Overwatch 2 was recently released as a free-to-play multiplayer shooter and the sequel to the beloved Overwatch. The game has seen a remarkable number of players enjoying the experience thus far, with over 35 million already taking part within the first few weeks. However, not everything is as good as it should be for a lot of those players. Specifically, players have complained about how much harder and inconvenient it is to earn skins in Overwatch 2’s events, with high real-world prices involved. Developer Blizzard has now attempted to address this concern going forward.
In a new blog post on the Blizzard website, executive producer Jared Neuss discussed how the team will try to fix this issue in the future. He says that the team isn’t “completely satisfied with how everything feels right now,” and that they “recognize that today’s experience has the opportunity for improvement that we need to focus on.”
To address player concerns, Neuss confirmed that future events from Season 2 and onwards will have skins that players can obtain by just playing the game. He notes that this is “in addition to the other cosmetic rewards we already offer.” Blizzard will still continue to provide skins and other items for players who tune in to various Twitch streams of the game that feature Overwatch 2 drops.
Beyond this, Blizzard will be experimenting with changes to the Battle Pass, including “more exciting play-focused progression systems,” that it hopes to implement starting from Season 3.
There were no specific details revealed about how Blizzard will implement these changes into the game just yet. Neuss said that this is simply because it’s “easier and safer to talk about the work once it’s nearly done and ready to deliver.”
In the original Overwatch, players would earn loot boxes that provided them with randomized cosmetic items for their heroes. There was a lot of debate about the predatory nature of random loot that could be paid for with real money. However, Blizzard is now charging much higher prices for individual skins in Overwatch 2, and the lack of methods to earn skins for free has frustrated some of the Overwatch faithful. Monetization is, unfortunately, a necessary aspect of any free-to-play multiplayer title, but we hope that Blizzard can find the right balance to make things feel fairer to its player base.
Overwatch 2 is free-to-play and available now across PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.
