Overwatch Dev Tracker

The reckoning draws near. Stalk amongst the shadows to reap limited-time rewards, including the Legendary Dusk Reaper skin.

From now until March 8, players will be able to earn a player icon, seven unique sprays, and Dusk Reaper (Legendary) for a total of nine new rewards.

• DEATH BECOMES YOU - Learn how to unlock rewards
• WATCH TO EARN - Earn special Reaper-themed cosmetics by watching Twitch streams
• CODE OF VIOLENCE - Learn more about the latest Overwatch short story

DEATH BECOMES YOU

Playing games in Quick Play, Competitive Play, and Arcade will earn you a limited-time player icon, a spray, and the Legendary Dusk Reaper skin, in addition to regular weekly rewards! Each win counts as two games.

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The second Experimental Card Creator Cup is just around the corner! For the past week, players and teams have been diving into the whimsical and wild changes stacked within the new Creator Experimental Card. The teams have all signed up, and now it’s time to see who will climb to the top of the competition!  

To broadcast both the NA and EU regional tournaments, the Overwatch Team is partnering with both Overwatch League and Monkey Bubble.  

NA Broadcast powered by the Overwatch Team and the ...

Overwatch has teamed up with content creators to build the second Creator Experimental Card! This daring and wild experimental patch will feature updates, changes, and additions never seen in Overwatch before. We have given our creators complete freedom to turn the Experimental game mode into their sandbox and imagine their own versions of Overwatch. No hero will be left unchanged, and you may find some of their updates fresh and new... yet strangely familiar.  

An unexpected, but not unwelcome, development.  

Our group of content creators for this experimental card is as interesting and unique as their proposed changes. They include an incredibly diverse group of creators featuring professional Overwatch players, casters, and streamers. If you aren’t familiar with them, make sure to check out their channels and work! Here’s the lineup for the second-ever Creator Experimental Card:  

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Lunar New Year is a special time to pay homage to times past while celebrating the hope for a better future. This year is no exception for Overwatch as we look forward to the Year of the Tiger, and honor the beast symbolic for courage, respect, and momentous changes yet to come.

Lead concept artist David Kang and concept artist Tim Guo personified these symbols in their creative visions for the latest Legendary skins: Seolbim Mercy and Nezha Tracer.

Kang began the ideation for Seolbim Mercy by attempting to portray themes like beauty, grace, and royalty. One of Kang’s top priorities was to create a skin that honored Korean culture and Lunar New Year. “We are really proud of the Hanbok—a traditional Korean dress,” says Kang. “We wanted to create a Hanbok gown that would have been worn by royal...

’Tis the season for the coziest event in Overwatch! We’re introducing new festive, frigid, and fashionable cosmetics to turn every game into a winter wonderland. Some of the gifts you might find in your Loot Boxes include Snowman Wrecking Ball, Ice Wraith Genji, and Sleighing D.Va!

To celebrate the event, we teamed up with concept artists Morten Skaalvik and Yiming Liu, as well as senior concept artists Qiu Fang and Nesskain, to learn more about how these magical legendary skins came to life.

Snowman Wrecking Ball

The process of creating a new skin for any hero starts with an ideation phase. This is where Concept Artist, Morten Skaalvik, drafted the first version of Snowman Wrecking Ball. The ideation for this skin was chilly and snowy, with Wrecking Ball c...

Hanzo re-learned geometry just for this tournament.  
 

It's not quite Scatter Arrow, but you should check out the Creator Experimental Card that has completely turned the game upside down.  
 

This December 10-12 will be the first ever ...

The Experimental Card enables the Overwatch team to test out changes that are outside the scheduled patch cycle. This gives us a lot of creative freedom while not having to worry about completely shocking the retail game. We thought it would be a brilliant idea to extend that same creative freedom directly to our content creators and community.  

What an interesting hypothesis.   

Everyone is invited to check out our newest Creator Experimental Card beginning November 30, 2021, featuring over-the-top balance ideas coming directly from Overwatch content creators. Each of the following creators will submit wild, whimsical and, dare we say, wacky changes for any of the heroes within their role:  

• Violet—Support  
• Flats—Tank  
• Somjuu—DPS  

We are also teaming up with these creators to bring you a new competitive community tournament: Overwatc...

