Season three begins on February 7 and brings with it a host of all-new content, including the new Antarctic Peninsula Control map, a new Asian Mythology theme and Battle Pass with a Mythic Kiriko skin, the Ultimate Valentine’s in-game event featuring a browser-based Overwatch Dating Simulator: Loverwatch, and an IP collaboration —a first-ever for Overwatch 2. What’s more, PachiMarchi returns in March!

Read on for a short summary of the matchmaking, competitive, and balance changes we’re making in season three, a preview of what to expect from our upcoming patches, and details on the return of the Overwatch World Cup! Season three also introduces Workshop mode with new auto-moderation tech along with several accessibility improvements. Let’s get to it!

New Antarctic Peninsula Control Map

Control gets its first new map in Overwatch 2 in the form of frosty Antarctica! We have already visited the main facility of Ecopoint: Antarctica, as seen in ...

Hi all! We’re back a little earlier than we had originally planned. Think of this as a bonus Dev Chat!

We’re going to mostly focus on maps and level design this go around.

Off we go!

Map Pools… You were right. We were wrong. Map Pools are going away starting in season 4. We aimed to provide a bit of freshness each season and concentrate the number of maps that people were playing, however player sentiment around map pools was pretty low, the map roster doesn’t have enough maps where we truly need them, and the impact they had on seasonal identity was fairly low. Additionally, the cadence for maps leaving and returning to the pool didn’t align with the time it took to make changes to the maps. Gibraltar was supposed to return in Season 4 but the playtesting and iteration we were doing for the map started calling that deadline into question. There’s the possibility that we bring map pools back in the far future when we have...

With the launch of Overwatch 2, we have welcomed over 40 million players, both returning and new, to the world of Overwatch! Since becoming free-to-play, we've continued to combat disruptive behaviors, including gameplay sabotage, abusive chat, and cheating. As explained in the introduction to our Defense Matrix initiative, we've already made strides to push toward a fairer gaming experience for all our players. Today, we have a few updates we'd like to share about how we’re continuing to ensure Overwatch 2 is a fun and safe game for everyone to enjoy.