Blizzard Responds to Overwatch Summer Rage

Overwatch developer and little-known winter weather phenomenon Blizzard has recently updated the game with the Overwatch Summer Games: an Olympic-themed minigame where you and your fellow Lucio's (mostly) battle in the world's most blatant Rocket League clone. So far, people are calling it pretty darn fun: so much fun,but that's not all--this new summer games update also comes with a host of new skins, voice overs, and stickers that are distinctly Olympic themed and very much a limited time offer. The problem? These can't be purchased with the in-game currency, and can only be grabbed with real cash-money.

This has ruffled more than a few feathers, especially since earlier Blizzard had said updates to the game would be free. This spits in the face of that. So, as fan discontent grew, Blizzard decided to do something about it, and Jeff Kaplan went to the forum to explain the logic.

"... Sometimes we want things to feel rare and special.

We wanted to try something new with this event. As we mentioned in the Developer Update, we're learning and experimenting with this event. And if the event is received well (my impression so far is that it is being received well once you remove the debate over the items not being available for credits), we will run it again next year. Our Summer Games are on a yearly schedule -- not a 4 year schedule. Our plan would be to have the items available again when the event recurs. Perhaps we add new content to it as well? We're not sure yet... we're seeing what works and what doesn't.

We'd like to give the event more time and see how people feel as it wraps up. Maybe people will be feeling differently at the end of the vent. Maybe not. If we need to make things less rare -- if everyone is entitled to that Genji Epic Skin -- we'll have to reconsider our design philosophy in the future."

So, first thing: hey, at least you'll get to play Lucioball every summer, rather than every four years! That's something! As far as the rest of it, well... yeah, it's really crappy of Blizzard to add something that can only be earned through mictrotransactions in a 60-dollar, full-price game, that already has a pretty bad 'loot' system in place. This explanation doesn't really help things, and unsurprisingly, the outcry hadn't improved in the forum afterwards, although discourse did become a bit more civil.