In Response To Sequel’s Lack Of Profits, Blizzard Completely Scraps ‘Overwatch 2’ PvE Plans
Spencer Baculi
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Let’s be honest: At this point, Overwatch 2 is beyond cooked.
According to a new report, due to its failure to make a substantial profit, Blizzard has officially ended development on Overwatch 2‘s PvE mode plans – which, if players may remember, was the entire selling point of the sequel in the first place.
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This latest pivot for the once-popular hero shooter was first brought to light on March 22nd courtesy of Bloomberg‘s Jason Schrier.
Relaying information first provided to him by “people familiar with the business”, Schrier reported that following an absolutely abysmal sales performance by the game’s first paid Player-vs-Everyone mission packs – titled Invasion, the pack grants players access to three PvE missions, 1,000 units of premium in-game currency, and the ability to unlock the ‘Vigilante’ skin for Soujorn – the “majority of the team” responsible for the game mode was let go in January 2024 as part of an Activision Blizzard-wide round of layoffs.
As such, he added, “Overwatch 2 developers were informed that the company does not plan to finish any of the remaining planned PvE content and will instead double down on competitive player vs. player gameplay.”
This change in direction was later confirmed to Schrier by Blizzard spokesman Andrew Reynolds, who in a statement provided to the reporter admitted that, as of last year, the company had started “focusing on the foundational team-based experience, building the game alongside our players, and more quickly addressing their feedback.”
“Decisions like these are in service to our community and based on feedback, which is also good for our business and the future of the game,” said Reynolds. “[We are] exploring new experiences, big and small, which will push the frontiers of the Overwatch universe.
Notably, this cancellation confirmation comes less than a year after game director Aaron Keller, in following-up on the May 2023 announcement that the Overwatch 2 team would be unable to deliver on their “original vision for PvE”, assured players that they would only be abandoning their specific Hero Mission roadmap rather than the whole of their PvE plans.
“As we were running up to launching Overwatch 2, we realized that we could not build that other game,” Keller explained to GameSpot. “We couldn’t save up all of that content over the course of what was looking to be at least the next several years to finish it, and by doing that, pulling more and more resources away from the people that were all playing our game and all the people that would be playing Overwatch 2.”
“So we made a decision later last year that we would focus all of our efforts on the live running game and all of our PvE efforts on this new story arc that we’re launching in Season 6,” he then asserted. “And then on top of that, to keep all of our PvE efforts, all of our co-op efforts, invested in our seasonal releases rather than that one big boxed release.”
Hilariously enough, this news also serves as the second hit in the latest instance of Blizzard’s favorite one-two combo, ‘Make a bombastic positive change to the game before hitting players with a major sleight,’ as it comes just days after the company announced that the entire of Overwatch 2‘s roster of heroes would be made freely available to all players.
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