Overwatch Dev Tracker

Haikei, Toshiro, beloved husband:

The cherry blossoms are in glorious bloom after a gentle winter, soft clouds of pink against the green trees on the hillside. The season returns me to the winter day when the Hashimoto took you away from us, when snowflakes fell as the petals do now.

Strange that we are so close, yet we can visit you only when our current “masters” wish it. I hope they value your work enough to bring us together soon. Our daughter appreciated your recent gift, though I pray the blades you forge for the Hashimoto aren’t nearly so sharp, that what you craft for them is only equal to their sordid selves.

The forge of Yamagami Blades remains locked up tight, and since we last saw you in the autumn, we have moved...

The holidays are back, and with them come festive new outfits for Overwatch players to don while they sleigh the competition. Among the skins to unwrap this year are Toybot Zenyatta, a chrome-plated present straight from Santa’s sack, and Penguin Mei, who sports the latest in vogue cuddly climatology gear.

Senior concept artist David Kang, technical artist Ben Gerowe, and concept artist Kejun Wang divulge some of the secrets behind two of this year’s Winter Wonderland skins.

Toys for Bots

One of the most unique skins in the sleigh-load of Winter Wonderland cosmetics, Toybot Zenyatta employs visual effects that allow him to swap between faces in the midst of battle. The dichotomy between smiley and frowny face echoes his mantra of balance in both harmony and discord and gives him a bit of fun flair as he helps allies and hurts enemies. David Kang, the art director for the skin, guided the concept from its inception to its...

It’s not every day you get to use your teammates as literal bullet sponges (Roadhog aside) in a close-quarters firefight. Grab your pulse pistols, don your coziest skin, and get ready to get cold—Freezethaw Elimination, the newest Winter Wonderland brawl, is here. Instead of dying in this brawl, players are frozen solid in blocks of ice that their teammates can thaw (or choose to utilize as sniper cover while they attempt to pull off that perfect headshot). It’s an Overwatch version of freeze tag, one of the popular Workshop modes enjoyed by players in the Arcade.

This new game mode is the brainchild of associate level designer Trey Spisak, whose spark of holiday brilliance during the team’s annual game jam—also the source of the Overwatch Workshop—led to the icy inception of yet another way to play.

Catch up with Spisak and learn more about working on the Overwatch team and what it takes to design event brawls.

Let’s start o...

Despite having been immersed in numerous fantastical worlds and written over 50 novels spanning a multitude of universes, author Christie Golden talks about the Overwatch universe like it’s a home to her.

“I love that it’s a world in which everyone belongs,” she says. “You can celebrate your own culture, or appearance, or beliefs, while also celebrating those of others. Strong teams, friendships, and bonds of respect can be formed with anyone. I’ve always believed that there’s so much more that connects us than divides us.”

Those friendships, bonds, and connections are what she sought to explore in her short story, “Stone by Stone,” a narrative that takes readers on a journey of...

“The most important thing we’re looking out for is: at the end of the day, how can we make Overwatch more fun for our players?” principal game designer Scott Mercer says. He’s discussing the team’s latest idea, as introduced by Jeff Kaplan in the most recent Developer Update video, to do just that. It’s a feature now being tested on the PTR called the Priority Pass that, Mercer hopes, will help equalize the disparate player populations between all three of the game’s roles: tank, support, and damage.

With the Priority Pass, the team seeks to address long Damage ...

You’ve likely done one of them before: slapping a Sorry. speech bubble down over a corpse after pulling off a Play of the Game-worthy team kill; spamming a pixelated version of your hero on the payload while you push it; angling that McCree Wanted poster just right so it’ll frame the face of your teammate’s spray. Sprays are an integral part of the Overwatch experience, whether you’re distorting Cute Moira’s face on that rock in Hanamura or taunting enemies in the kill cam. And, over the game’s lifetime, the Overwatch team has collaborated with a number of different community artists to bring eye-catching event sprays to life.

Overwatch community artist JaviDraws talks art, Symmetra, and what it was like to design sprays for ...

Earn new rewards, including Marammat Symmetra, by winning games and watching Overwatch on Twitch. Plus, embark on a journey of understanding with Symmetra and Zenyatta in Christie Golden’s new Overwatch short story, “Stone by Stone.”

From now until November 30, players will be able to earn a player icon, seven unique sprays, and Marammat Symmetra (epic) for a total of nine new rewards.

