Overwatch 2 producer says it’s “gross” when games release OP heroes to drive up sales

Overwatch 2 Executive Producer Jared Neuss is hitting out at game companies that release characters in overpowered states and says Blizzard wouldn’t do that.

The next Overwatch 2 hero will be released in Season 6 and the team has already begun teasing the latest support in trailers and developer blogs.

While the game’s most recent hero, Lifeweaver, wasn’t very popular on launch with clunky controls and weird abilities, the devs say they’ve learned from his release to make the next character more viable.

However, when it comes to deploying heroes that are broken and overpowered, Neuss says the team would never do that and takes issues with developers of games that do.

Overwatch dev wants heroes to be more balanced on release

Speaking with Twitch streamer Emongg, Neuss discussed how Blizzard doesn’t want to unleash heroes “super underpowered” heroes, but aims to find a balance after Lifeweaver’s disastrous launch.

“I think there’s something really gross about games that put a new hero in the game and it’s super OP for three months to drive people to buy it,” he said. “We don’t want to go that route and release heroes that are overpowered.”

Of course, there have been some notorious Overwatch hero rollouts over the years. Brigitte, for instance, was one of the most overpowered heroes in the game and had to be nerfed countless times after she ushered in the controversial GOATS meta.

Neuss went on to cite previous hero releases, admitting how they “haven’t had a great grasp” on making heroes viable, but balanced at launch, with there being some good and bad examples of that so far.

“I think we learned a lot from Lifeweaver and so going forward it’s about trying to identify why we missed the mark on those heroes to make them viable at launch and then fixing them,” he explained, adding that more playtests with broader audiences could help.

The next Overwatch 2 hero is going to be released at the start of Season 6 Invasion. Will she be the most balanced support to date? We’re going to have to wait and find out.