Overwatch 2 has been in some sort of development hell for a while now and following the news of the acquisition, more details seem to be surfacing.
Tracy Kennedy, one of the producers on the Overwatch team recently opened up about another type of issue the devs were facing while trying to move Overwatch 2 forward.
It appears that Bobby Kotick was trying to micromanage the creative process as Kennedy noted he would shove "random projects for OW1" on the dev team, which inevitably resulted in resources being redirected from OW2 development.
The situation gets worse, however, as Kennedy alleged that the team would do overtime in order to keep up with Kotick's demands, who would then cancel said projects, leading to the loss of months worth of OW2 dev time.
Kennedy's claims haven't been corroborated by team members at the time of writing this article but given the horrendous work environment Blizzard devs had to endure for years, these words certainly sound truthful.
This revelation was prompted by Kennedy's noticing of one of the interviews Kotick accepted after Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard, where he cited OW2 and Diablo 4 delays as some of the catalysts for the decision.
Whether Kotick will be involved with Activision Blizzard after the acquisition has not been officially announced yet but at this point, it's almost certain he will be gone once the reins are handed over to Microsoft.