Overwatch 2 has undergone quite a bit of turbulence in the 18 months since its 2022 launch. The sequel to Blizzard’s wildly popular hero shooter was subject to mixed reviews and underwhelming fan reception, and the shelving of the promised PvE hero mode made matters worse.
There’s been a lot of doubt over the free-to-play shooter’s future, with more concerns over its monetization and extensive time investment for the battle pass. However, game director Aaron Keller has promised imminent changes, which will help alleviate the issues, albeit two years too late.
Overwatch 2‘s Heroes Are No Longer In The Battle Pass
Overwatch 2‘s hero system is getting reshuffled in a major way. In a recent interview with GameSpot, Keller confirmed they’re taking heroes out of the battle pass. This means players won’t have to pay money to unlock new characters – a big win for the fans. Keller explained the decision:
We’re pretty confident that removing heroes from the battle pass is not just what’s best for our players, but it’s what’s best for the game. When we first launched Overwatch 2, we had a worry that running a cosmetics-only business with a game that had all of these different heroes that you could purchase individual and unique cosmetics for might not be successful.
At first, Blizzard worried that relying solely on cosmetic sales wouldn’t generate enough revenue to sustain the game’s development. But putting heroes behind a paywall, either in the battle pass or for direct purchase, naturally resulted in the game being unfair on a competitive level.
To fix this, they tried a few things. “We put heroes in the free battle pass; we created challenges to unlock some of the heroes. We also tried to remove some of the hard counters from the game to maybe make that effect a little bit less pronounced and prominent,” said Keller. Ultimately, none of this worked.
Blizzard Made The Decision After Extensive Scrutiny
Keller also stated that the team has been observing how Overwatch 2 has worked with different hero release formats since its launch:
After about a year and a half of releasing seasons that have heroes in them and heroes not in them, I think we’ve seen that we can safely remove heroes from the battle pass and still run a successful business.
Now that they feel confident enough to take them out of the battle pass completely, this allows them to focus on what really matters: “And what success means to us is the ability to have a team that’s still creating new heroes, creating new maps and game modes and all of the features that we’re making well into the foreseeable future.“
Although quite late, this change will no doubt be met with thunderous applause from Overwatch 2 players. With a huge barrier to entry removed, players will now have the freedom to experiment and discover the heroes that best suit their playstyle, without feeling pressured to spend real-life money on predatory battle passes.
While it’s unknown how Blizzard plans to recoup their investments now that heroes are being given away for free, it seems clear that the team is keen on acting on player feedback to make Overwatch 2 the fun, fair PvP experience it was always intended to be.
