Vince Pavey is a writer from the North-East of England who has worked on comics for The Beano and Doctor Who. He likes to play video games and eat good food. Sometimes he does both at the same time, but he probably shouldn’t.
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Overwatch 2 was first announced in 2019, but progress updates have been few and far between when it comes to the hotly anticipated co-op campaign mode and honestly somewhat confusing cross-title expansion pack for the multiplayer mode.
Twitch partnered Overwatch streamer Metro has leaked insider information on the game from his trusted sources, saying that development is taking longer than expected and Overwatch 2 may be so delayed that it misses next year entirely. This is surprising as Overwatch 2’s development team had previously promised an admittedly vague 2021 release date.
OW2 News
I've heard from multiple people close to my original source with OW2 that the development is taking longer than expected. From what I can gather a release in 2022 does not seem likely anymore. I hope this is false and I'm proven wrong.
— Metro (@Metro_OW) August 7, 2021
This has upset fans of the series, who are now expecting to have to wait until at least 2023. The original Overwatch has not had a real content update since 2020, which only further adds salt to the wound for people who are sticking with the hero shooter even though Riot Games have released their own competitor hero shooter game called Valorant.
Conflicting Information From Blizzard
Blizzard Entertainment (best known for the Warcraft series) claims that Overwatch 2 development is going smoothly, and that they have “passed an important internal milestone in recent weeks.” but no one really knows what that milestone is and the company has both merged with Vicarious Visions and had a large wave of staff layoffs in recent months.
One leak also suggested that there is an unannounced mobile port of Overwatch 2 in development, which might lead to success for the game in the same markets as fellow Activision shooter Call of Duty: Mobile. This could be one of the reasons that Overwatch 2’s release has been delayed.
Activision Blizzard has been the subject of several employment harassment and workplace culture scandals lately, which will likely distract from this news quite a bit. It’s likely these scandals, combined with a lack of updates and generally dwindling game popularity, are why big companies like Pringles, IBM, and State Farm have stopped sponsoring the Overwatch League with no reason given to the public.
When Activision Blizzard announce the release date for Overwatch 2, we’ll let you know.
