Image: Blizzard Entertainment
Overwatch 2’s PvE content is reportedly dead in the water, as Blizzard chooses to ‘double down’ on PvP.
Blizzard Entertainment has chosen against moving forward with Overwatch 2’s promised PvE campaign missions. According to Bloomberg, the company will instead ‘double down’ on existing PvP content after the game’s first and potentially final pack of three PvE missions proved to be a financial failure.
Most of the developers working on Overwatch 2’s PvE content have also been laid off, and those who remain have been informed that the game’s campaign is essentially dead in the water.
Overwatch 2 cancels PvE story missions
Overwatch 2 was first announced with the promise that its in-game lore would finally move forward with a PvE co-op campaign focusing on the threat of a second Omnic War. Two PvE modes would be available; one in which players progress through a linear campaign, and another consisting of replayable Hero Missions that would allow players to level up hero abilities. The game eventually launched as a free-to-play PvP game absent of either mode. It was then announced that the planned Hero Missions had been cancelled entirely. This was followed by another announcement that the campaign would drop as paid sets of three missions every few seasons, rather than all at once.
Now, it looks like Overwatch 2 players aren’t even getting that much. According to Bloomberg, Blizzard has opted not to finish any remaining PvE content for the game in favour of making more PvP content. Previous early looks at upcoming campaign missions have confirmed that levels starring Zenyatta and Genji were at least playable internally, but will likely now stay unfinished forever.
When Microsoft laid off 1900 Activision Blizzard employees in January, a ‘majority’ of the Overwatch 2 team’s PvE developers were fired from the company. This, and the fact that Overwatch 2’s financial underperformance led to employees not getting a profit-sharing bonus, suggests that Blizzard is pivoting to PvP with the hopes of making more money off the game than PvE would have given them.
It does feel like Overwatch 2 players are getting short-changed here, as the game was announced and marketed to be a more PvE-focused game than its predecessor. Unless upcoming PvP content gives Blizzard the long-term financial results it’s looking for, it’s no stretch to imagine that more and more planned content might be gutted from the game as time goes by.
