the financial success of their products. Each employee is given a target number and informed that they will receive a percentage contingent upon the company hitting its profit goals for the year.
These profit-sharing bonuses are an important part of Blizzard’s compensation packages. For decades, prospective employees have been told that while the company does not pay base salaries as high as nearby competitors such as Riot Games, they make up for it through profit-sharing from lucrative hits like World of Warcraft.
Bonuses at Blizzard usually arrive in two chunks: one in August, for the first half of the year, and one in March, for the second half of the previous year.
In August 2023, Overwatch 2 team members were told that based on the game’s poor financial performance in the first half of the year, they shouldn’t have received anything, according to people familiar with what happened who asked not to be named discussing nonpublic information, but that the company would cover some of their bonuses to make up for the shortfall. Then, earlier this month, the company informed developers that they would receive a stunning 0% of their bonus targets.
Failing to get any profit-sharing bonus is rare at Blizzard and is the result of a major policy change that was enacted in 2023. Previously, employees would receive bonuses based on the overall performance of the company. But last summer, the payouts became tied to the performance of each specific franchise. Since their titles were more successful in 2023, teams on games such as Diablo and World of Warcraft received bonuses this month, but the Overwatch developers weren’t so lucky.
