The upcoming PvE for the free-to-play Overwatch 2 will be paywalled.
Blizzard Entertainment announced that its co-op Invasion mode will cost $15 for permanent access to the three-mission mode after it leaves seasonal rotation. In-game cosmetics and currency are also included in that bundle.
Previous seasonal content across Overwatch 2 and its predecessor was free of charge. This marks the franchise’s first post-launch seasonal content players will have to pay for to access, and bucks a trend that’s been a part of similar free-to-play games for ages.
Overwatch 2 steps into another messaging debacle
Overwatch 2 isn’t even a year old, and its lifecycle is already kind of complicated. This wrinkle to its co-op mode further shows how the game is struggling to justify its own existence.
When the game was first announced at BlizzCon 2019, PvE was the primary selling point. Since the first Overwatch came with no narrative mode, its inclusion here felt like a real shift to appeal to both its competitive player base and those invested in its narrative, who were previously sated with expanded media.
Now dubbed “Story Missions,” Blizzard announced the change in its PvE direction back in May. Previously, the studio’s ambitions would’ve involved skill trees for each of the game’s Heroes (which are nearing 40, at time of writing) and new enemy units.
Story Missions are one of the big highlights of Overwatch 2’s sixth season, which begins in August. But since Blizzard was quiet on PvE until a month ago, the question of whether the mode would be gated off to players willing to spend real money was never really brought up.
At time of writing, it’s unknown if future Story Missions will be similarly paywalled, or if it’ll be possible to buy Story Missions after they leave seasonal rotation.