Blizzard has announced it’s holding a big blowout event for Overwatch 2 next month. The Overwatch 2 Spotlight showcase will take place on February 12 at 10 a.m. Pacific/1 p.m. Eastern and will unveil “groundbreaking changes to the PvP experience that will be unlike anything you’ve seen before,” as well as new maps, playable heroes, and more. We won’t know what that means for a couple of weeks. Still, given that Blizzard didn’t hold its annual Blizzcon event in 2024, I imagine this is the Overwatch 2 team’s chance to regain the lost promo time they didn’t get last year. But something else has happened in the months since Blizzcon would have taken place that has shaken Blizzard’s mostly uncontested spot as the hero shooter king: It now has real competition in Marvel Rivals.
Before NetEase superhero-landed on the scene in December with a Marvel-based hero shooter that has captured the hearts of millions, Overwatch 2 had already been in a state of decline. The sequel has failed to deliver on pretty much any of its promises of being a robust follow-up with PvE elements and a real story, is dealing with an identity crisis as Blizzard tries desperately to figure out if adding the two players it removed to a match would solve all its problems, and most days just feels like a cash grab built upon expensive skins given to the same handful of heroes.
A lot of this stagnation seems tied to layoffs at Blizzard courtesy of Xbox, but whatever the reasoning, Overwatch 2 has lost any benefits it gained from its head start and its cultural cache. Marvel Rivals, meanwhile, is the current hotness. Several content creators who made careers playing and talking about Overwatch are moving onto NetEase’s game, fans are embracing its fun, unbalanced chaos, and its approach to microtransactions and battle passes feels less predatory than that of the average live-service game. Sure, the game is young and there’s plenty of time for something to go wrong. But right now Marvel Rivals has a lot of goodwill and Overwatch 2 doesn’t.
I’m still hopeful that Overwatch 2 can rise from the ashes. Sure, fumbles by top-level management have pushed incredibly talented designers, artists, writers, and others out of a team that was once brimming with passion and promise, but I know there are still people in Blizzard who want Overwatch 2 to be the best version of itself. If it’s not going to be the feature-rich narrative sequel we were promised, I do hope that Blizzard can at least find something to bring the magic back. The team is no doubt aware that Marvel Rivals hangs over Overwatch 2. Every perceived misstep right now might feel like a point on the board for NetEase, and every underwhelming update or recolored skin looks like Overwatch 2 falling further behind.
I don’t know that a new PvP mode is the update Overwatch 2 needs to get back on top. Returning to the 6v6 format won’t wipe away the stench people associate with the game overnight, and after gutting Overwatch 2 into a husk of its former self, Blizzard has to know the window to reclaim its place in the hierarchy of hero shooters is closing. The faded glow of its long-gone status as undisputed king has largely sustained Overwatch 2 through years of content droughts and failure to live up to its potential. In the volatile live-service market, you can only stay in the shadow of something else for so long before players stop searching for you on their desktops. I hope Overwatch 2 can find a way out of the darkness it’s found itself in.