Overwatch co-creator Jeff Kaplan's new open-world FPS probably won't be free-to-play because "you need 8 billion players and 2 thousand devs cranking out f***ing keychains like a sweatshop"

Former Blizzard vice president and Overwatch co-creator Jeff Kaplan hasn't decided on a monetization model for his new open-world action survival FPS The Legend of California, but he's pretty sure it won't be free-to-play.

Having previously worked on Overwatch at the highest level, Kaplan knows a thing or two about free-to-play games, and he doesn't see it as a viable model for The Legend of California. "To be free-to-play, you need eight billion players and two thousand devs cranking out fucking keychains like a sweatshop," Kaplan says during a recent 10-hour livestream of Legend of California (via Majid Manzarpour on Twitter).

"That's not us. We're not gonna be able to support ourselves on free-to-play, I don't think. I'd be happy to be proven wrong on that," he adds.

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Under Kaplan and studio co-founder Tim Ford's leadership, The Legend of California is being developed by a 34-person development team at Kintsugiyama. Compared to the hundreds of people who work on a free-to-play game like, say, Overwatch, it's easy to see how Kaplan feels a little understaffed for another live-service game.

Another problem with the free-to-play model, in Kaplan's view, is that they typically make money via in-game shops that allow players to buy items using real money. That goes against Kaplan's philosophy that games should go back to rewarding players for their time by giving them stuff for free.

"I wanna do something simple and, like, right now I'm just unlocking this stuff by doing gameplay," he says while scrolling through a list of challenges in his game. "It's like this crazy idea that hasn't been seen in the past ten years, maybe I could play the game to get shit."

It definitely sounds like Kaplan is leading toward a traditional monetization model where you buy the game for a certain price and then earn loot and rewards by checking off boxes in-game. He makes it clear he's still open to free-to-play, and it's crucial not to infer too much from the ramblings of a man in the middle of a 10-hour livestream, but still, it's refreshing to hear a prominent game dev in 2026 speak out against microtransactions while making an online multiplayer game.

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