• EVERYTHING BY DESIGN - Learn how to unlock brand-new Symmetra rewards
• WATCH TO EARN - Earn special Symmetra-themed cosmetics by watching Twitch streams
• NEW COMIC - Learn more about Christie Golden’s new short story, “Stone by Stone”

EVERYTHING BY DESIGN

Bend reality to your will to earn exceptional new content available to unlock in-game. Wins in Quick Play, Competitive Play, or ...

“We had to develop a few new tools to actually get this to work properly,” Albert Vital, one of the Overwatch team’s technical artists who worked on Shin-Ryeong D.Va, says. In the end, the work paid off: concept artist David Kang’s dream of an untamed fox-girl caught mid-transformation was fully realized by the Overwatch art team in 3D, complete with tails that trail behind her mech-less form while she scampers around the boundaries of teamfights.

Shin-Ryeong D.Va’s pilot form isn’t the only star of this Halloween Terror show. She rides in spooky style, her temple-mech accented by tiny details like guttering candles on her fusion cannons, stone lanterns for boosters, and long strips of fabric that flutter ominously behind her as she hunts for her next kill.

Read on as Vital and Kang share more about the creation of D.Va’s fiercest skin yet.

How did you get started in the in...

At first, concept artist Daryl Tan doesn't even mention "art" when asked to describe his work. "I'm an idea salesperson," he says.

So are all of Daryl’s fellow concept artists on the Overwatch team. And it’s their job to make lots of people—inside Blizzard and out—into believers.

When a player’s interacting with a creative work, they need to be convinced to suspend their disbelief. Immersing you in another world requires an artist to invent credible details and to ensure their work keeps its essence in the face of development iteration. Here’s how the Overwatch team—armed with Photoshop and an aptitude for 2D illustration—does it.

Characters and Weapons

Senior concept artist Qiu Fang started at Blizzard in 2016, and he was soon assigned to work on the Talon units deployed to stop Blackwatch during the Overwatch: Retribution Archives mission. Those units weren’t the stars of the show—that ...

Soldiers. Scientists. Adventurers. Oddities.

At its core, the story of Overwatch is one of heroes. Individuals from globe-spanning walks of life bonded by their belief in a better future for the world they inhabit. And there’s no better time to delve into the past of a hero familiar to all as the game’s poster girl than with the release of her titular comic, Tracer: London Calling. Before you dive into issue #2, discover more about how this iconic Overwatch character became who she is today.

FROM TEST PILOT TO TIME-JUMPER

The youngest member ever inducted into Overwatch’s experimental flight program, Lena Oxton—callsign: “Tracer”—was a hotshot p...

Zap! Pow! Bang! Pew Pew! You’ve seen the sound effects in comics, accompanying intense scenes of mayhem and madness. Now, these effects have been made into sprays and stickers that adorn the gauntlets of the latest epic skin, Comic Book Tracer—a love letter to the influence of comics on the themes and style of Overwatch.

There’s more to Comic Book Tracer, however, than just the little details that give her unique artistic flair. The skin is a product of the collaboration between Overwatch concept artists and the talented team behind Tracer: London Calling, the...

Blink into battle now to earn rad new limited-time rewards, including the Comic Book Tracer skin.

From now until September 28, players will be able to earn a player icon, seven unique sprays, and Comic Book Tracer (epic) for a total of nine new rewards.

• LET’S GET TO IT! - Learn how to unlock brand-new Tracer rewards
• WATCH TO EARN - Earn special comic-themed cosmetics by watching Twitch streams
• NEW COMIC - Learn more about issue #1 of the new comic, Tracer—London Calling

LET’S GET TO IT

Pull out your pulse pistols and pew pew your way into the fight with special comic-themed content available to unlock in-game. Wins in Quick Play, Competitive Play, or Arcade will all earn you a limited-time player icon, a spray, and a new epic...

You’re at the beach, sprawled out on a tastefully patterned towel on the postcard-perfect Mediterranean beachfront in Ilios. The sea breeze softly whispers by, gentle gusts complemented by the song of waves breaking on the shore. It’s perfect. It’s summer paradise.

Until it’s not.

Your reverie is shattered by seven screamed syllables. “No surfing in the swim zone!” shouts what you can only assume is a lifeguard. You hear the sound of torrential water, akin to twin fire hoses being sprayed furiously at a sand dune. Curious, you glance in the direction of this disturbance to your bliss, only to see. . . the lifeguard? Flying through the air toward a wayward surfboarder caught up by the tide? With a water jetpack?

A perfect marriage of futuristic lifeguard style with a hydrosports-inspired water jetpack in place of her combat suit, Lifeguard Pharah is just one of the eight new visions crafted by the Overwatch team’s skin concept artists for the 2020 O...

