Seagull slams Blizzard’s silence over state of Overwatch 2 development

Former Overwatch League pro turned content creator Brandon ‘Seagull’ Larned has slammed Blizzard over their lack of communication about Overwatch 2, saying that a lack of content in the base game plus a lack of knowledge about the expansion is killing the player base.

It’s been almost a year since Overwatch 2 was revealed at BlizzCon 2019. Then, players of Blizzard’s FPS franchise were hyped for the game’s big rejuvenation. New content, a whole new PvE campaign, and much-needed updated to the PvP side of things.

However, in those nine months since, players have been met with deathly silence. Games like Valorant have gone from announced, to released, churning out new content on a monthly basis. Call of Duty is about to get another title. In Overwatch though, there’s hardly anything.

While seasonal events like Summer Games have brought back fan-favorites like Lucioball, the only thing that’s new is some cosmetics, and Echo. Fed up with the lack of content, Seagull put out an impassioned plea to Blizzard to tell the community what is happening with Overwatch’s sequel.

“How is it acceptable as a live service game to be on our fifth summer of Lucioball in a row? How is that acceptable? How is it acceptable that we repeat the same seasonal events…[and] our game has almost no content compared to any other game,” he stated during a podcast on August 8.

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“I’m not talking about just gameplay, but Overwatch 2 better get their sh*t together. It is a joke that other games can drop content on a seasonal basis, and we’re sitting here like ‘man we only get three heroes this year.’ Valorant is like ‘yeah we get a new hero every two months, we have seasons, we have a battle pass, we have quests and lore.’ Where are we [in Overwatch]?”

Seagull mentioned Overwatch has its fair share of gameplay issues ⁠— power creep and a lack of hero bans being the two biggest ones. However, that’s not the biggest problem with the franchise now. The biggest issue is the lack of content to get excited about.

PvP players have no idea what to expect when the sequel launches. We already know it’s going to have a heavy PvE focus with the new campaign. However, what that campaign looks like is anyone’s guess. In Seagull’s words, we don’t know if it’s “closer to like Destiny or Borderlands.”

“They’re making a PvE game right now. Do we even expect them to continue with seasonal content for Overwatch 2? Will there be any content? We don’t know their content schedule plans.

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“Will there be PvE raids, loot progression, hard content, easy content, campaign ⁠— we know literally nothing, and I find that to be so ridiculous for a franchise of this size that I don’t know if Overwatch 2 is closer to Destiny or Borderlands.”

With Blizzard seemingly dedicating more resources to pumping out the sequel, it’s left players in the lurch for the time being. As other franchises like Call of Duty pump out seasonal content while a new release comes around, it leaves the question begging why can’t Overwatch do the same?

“We know it can be good, [Blizzard] just need to put out content. Do a seasonal model, do a regular expansion model. At this point, full Call of Duty model to Overwatch would be better than what we have right now. You get more content.”

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It’s also killing Seagull’s faith in the PvP product. The former Overwatch pro believes the competitive side of the title is on life support as the dev team is split between two products, and that much-needed balance improvements will be left on the back burner.

“The dev team has already demonstrated that [Blizzard] are going to sacrifice content to build Overwatch 2. OW2, and most of its development time, is probably going towards the PvE side of the game. Why would that not continue in the future?

“It was already rough in OW1, why should I expect it to improve in any meaningful capacity for OW2 now that you’re implementing an entire PvE mode? I have full faith in Blizzard to make a PvE product… but I’m curious about the future of the PvP side of the game. Will that continue to be a priority in the future, because I doubt it.”