Former Overwatch director has sage advice for those who complain about games they don’t play: “Shut the f**k up”

As a longtime team lead at Blizzard, Jeff Kaplan’s seen plenty of criticism over the years. In a recent livestream, he decided to share his feelings on what he believes makes for legitimate critique, among which lies one unshakeable belief: people who haven’t played a game shouldn’t tear it down.

“If a game comes out and you don’t want to play it and you’ve never played it, shut the fuck up. No one cares,” he says, in a clip reposted by Majid Manzarpour on Twitter.

“We don’t need to hear that you weren’t into it,” he continues. “What is with this, ‘Oh my God I’m so upset they decided to make this game that I have no interest in’? Who cares about my opinion if I’m not going to play it, and if I’ve never played it? Why does my opinion matter?”

There’s no misunderstanding his point on this one, and he adds that anyone who plays a game at least has an “informed opinion,” however much you may agree or disagree. I’d be inclined to broadly side with his overall sentiment, though there’s room for nuance; there are games that seem misguided and baffling from the outset, and it’s OK to point that out. Likewise, I’ve seen some extremely leftfield takes that make me wonder if they and I played the same game.

Kaplan also gives a pass to dedicated fans who don’t enjoy sudden change. “I get a little upset and I voice my opinion, because I so love this game, and I’m bummed that my paladin is nerfed,” he says. “I can kind of understand that a little bit.”

Given he worked on World of Warcraft from launch and spearheaded Overwatch, he’s been party to more community outcry than most in the industry, and the fact he’s not become completely cynical is impressive in itself. He mentions all of this while his own new upcoming game, The Legend of California, an open-world shooter set around the mid-1800s on the then-mythical Island of California.

We’ll see how reactions are when people get to play it for themselves, and perhaps more importantly, how Kaplan feels about those reviews.

“Typical hubris” led to one of WoW’s “s**ttiest” quests, admits creator Jeff Kaplan, who thought he was a clever designer but was “actually a dips**t.”