A former writer of the WWE games expresses his regrets in bashing the WWE 2K series publicly. This was voiced by Justin Leeper, who was heavily involved during the Smackdown vs. Raw series (before its rebrand to WWE and WWE 2K) as a writer, director, stunt coordinator, and other positions when he was working with Yuke’s. His most notable roles in these games would be for Smackdown vs. Raw’s Road to Wrestlemania Story Modes in the 2009-2011 entries, with WWE 12 being the last iteration of this mode and Leeper having no involvement in its development. However, one of the most critical things he had voiced regarding WWE-branded games was the release of WWE 2K20.A few years ago, during the release of the WWE 2K20, Leeper released a series of videos that detailed his perspective on Yuke’s being dropped in favor of Visual Concepts for the WWE 2K series of games. These videos got a lot of traction, especially when WWE 2K20 released to an overwhelmingly negative reception, between game-breaking bugs, poor PR management, and many more issues, making it one of the worst reviewed games of 2019. These videos from Leeper were publicly critical of the WWE 2K series, which have since been made private. These were something that the former writer had expressed regret in releasing.This tweet from Leeper was made in response to an interview that was released earlier this month, where it covered the regrets from a former Half-Life writer who shared a story summary for the fabled Episode 3. Marc Laidlaw, the writer of the summary, expressed how he was "deranged" for releasing it and causing issues for his colleagues in the industry and how it wasn’t reflective of the actual plot for the next Half-Life. Similarly, Leeper noted that his videos about WWE 2K20 were a case of him burning bridges with the franchise.
Leeper stated that while his perspective on WWE 2K20 was honest and that he had met many people in the industry, the story shouldn’t have been coming from him, but the other employees who were involved in the game’s development. He also states that instead of burning the bridges he built when he worked with the WWE games, he should have tried to help improve 2K from within instead. He also asks other members of the entertainment industry to learn from his mistakes.
The result of WWE 2K20’s critical bomb did end up resulting in the next entry skipping a 2021 entry and instead jumping to 2K22, with the upcoming WWE 2K23 looking to drop next week. Moreover, Leeper is still active with the WWE games fan community, along with still being a full-time actor, such as being the motion capture artist for Deadman in Kojima Productions’ Death Stranding.
WWE 2K23 releases March 17 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.