Blizzard has confirmed that they are ending development on the PvE co-op Hero Mode that was originally planned for Overwatch 2. Instead, the studio will apply all of its efforts to developing seasons, maps, characters and content for the free-to-play competitive multiplayer mode. There will also be more of a narrative running through the game’s seasons and limited time PvE events.
Here’s the announcement from Game Director Aaron Keller and Executive Producer Jared Neuss on the latest dev chat:
Overwatch 2 was announced at BlizzCon 2019, with a big part of the announcement being that, while the PvP would be cross-compatible with the original game release, this would justify the new number at the end by having a big PvE Hero Mode and story attached to it.
As the company went through internal struggles through 2021 and Overwatch 2’s development suffered as a result, they eventually made the decision to split development, get PvP out of the door with a new free-to-play business model and then bring PvE out at a later date. Overwatch 2 arrived in October last year, making significant changes through a shift to 5v5 teams, battle passes, and more.
Speaking in a lengthy interview with Gamespot, Keller said “The development of any game is a process. In the years following our announcement at BlizzCon 2019, we had a really large portion of our team working on the PvE side of that game, and I think players of our live running game could feel that because we eventually stopped making content for it. […]
“It was about a year and a half ago that we made the decision to really shift strategy. That’s when we rapidly shifted the resources on our team to work on launching Overwatch 2, and that’s what came out last October.[..]
“As we were running up to launching Overwatch 2, we realized that we could not build that other game. 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. 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.
While the Hero Mode is gone, with all of its extensive missions, the Talents system and more that was originally revealed, PvE is not dead. Instead, Blizzard will use it as it has in the past, as seasonal temporary events to make for a break from the PvP, and it will tie in with seasonal narratives.
Here’s what’s on the roadmap:
