Regardless of your thoughts on Blizzard’s red-hot competitive shooter Overwatch 2, you can’t deny that much of the game has been mired in controversy. As we’ve said before, Overwatch 2 barely qualifies as a sequel, keeping much of the original’s same structure intact to such a degree that many people are wondering why it exists at all. There are even more paywalls now, as many of the characters are progression gated, which of course can be bypassed with a modest donation ala microtransactions to Blizzard.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the most hyped feature of Overwatch 2—its brand new Player vs. Enemy mode—was delayed until well after launch. The original idea for this mode was ultimately scrapped but came back during the game’s sixth season called Invasion. Still, plenty of folks weren’t too happy about that one. The half-baked story mode, rampant microtransactions, and overall lack of care the company exhibits towards its player base culminated in one of the most vicious review bombings in recent memory.
The Steam version of Overwatch 2 was released on August 10, 2023, and boy, it was not pretty. Previously, the game had only been available on Blizzard’s Battle.net client. Almost instantly, the game received an “overwhelmingly negative” review summary, which is where it stands today.
I’m not gonna lie, some of these reviews are hilarious. Some reviewers keep posting Megamind ASCII art over and over, while others have said that the “porn is better than the gameplay.” There are serious, legitimate reviews thrown into the mix as well, like criticism over microtransactions and the lack of free lootboxes.
It got so bad that Aaron Keller, the lead director on Overwatch 2, actually responded to the criticism. According to Kotaku, Keller wrote in a recent blog post, “Although being review-bombed isn’t a fun experience, it’s been great to see lots of new players jump into Overwatch 2 for the first time. Our goal with Overwatch 2 has been to make the game more accessible than ever for more people than ever before.”
It appears that Blizzard is largely shrugging off the bombing for the time being. Whether they will eventually address problems or not is still left up in the air. Personally, I can’t fault people for getting pretty miffed. So many things that were in the original Overwatch just aren’t there now. It feels like Blizzard ruined a perfectly good thing for corporate greed.
I used to play a ton of Overwatch and it was one of my favorite competitive shooters. Nowadays, I largely go to other games for that thrill, and that’s a darn shame.
(featured image: Blizzard Entertainment)
