The Overwatch 2 beta is live right now for Blizzard employees and Overwatch League pros, but it won’t be much longer before you can play it yourself. Blizzard has opened beta sign-ups for its upcoming FPS game, and the first wave of participating players will be able to get in starting in April. Additional players will be added in waves, ahead of larger stress tests with bigger player numbers later on.
With the beta, you’ll see Overwatch trimmed down to its new 5v5 configuration, with a new playable hero in Sojourn. There will be four reworked heroes in Orisa, Doomfist, Bastion, and Sombra, and four new maps in Circuit Royal (Escort), Midtown (Hybrid), New Queen Street (Push), and Colosseo (Push). The Push game mode is new to Overwatch 2, as is the ping system, which will also be available in the beta.
You can sign up for the beta over on the official site. (We still don’t know when the proper Overwatch 2 release date will land.)
The devs have also announced that they’ll be “decoupling” Overwatch 2’s PvP and PvE modes in order to “get new PvP content into your hands sooner”. So don’t expect to see any PvE content in these early releases.
In July 2021, the state of California filed a lawsuit against Activision Blizzard alleging years of workplace discrimination and harassment. The story has since embroiled CEO Bobby Kotick and prompted the US federal government to open an investigation. It continues to unfold and to be of immense importance to the game industry. You can catch up on all the developments so far in this regularly updated explainer article.
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