Former developers of OW2 have expressed concerns that because of the game's troubled development and recent layoffs, the Overwatch 2 Story Missions might not get released in the future.
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| Overwatch 2 Story Missions Might Have Been Canceled, Speculates Ex-Devs |
PvE content was a major factor in the development of Overwatch 2, which was initially revealed in 2019. However, this feature, which was meant to differentiate the shooter from its predecessor, was formally dropped last summer in favor of story-based PvE missions, three of which were introduced in August 2023. Although more are rumored to be coming later, Blizzard has been largely silent about the situation for the past six months. And recent reports reveal that these Overwatch 2 Story Missions might not get released in the future.
Ex-Overwatch 2 developers, who have chosen to stay anonymous, discussed their time working on the story content of the game in an interview with Kotaku. They revealed that the first three Story Missions failed to meet expectations both in terms of player satisfaction and financial success. They also stated that several devs working on events, PvE content, and narrative components were affected by Microsoft's January layoffs.
These former employees claim that Blizzard planned to release three story missions around "every 18 months," and each story mission has been worked on to a different extent; some are fully playable, whereas others are still in the concept stage. However, the reality hasn't been quite so simple; according to those surveyed, the missions that have already been released "did not do well at all," falling short of the "serious numbers" that Blizzard targeted and receiving a lukewarm response from players.
The devs reveal that the challenges in delivering this content have been present from the beginning, partly due to the pursuit of 'Blizzard Quality' by senior leadership. One source said, "[Blizzard Quality] is a justification to essentially piss about forever and ever redoing the same work over and over," while another noted, "Some executive goes, 'Hm, but is it Blizzard quality?' It's always leadership or game directors, deciding they need to spend the extra time. So honestly, if they could have just made any kind of decisions, the game would have shipped years ago."
The sources also claimed that adapting Overwatch's gameplay for PvE was challenging due to the PvP-focused nature of hero kits, with priority given to the competitive aspect of the game. A dev said, “PvP was understood to be the core of the game’s success. Everybody still cared a lot about PvE, though, and that includes team leadership.”
The layoffs at Blizzard further complicated matters, particularly for those working on the game's story and PvE elements as Blizzard was forced to lay off staff in January after Xbox said it was firing up to 2,000 employees from its game division. And the departure of key personnel raised doubts about the future of PvE content development for Overwatch 2.
One developer remarked, “If they’re gonna make more of that stuff, they just laid off all the people who were working on it. Maybe there’s some other way they could do it, but most of the people laid off from the Overwatch team were working on that pillar.”
These sources suggest that Overwatch 2's PvE content faced indecision, pessimism, and inflated expectations from the start. Blizzard's executives emphasized quality while expressing confidence in the content, leading to frustration among developers and contributing to its uncertain status.
While this doesn't definitively mean the end of Overwatch 2's story missions, the overall outlook appears uncertain. Moreover, recently, Overwatch 2 moved the Hero Mastery card to the place of the Missions card, making the campaign smaller on the button. So, considering everything, the future of Overwatch 2's cooperative Story missions does not appear bright.
As usual, though, we'll have to wait for Blizzard to officially announce anything before we can be certain of what the OW2 story missions' future contains.
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