The world needs heroes now more than ever, it seems. And digital heroes need quite a lot to exist: dramatic motivations, iconic aesthetics, deep designs. But they need code in far greater quantities. Over 2.7 million lines of evolving code power the tools that support Overwatch today.

The Architechs on Overwatch’s engine and tools teams are the keepers of that legacy, and there’s no game without their work.

The Engine Team

Overwatch’s engine team builds the technical infrastructure of the game’s many systems, among them graphics, visual effects, gameplay physics, and audio—the “building blocks” that enable development. Lead Software Engineer Phil Teschner, who worked on the Halo series and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning before joining Blizzard, is the engine team’s chief block wran...

It’s your turn to take the stage! Take part in Sigma’s symphony to earn limited-time rewards, including Maestro Sigma (legendary).

From now until July 27, players will be able to earn a player icon, a legendary emote, six unique sprays, and Maestro Sigma (legendary) for a total of nine new rewards.

• THE MAESTRO - Learn how to unlock brand-new Sigma rewards
• WATCH TO EARN - Earn special music-themed cosmetics by watching Twitch streams
• AMP IT UP! - Learn more about the new soundtrack, Overwatch: Cities & Countries

THE MAESTRO

Take part in Sigma’s symphony and shine under the spotlight with special concerto-themed content available to unlock in-game. Wins in Quick Play, Competitive Play, or Arcade will all earn you a limited-time...

What is that melody? A brand new collection of Overwatch music, featuring the themes from the game’s maps and missions. Overwatch: Cities & Countries releases worldwide starting Today! Get a taste of the album with the YouTube playlist!

Overwatch:Cities & Countries is undergoing rolling releases across several popular music streaming platforms, going live in each region on July 13. Check back in on ...

With the launch of Season 23, Overwatch players will be able to enjoy a new option in Competitive mode with the addition of Open Queue, available starting today. Open Queue, which will live in the Competitive Play menu, will allow players to team up using different compositions from the 2 Tank/2 Damage/2 Support makeups in Role Queue. Furthermore, the Skill Rating (SR) earned in Open Queue will be separate from the SRs earned in Role Queue.

Michael Heiberg, principal game designer on Overwatch, says the decision to add Open Queue to Competitive Play came off the heels of its success in the Arcade, where players can face off in rotating non-standard game modes.

It all started with a simple experiment.

“We were looking at how popular Quick Play Classic has been,” says Heiberg, “and we wondered how successful an open queue alternative for Competitive would be.”

In keeping with some of the team’s main goals for Overwatch this year—fast balancing, lots o...

You’ve pulled off incredible POTGs, pushed millions of payloads, booped your foes off the map and into oblivion, and danced your way into the hearts of your teammates. It’s been an incredible four years of Overwatch. For the Overwatch team, it’s also been years of ingenuity, of creating a game that is a love letter to an auspicious future in which anyone––soldiers, adventurers, scientists, oddities––can become a hero. Years of art, engineering, programming, and development to bring together millions of players worldwide and foster the creation of bonds and memories. And, since the inception of Overwatch, we’ve made countless memories of our own.

To commemorate the game’s fourth anniversary, a few team members took the time to share some of their favorite moments from the development of Overwatch and the past several years of fun that the game has brought.

Dylan Jones, lead character technical artist:

...

You’re powered up, get in there!

It's been an incredible year, and we're so thankful you were a part of it. To celebrate our fourth Overwatch Anniversary together—and the community that made it all possible (that's you!)—all players who log in this weekend on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, 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 5 at 11:00 a.m. PDT and ends on Tuesday, June 9 at 11:59 p.m. PDT. If you'...

Overwatch concept artist Qiu Fang has a knack for envisioning rugged, outdoorsy characters. Four years ago, when he was an art student with aspirations of becoming a character concept artist, Fang began a personal project depicting a ragtag group of nomadic hunters. The concepts displayed careful control of a muted color palette, precise line art, and small details of equipment and improvised technology that hinted at a world beyond the images.

Fang was proud of his work, but he never expected what happened next: The Overwatch team found his project and recruited him.

“Everything in Qiu’s design seemed to have purpose and function,” says concept artist David Kang, who stumbled across Fang’s work on the portfolio website ArtStation. “I loved that he had a lot of experience not only in fantasy but with functional mechanical tech.”

After a successful series of interviews, Fang left school and joined Blizzard. Now he uses his considerable artistic powers to bri...