Introduction  

The Overwatch team hosted a live AMA on /r/Competitiveoverwatch to talk about the recent Overwatch League pro playtest. We welcomed Lead Hero Designer Geoff Goodman and Hero Designer Josh Noh to answer community questions about 5v5 and upcoming balance changes. In case you missed out, we’ve got you covered with all of the highlights below.

Hero Reworks Bastion and Sombra  

Overall, the team is happy with Bastion's current tool kit after the recent rework and is working on adjusting numbers to get him into a good place. Geoff Goodman replied to a question about Bastion's performance from u/BarstMain.

GEOFF GOODMAN: Sinc...

Saddle up and ride into action to earn new limited-time rewards, including the Sandstorm Cassidy skin.

From now until November 23, players will be able to earn a player icon, seven unique sprays, and Sandstorm Cassidy (epic) for a total of nine new rewards.

• WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE - Learn how to unlock rewards
• WATCH TO EARN - Earn special Cassidy-themed cosmetics by watching Twitch streams
• NEW BLOOD - Learn more about the latest Overwatch comic starring everyone’s favorite gunslinger

WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE

Playing games in Quick Play, Competitive Play, and Arcade will earn you a limited-time player icon, an Ana and Cassidy spray, and Sandstorm Cassidy, in addition to regular weekly rewards! Each win counts as two games.

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As we introduce a new name, you might have the desire to do the same. Starting 22 October, 2021 and continuing through 5 November, 2021, all players will be offered a free BattleTag name change. This applies to anyone who does not currently have a free name change available. Existing name changes will not stack for future use.

Players can request a name change through this form. You will receive a notification once your request has been processed. Please allow up to four weeks for processing.

Thanks and we’ll see you in game!

The Overwatch Team

The spookiest event of the season has returned to Overwatch, bringing with it a slew of sinister new skins guaranteed to transform every battlefield into a graveyard smash. Some of the treats you might find in your Loot Boxes this Halloween include Echo’s blood-chilling Vampire Bat attire, a grim new getup for Bastion, and the styled-to-slay Vampire Hunter Brigitte.

To celebrate this frightful event, we caught up with concept artists Daryl Tan and Morten Skaalvik to discuss how they approached designing three of the latest Legendaries.

Halloween Terror gives the minds on the Overwatch team a chance to indulge their spookiest artistic senses. From ‘80s slasher flicks

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Tired of lounging around at home? Have your local haunts become boring to visit? Looking to travel somewhere new without having to fight over photo-op spots and restaurant tables with flocks of fanny pack-wearing tourists? Look no further than Malevento—your next vacation destination.

While visiting Malevento, you can enjoy a late lunch accompanied by chilled white wine on a patio overlooking the verdant hills, watch hot air balloons alight above the countryside, stroll down cobblestone streets ensconced between rows of ivy-swathed buildings, and more. The town boasts a rich history (and even richer benefactors funding its recent reconstruction); there’s somewhere in Malevento for everyone to enjoy, whether they’re fast-paced flankers, heavy-hitting tanks, or environmental experts who prefer to play on the edge.

Catch up with Thomas, a senior level designer on the Overwatch team, to discuss the newest Deathmatch map: Malevento.

MAKE A SPLASH

Bon voyage! It’s time to celebrate summer with the ultimate getaway: the Overwatch Summer Games. Earn weekly rewards, get new cosmetics, and bring your A-game in the Lúcioball arena.

AMP IT UP

Overwatch’s futuristic spin on soccer is back! Team up to boop the ball into the opponent’s goal. The team that scores the most points before time runs out wins the game.

In 2014, the introduction to the world of Overwatch began with the fervent beat of a drum. As the screen flashed to an image of a frigid Russian warfront littered gun-toting militants and arachnid-like omnics, the music surged into a crescendo of heavy horns and distressed violins while a disembodied voice uttered a single word: Conflict.

We glimpsed havoc. Global devastation wrought by malevolent, seemingly unstoppable robotic entities. A world teetering on the brink of anarchy.

But, then, the music segued into a swell of triumphant trumpets. A new hope arose. For the first time, we saw the soldiers, scientists, adventurers, and oddities that comprise the ranks of the international task force we would come to know as Overwatch.

This first animated short—and the many that would follow it—was a marriage of visual and musical passion crafted by the artists and composers whose work on the many Overwatch cinematics has now be...

