‘Overwatch’ vice president Jon Spector is leaving Blizzard

Jon Spector, the commercial leader and vice president for the Overwatch series, has announced he will be exiting Blizzard at the end of the month.

On Friday night (March 10), Spector announced his departure on Twitter.

“After six amazing years, I’ve decided to hang up my sword and [I’m] leaving Blizzard at the end of March,” wrote Spector. “Working on Overwatch has been the highlight of my career — Team 4 brings immense talent and passion to their work every day.”

Thank you to everyone at Blizzard who made this chapter of my career so incredible, and thank you to the Overwatch community too! I’ll still be around memeing in Twitter replies and posting dps Moira highlights. (2/3)

— Jon Spector (@Spex_J) March 10, 2023

“Thank you to everyone at Blizzard who made this chapter of my career so incredible, and thank you to the Overwatch community too,” he continued, adding that he will remain a part of the Overwatch community.

“There are so many exciting things coming to Overwatch that I can’t wait to see as a player,” Spector added.

While Spector’s replacement is yet to be announced, he said that he has “worked closely” to support the transition and feels the franchise is in “great hands” with game director Aaron Keller and executive producer Jared Neuss.

In January, we spoke to Keller about his team’s efforts to balance Overwatch 2 and why Blizzard’s shooter launched without its campaign mode.

“We found ourselves in a position where we couldn’t release all of the content that we were building for Overwatch 2 until the campaign was finished,” said Keller, who added that development on the campaign was “going slower than [Blizzard] wanted it to” at the time.

“We couldn’t release all of the content that we were building for Overwatch 2 until the campaign was finished […] We found ourselves saying ‘we’re going to keep withholding content from our players so we can release everything together with our original strategy – the campaign – or we’re going to have to change the way that we think about releasing the game.’”

Looking ahead, Keller said Blizzard is “finalising” how Overwatch 2‘s campaign will be launched in the future.

In other gaming news, a YouTuber claims to have been “attacked” by a cheat provider after sparking a debate on hacking in Escape From Tarkov.