“We’re actively working towards it”
Blizzard is teasing a major shift in its monetization model, with executive producer Jared Neuss stating on a recent podcast that the “goal” is to make all new heroes available to everyone at the start of new seasons.
Overwatch 2 currently sells a premium battle pass that allows players to instantly unlock a season’s new hero (assuming there is one that season), leaving people to opt for the free version of the battle pass to grind their way through the tiers required to unlock the new hero. However, in an interview with SVB’s Group Up! podcast, Neuss strongly implied that all of that is about to change, but he did not provide any specifics.
“Would I like for every single player to be able to experience a hero the day that a season drops? Yes,” he said. “Do I think that we will get there? Yes, I do think that we will get there and we’re actively working towards it. right now. Can I talk about the details? No, I can’t.”
Neuss was responding to the podcast host’s question about the perception of pay-to-win in Overwatch 2’s current monetization model, which locks new heroes behind the paid battle pass and makes that hero’s unique meta and potential ability to hard counter other heroes unavailable to the game’s full player base until they complete the required tiers.
“We’re making sure that we’re balancing that, like, we’re free to play, with fairness, so it’s like, yes, obviously you can earn every hero, you don’t have to buy them, but like you said, there’s this period of time then where, does a team have a competitive advantage? That’s one of the reasons we want to change our model going forward.”
Intriguingly, Neuss is not only openly discussing such a significant change to Overwatch 2’s monetization model, but also potentially hinting at larger changes to the model. Again, he doesn’t go into detail beyond this change to the release of new heroes, but it sounds like there’s a larger conversation about monetization going on behind the scenes that we’ll likely see play out in future seasons.