Jeff Kaplan finally reveals date of next Overwatch Developer Update

Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan has revealed that a developer update is on the horizon, giving players hope that changes involving hero bans, role queue, and crucial balance updates are on their way.

The Overwatch team hasn’t posted a developer update in over six months, fuelling community concerns about the state of the game.

While there’s been leaks of hero bans coming in an upcoming update, as well as a new version of role queue, there’s not been much communication between Blizzard and the players. However, that’s changing, with Jeff Kaplan announcing that a developer update is on its way.

The face of the Overwatch dev team responded to players’ concerns on the forums on January 21, saying that an update is due by the end of January.

“We recently recorded a developer update,” he said. “It’s scheduled to come out towards the end of the month. We’ll try to do them more frequently.”

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The response helped alleviate the worries of players, who were hoping for some more communication from the developers as more details about future updates were being leaked.

Prominent Overwatch leaker Metro revealed on January 20 that “it’s very likely that hero bans will be added to the game as the dev team has been working on them for a while.” There hasn’t been any official comment on the concept which has divided the player base.

On top of that, the Overwatch team have also been testing new variations of the role queue system. Jeff Kaplan himself shared the concepts they’ve been trialling in a January 14 forum post, and will likely go into more detail in the developer update video.

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With Overwatch 2 on the horizon, players have been concerned that resources have been dedicated into ensuring that the expansion could be released in 2020, neglecting the game as it is now.

With nine days left in January, players shouldn’t have to wait too long for Jeff Kaplan to make his first appearance on a developer update in over six months.

With plenty of rumors and leaks about there’ll be a lot to talk about, and hopefully some good news will grace Overwatch players soon.