In the wake of the calamitous Omnic Crisis, the world is desperate for heroes more than ever. The young upstarts of the Deadlock Gang might not be the heroes the future-possible world of Overwatch needs, but they’re here, regardless, in all of their riotous gunslinging glory.

Deadlock Rebels is a novel set in the American Southwest of Overwatch during the years of turmoil that followed the Omnic Crisis that explores the founding of the notorious Deadlock Gang. Elizabeth Caledonia Ashe, an opportunistic young thief recently disinherited from her family’s fortune, teams up with local delinquent Jesse McCree and her omnic butler, B.O.B., for a cavalcade of capers.

The novel is written by author Lyndsay Ely, who was well-equipped wit...

Join the fight now to earn new limited-time rewards, including the Deadlock Ashe skin.

From now until July 5, players will be able to earn a player icon, seven unique sprays, and the Deadlock Ashe skin for a total of nine new rewards.

• MY BUSINESS, MY RULES - Learn how to unlock rewards
• WATCH TO EARN - Earn special Ashe-themed cosmetics by watching Twitch streams
• READ UP AND READY UP - Check out Deadlock Rebels, a new Overwatch novel

MY BUSINESS, MY RULES

It’s time to get your hands dirty. Unlock special Ashe-themed content in-game by playing Quick Play, Competitive Play, or Arcade to earn a limited-time player icon, a spray, and a new epic skin: Deadlock Ashe.

These special Ashe’s Deadlock Challenge rewards ar...

Cross-Play is now live in Overwatch, allowing players to group up and play together across platforms. Powered by the latest global Battle.net update, players from around the world can team up, regardless of their preferred platform*. With the release of cross-play, all players will need to make a Battle.net account and link their appropriate console accounts. With the launch of Cross-Play, everyone who logs in to Overwatch by the end of 2021 will receive a Golden Loot Box to celebrate.

Check out our resources below to get all of your questions answered.

Prepare Your Account

All console players will...

Hi, everyone! My name is Marco Alamia, and I am a software engineer on the Overwatch team. Since we recently finished working on a new piece of technology for Overwatch 2, we thought it would be a great opportunity to give the community a sneak peek of what goes into creating improvements for a game engine. To assist me in this endeavor, I have enlisted the help of two other developers from the Overwatch team: Bruce Wilkie and Fabien Christin.

The new technology we added to the engine is called Environment States, and it has quickly become our favorite workflow for map creation and design. Although the feature is developed and refined inside the Overwatch 2’s engine and tools, the core idea stems from the mind of our talented lighting artist, Fabien. I asked Fabien to help us understand how he came up with the idea that has now reshaped how the team creates maps, and to walk us through his design process.

Let’s dive into Environment States!

“Let’s up the tempo!”

Thank you for another wonderful year of Overwatch! To celebrate our fifth Overwatch Anniversary together—and the community that made it all possible (that's you!)—all players who log in this weekend on PC, PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo Switch will receive double experience.

This bonus will apply to nearly all sources of in-game XP, including:

• Time spent in a match
• Completing a match
• Completing consecutive matches
• Winning a match
• Backfilling a match in progress
• Earning medals

It will also stack multiplicatively with existing group and IGR bonuses. The only experience it will not affect is your First Win of the Day bonus—which will remain at 1500 XP.

This bonus experience period begins in all regions across all platforms on Friday, June 4 at 11:00 a.m. PDT and ends on Wednesday, June 9 at 11:00 a.m. PDT. If you'd like to see when the bonus will go l...

Funk meets (Junk)food in this year’s Overwatch Anniversary event, with Baptiste donning his grooviest garb and Junkrat sporting his most explosively-enticing ensemble yet. With the fifth Anniversary celebration in full swing, we caught up with senior concept artist David Kang to talk about two of the new Legendary skins: Funky Baptiste and Junkfood Junkrat.

While skins for other events like Halloween Terror and Winter Wonderland tend to work within the constraints of a seasonal thematic, the Anniversary event is a chance for artists on the Overwatch team to unlock their mental vaults and pen some of the year’s wildest skin concepts.

Kang oversaw each skin’s journey from concept to completion. He also supervised the work of the talented artists from outside Blizzard that the team was lucky to work with, ensuring that the finished look of each skin had a perfect amount of Overwatch charm and flair.

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