Blizzard now sells a seasonal battle pass, and the studio has dropped its maligned and predatory loot box system for an in-game shop that sells character skins and other cosmetic items directly in exchange for in-game currency.And as you might suspect, those methods now include many of the familiar monetization strategies popularized by Fortnite and its contemporaries.

Overwatch’s new economy is familiar, but is it fair? Blizzard’s free-to-play transition means Overwatch 2 must make money through means other than upfront cost. And the early sentiment toward this transition underscores some major hurdles facing the game industry and its current love affair with the live service model. As such, the game is now free to play.īut now that Overwatch 2 is out in the wild, after a rough launch resulting in multiple days of connection and login problems, players are grappling with a new realization: While the gameplay is near-identical, Overwatch now sports a vastly different in-game economy.

As I first noted over the summer, the reboot of the once-popular hero shooter has been more about restructuring the game’s business model than about adding more content to justify a new price tag. Overwatch’s new economy exposes old problemsīlizzard’s long-awaited Overwatch 2 is not your typical sequel.

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