Overwatch League commissioner to leave Blizzard for Epic Games

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Nate Nanzer will work on competitive Fortnite.

The commissioner of the Overwatch League, Nate Nanzer, is leaving Blizzard to work on competitive Fortnite at Epic Games.

Nanzer, who joined Blizzard in 2014, said leaving had been the "toughest decision of my life", but that he was leaving the league in "great hands".

Nanzer didn't say that he was headed to Epic Games in his farewell tweets but the studio confirmed to ESPN, which first broke the story, that he would was joining to work on competitive Fortnite. It's already one of the biggest esports around: the Fortnite World Cup, currently in its seventh week, has a $100 million prize pool.

Nanzer will no doubt try to ensure that the studio better handles changes to the competitive side of the game, which continue to piss off pro players.

Blizzard announced the Overwatch League in 2016 and its inaugural season was held last year. London Spitfire won the tournament in dominant style. This year's season began in February and will end in August, with the grand finals held in Philadelphia.  

In his parting remarks, Nanzer said he had received "way too much credit" for the league's success.

Samuel Horti
Samuel Horti

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.