Like many other BlizzCon 2019 announcements this weekend, the Overwatch 2 one was leaked ahead of the opening ceremony.
In a follow-up interview with Kotaku Australia, Overwatch lead designer Jeff Kaplan expressed how leaks can be "extremely demoralising" for developers and explained how lack of context can often result in worst-case scenario concerns:
When you're trying so hard to deliver something for somebody and to have it be spoiled in a way that's not coherent. That's the part that bothers us the most, where people are not given all the information and all of the context that they need to understand what we're doing.
When the Overwatch 2 leaks started to happen, immediate worries raised by the community were in regards to progression and cosmetics carrying across – along with how a sequel could potentially divide the game's playerbase.
Kaplan also noted how the artists working on the PvE focused entry were "heartbroken" when leakers began uploading low-quality screenshots:
Our artists are heartbroken: They take such care to make the art look beautiful, and then we get some crappy version of what the art looks like ... and then people are like, 'I don't know it doesn't look that good' and we're like, no it does, it looks amazing! It's just a crappy screenshot that someone took, so it can be a bit demoralising.
Be sure to check out yesterday's announcement post, officially confirming Overwatch 2 for the Nintendo Switch.
What are your thoughts about leaks? Tell us in the comments.
[source kotaku.com.au]
Comments 67
Exult at his frustration, leakers. Are you not entertained? Is this not why you did it all?
Just remember this next time you take an issue with your own data being accessed and/or abused by corporations, intelligence services, fellow random hackers/leakers and whoever else.
I imagine it is kinda of how the pros felt learning that Heroes of the Storm's Pro League was cancelled.
Leaks are always going to be demoralising, but they'll always happen. People enjoy leaking stuff ahead of time, companies can't identify the leaker, so they keep doing it. Working hard on something for years and having it spoiled early is never going to be nice, but there's no way of stopping it.
@nhSnork I agree that it must suck for these hard working designers and developers, but what you are talking about is identity theft. Not really in the same ballpark.
They also made a comment about the leaks at their blizzcon. And I really agree with them on this, it's not fun seeing things you worked years on being leaked.
To me, I always try to avoid the leaks. Since they can ruin good announcements (like Nintendo Directs, and the Blizzcon).
It was worth it.
@NotTelevision but with the common denominator of accessing and sharing someone else's data against their will nonetheless.
That's probably how the pro players and the commentators felt for being banned because they had an opinion....... But ya know not my problem
That’s not even the main thing they should be worrying about...
Yeah its really sh*tty when someone trashes your hard work and effort.
Kinda like winning a tournament but being denied the win because of your political opinion.
@Razer For which they apologised during their BlizzCon. I don't see the leakers apologising for the leaks though, or promising to do better in the future.
@sanderev an apology without action is meaningless
Sad. Fuming. Crying. Want to scream. Unless it’s someone leaking Drumpf’s plans to strong arm Ukraine at the behest of his Russian masters, there should be NO leaking, ever. This makes me literally want to scream helplessly at the sky.
@somebread They did 3 things, they reduced the ban to 6 months, gave him the money and the CEO apologised at their biggest event. That's not "nothing". A gaming / sports event is not a political podium. Whatever the political statement is.
@sanderev shouldn't be banned at all
@somebread I disagree on that point. Being political during a (e)sports event is a sign of bad sportsmanship. You should not want that.
Blizzard working to spin a story and try to get some moral high ground again.
@sanderev Can you please watch the "apology" again and come back and tell me when the dude said anything of consequence? The apology was so vapid and watered down that it ceased becoming an apology a third in and became instead a segue into advertising their new games. NO mention of specifics. Just vague corporate terms and diversity this (50+ countries here at blizzcon woweee!!!!), unison that (lets make something AWESOME gamers, throw your money at us!). If Blizzard were to make a sincere apology, they would have to lose something in the process; they are simply too far into the mud not to get some investor friction if they made a genuine effort to rectify the situation for the actual players. Instead, they made a non-apology that will lose them ZERO investors and segued it into a massive one-two "please forget about the China thing with these two games you keep asking for" punch that solidified the company has no desire to prioritise players and principles over investment.
@sanderev You call that PR blah an apology?
Yeah Leaks suck and all....
But not as much as having your winnings taking away and being banned from your literal job because you support democracy; cause that really sucks.
#NotAPolitcalHashTagButYouDoYouNL
@Ttimer5 They signed a contract, so if it’s not your business don’t comment.
@QueenKittenWrite They returned his prize money and lessened his ban. He’s happily getting ready for the next season. It’s not blizzards job to fix Hong Kong.
There are some people here that say that people are enjoying leaks. No. That's not true. Speak of yourselves only. There are people that don't enjoy leaks, hacks and datamines.
