Gabriel Stanford-ReisingerSo, Activision Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 has moved on from Early Access. This comes as Season 6 — Invasion — makes its way to players across the world.
Executive producer Jared Neuss told reporters (via IGN) ahead of the launch that Invasion was the moment that the five-on-five team game moved on to full live service development.
Overwatch 2 launched last year after its reveal at BlizzCon 2019, getting a solid player base early on, likely because the original game shuttered right before the new one launched and on top of that, it was free, so there was less of a cost investment for people getting into the scene.
It has faced a lot of pushback from its community for being a needless sequel, especially after the anticipated PvE Hero Mode was shelved. The lack of PvE left fans with a similar but watered-down Overwatch experience.
Neuss On Overwatch 2 Going Into Full Live Game Operations
“We have a bunch of these features we found to be gaps in the game, like finding better ways to recognize player time and investment, learning things about competitive and making adjustments to that, with future adjustments planned… these are all things we got out of that initial period, and now we’re able to move forward and settle into a rhythm. For me, this is the moment where we move out of that early access phase and into full live game operations phase.”