@Cosats those two statements don't really contradict eachother :V there are people of both
@Mr_Muscle They never should have taken it away in the first place; it's not Blizzards job to fix Hong Kong, sure, but it's also not their job to stand up for a corrupt government.
Wait, there was a leak for Overwatch 2? I didn't know that.
lol at all these posts about Blizzard and HK. I might be wrong, but somehow I doubt the devs of Overwatch 2 are the ones who made the decisions that generated so much public controversy.
@QueenKittenWrite They stood up for their tournament rules, not for a corrupt government.
This comment section seems to think that everyone at blizzard has the same political opinion, thereford should have their years of hard work spoiled. Absolute idiots if you ask me
I didn’t see an Overwatch 2 leak. In fact, I didn’t even see the Overwatch 2 announcement until a while after it happened
Can we just ban leakers from social media platforms now? I really don't think anybody will care much about them anyways
I would imagine that yes it would be a disaster and I would be extremely pissed off if it was me.
Then they should be glad so few cared about the leak since many of us still annoyed about the China fiasco?
I only got to hear about OW2 post announcement and still sounds like an expansion DLC labeled sequel in an attempt to generate more hype.
@sanderev it was a forced apology that was dragged out of them after a good few weeks of that PR disaster. If they could have avoided apologising, they would have.
They sided with a totalitarian dictatorship that is currently enacting genocide against a whole section of its people because of faith.
They are also trying to crush the last bastion of China that has managed to maintain its historical heritage.
Any company that has its roots in the west such as Blizzard but condones the actions of a genocidal dictatorship like China's for the benefit of lining their own pockets will get dragged down and stepped on by everyone that made them who they were.
It doesn't matter that they apologized, they will pay 10 fold for this.
If this was another company I'd have more sympathy but this is Blizzard.
What I find more demoralising than leaks is Blizzard's appalling recent behaviour.
Well, this is the first I hear of "Overwatch 2".
Not the leak. Not the announcement. Not an editorial about the game's potential.
Seems the drama is more newsworthy than the game itself.
My demographic wasn't very represented in the Overwatch2 video, so my opinion is a bad opinion anyway because of the color of my skin.
@Razer is this about the jewish or christians in Iraq,iran, saudi arabia, qatar, sudan, mali, indonesia, Malaysia, Turkey, brunei? Or am i missing the bigger picture here?
...How do you think Sakurai feels?
@sanderev They basically apologised for being caught. The whole speech was horrible, and full of corporate buzzword BS.
@Mr_Muscle
Yes ban the commentators Because they "didn't stop the political statement" that took less then a second and now can never commentate on overwatch and have lost all their hard work..... But ya know it's fair.
I’m sure they’ll get over it.
@Ralizah You're correct, the Dev team are the ones that work hard, break sweat working up to 70hr weeks to bring a game to life.. the ones making decisions on the eSport scene will be the much better paid PR and Management side of the business.
So leaks hurt the poorly paid hard workers, but dont effect the PR/Management side.
However, what you forget that people want to attack Blizzard completely free of nuance or tact so you (and I) will get voted down anyway.
@sanderev
I agree with you. An esports event is not the time for political statements. If I was on some sort of broadcast for my company and made a political point. I would probably be fired. This guy got off easy.
If they're not expecting and factoring in leaks by this point then I don't think they're paying much attention. Regardless of whether it should be this way (and it probably shouldn't), major announcements usually get leaked. There's almost always a market for information that someone doesn't want shared (that's 90 percent of why the media exists (and why they have protected rights)) and the means to share that info to fill that market are drastically stronger than the ability to prevent it being shared right now. Their plans and expectations probably shouldn't be based around a future where there are no leaks and if they are planning for there to be no leaks then that's on them. Because that's a dumb plan. Planning for a reality that almost never happens in reality is dumb. If a reality almost never happens then you shouldn't plan for it. You should plan for and expect the reality that is likely to happen.
Yeah it definitely didn't get leaked on purpose smack dab in the middle of the hk controversy to take eyes away from it at all
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
@sanderev Ohhh that was an apology?
You know.... it’s not an apology if you don’t mention what you’re apologizing for in the first place.
Ohh and also, a very different speech was said at their Chinese event
This looks frea*#ing awesome!
Great trailer!
Leakers are like bad DLC practices. Most gamers hate them, but as long as people keep giving them money/attention, they're not going away.
That being said, acting like Overwatch 2 was such a HUGE surprise is laughable. Every profitable game/movie gets a sequel nowadays.
...if they're referring to the 4chan leak, then no...this time they completely deserve it. Activision/Blizzard is a mess right now, and the world deserves to know it. The point of that leak wasn't to leak Overwatch 2; it was to provide insight on how messed up everything was. To provide examples on what else was in that 'leak':
So no, the point of the leak was NOT to leak Overwatch. It was to show the complete disarray from the company. When it came out five months ago, nobody believed the guy, but it's becoming more and more clear every day. I'd link the damn thing, but I'm not sure if that's allowed here. Point is Blizzard is in big trouble right now, and this was BEFORE the 'controversy'.
In this day and age of internet savvy people leaks are inevitable, it is very rare for a project to be completely unknown of, data mining and other methods of research have made sure of that.
It's a shame that the many programmers, artists and countless other people who had absolutely nothing to do with the terrible political move get trashed on. There are people working at Blizzard who were probably just as upset as the general community when they found out what went down. Lumping them all together is well, kinda short sighted imo.
ESPN reported on the Overwatch 2 leaks. Not IGN. ESPN.
When mainstream outlets report of stuff like this, that's gotta be demoralizing.
@Patron Cucktardary at it's finest. Please go cry about your political opinions somewhere other than a major video game site that most of us come to to get away from all of that biased nonsense. ✌
I've got to be honest, this games existence still feels like a joke. It's like "If Overwatch is so good, why isn't there an Overwatch 2?" except it's real. The game's going to sync up with the main multiplayer title anyway, so there's clearly not going to be any big changes or additions besides bonus skin and the story mode, which could have been added on via DLC. Offline modes or permanent PVE game modes are cool, but they also could have been added on separately, even if people have to pay for them.
They can get over it and should be used to with over 14 years of WoW leaks
Man, this whole time we've been worried about Hong Kong while we should have been worried about Blizzard's morale. 😰 Really puts things in perspective.
The main point is: how does leaking a game announcement ever affect its sales? If the game is good, it doesn't matter if it was announced Tuesday via a leak or Friday via Blizzcon.
It's not like they leaked the ACTUAL game for free.
Truth serum followed by brutal interrogation and then remove the hands of the culprit once discovered. This should deter future issues. You do get to keep your severed hands though, we're not Barbarians.
@RazumikhinPG If you want to sell a product you will need people to talk about your product. You will also need to control the things people say about your product. (Bad publicity sells less, this is economy 101) also you want to build up hype (for instance, with a good trailer)
All of this is impossible when it's leaked beforehand. And yes, that does hurt sales.
@sanderev the game is nowhere near to being released, they have plenty of time to promote it. People don't buy games based on reveal trailers, at least sane people.
Instead of whining they could just acknowledge the reveal was leaked and still do their normal promotion and move on.
If you're actually going to buy a game just because a game dev is hurt someone shared a low resolution screenshot of the game, then I'm sure you're one of the sheep these big corporations love.
At least the leaks allowed players to brace for disappointment.
I try and ignore leaks as best as I can. The recent pokemon leaks, for example have been annoying but I've managed to avoid seeing most of them. They ruin the surprise factor and companies who are trickling the information out themselves or intend to are trying to create a certain atmosphere for their fanbase to enjoy the game as best they can. What they try and do is generate hype whereas leakers take that hype, run it all the way down the spectrum and leave the fans to crash and burn with their expectations.
The tldr version is that these sorts of experiences are ruined by leakers and we really should consider ostracizing those who would present those leaks. We do worse on other subjects so why do leakers get a pass?
It's really hilarious, because if the reaction to the leaks would have been overwhelmingly positive, this article would never existed and none at Blizzard would have complained.
The real issue, is that the leaks showed that Overwatch 2 is not a new game at all, but more like a DLC on Overwatch 1 where Activision Blizzard tries to sell a DLC as a new game for 60 bucks!
It's just the same game, with a new map or two, a couple new heroes and a PVE mode added. That's it!
So, the Overwatch 2 annoucement blew up in their faces and people called them out for what Overwatch 2 truly is and now they cry about it, trying to spin it on the poor artists and developers boohoo hoo.
If they want to sell Overwatch 2 as a "real" new game worth the 60 bucks price tag, they have to come up with a lot more than they did!
Like a whole new roster with heroes, new game modes, a lot more new maps and the PVE campaign better be a lengthy one and not a couple hour tag on content, like Activision is notorious for with their other franchises like CoD.
So far, everything points to Activision having taking the complete reigns over Blizzard and giving their games the Activision treatment.
I'd rather a few developers be sad than PR people have the chance to frame everything in the exact perfect way to make you believe a game is going to be better than it is.
@sanderev they didn't apologize for banning the player. They apologized for something vague that they had done, promising to do better... About... Something? 'A tough hearthstone esports moment'. To be honest with you if I didn't know the situation I would have no idea why they were being sorry. They are sorry they got backlash is all it boils down to.
It reminds me of the leak for Mario and Rabbids Kingdom Battle. Initial leaks were concerning but the footage of the game was brilliant.
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