Overwatch

The Internet Reacts To Hanzo’s Abtacular Summer Skin

We’re once again in the midst of summer’s steamiest months, and you know what that means: Blizzard has made yet another Overwatch character hot. Also, Lucioball is back for the fourth year in a row. Between those two things, it’s unsurprising that it’s Hanzo “Hotzo” Shimada who’s the talk of the balmy beach town right…

Overwatch League is officially leaving Los Angeles next year. Well, for the most part. Season three will consist of 52 “homestand weekend events” at venues in teams’ home cities. Teams will be split into four divisions based on relative travel distance between their locations. All games will take place on weekends, as opposed to Thursday, Friday,…

2018’s Worst Overwatch League Team Just Won A Championship

Around this time last year, the professional Overwatch team Shanghai Dragons had just finished up a history-making 0-40 season. At the time, nobody would have expected that just one year later they’d be leaving the league’s top three teams in a heap of black-and-blue bodies on the ground. Maybe they should change their name to…

Overwatch Cheaters Are About To Get Games Automatically Shut Down

Blizzard is currently testing a new and interesting way of dealing with cheaters in an Overwatch match: whenever cheating is detected, they’ll just automatically shut the game down, no questions asked. They call it the “next evolution of cheat detection” in the game. Normally that would suck, because everyone else would be punished for one…

Custom Controller Lets You Rage-Quit By Literally Pouring Salt

A very wise man who wore a hood and whose skin was practically melting off his bones once said, “Good! Use your aggressive feelings, boy. Let the hate flow through you.” Probably, he was talking to a gamer about video games. Competitive games make people mad. There’s no getting around it, so you might as…

Role-Locking Could Resuscitate The Overwatch League

“Can I say anything I want?” asked Jong-ryeol “Saebyeolbe” Park after a particularly satisfying victory for his Overwatch League team, the New York Excelsior, last year. His translator nodded. Park’s eyes lit up. “I’m the best Tracer in the world.” He stuck his tongue out. Park was referring to the Overwatch hero Tracer, a zippy…

Check Out This Hot New Lego Overwatch Trash

Lego’s first round of Overwatch sets were nice, but they left out a few key characters. Two new sets due out in October fix three of these oversights, adding Junkrat, Roadhog and everybody’s favorite hamster mech pilot Hammond to the mix. 227 plastic pieces can be arranged to form Hammond and his signature ride, a…

Overwatch vs Team Fortress 2, A Battle To The Death

Overwatch’s rivalry with Team Fortress 2 is about to be settled once and for all, not the on the battlefield, but on a battlefield in Source Filmmaker. This was made by animator The Winglet, and is truly something. I’m years past getting any of the TF2 jokes, for example, and still found the whole thing…

Overwatch just kicked off a new themed challenge event, this one focused on combat medic Baptiste. Inspired by the “What You Left Behind” short story Blizzard released yesterday, the Reunion Challenge offers new Baptiste cosmetics—including a special skin—to players who win games from June 18 to July 1. You can also unlock additional cosmetics by…

South Korean Overwatch League Broadcast Apparently Omits Pride Day Festivities

If you tuned into the Overwatch League’s Friday games, you probably saw dozens of esports fans decked out in rainbow garb or flashing LGBTQ-themed signs as soon as the camera turned their way. It was Pride Day for the Overwatch League—a day that Overwatch publisher Blizzard put on for fans to “come together for diversity and…

Overwatch Workshop’s Most Popular Mode Is The Card Game Uno

The Overwatch Workshop, which allows players to create new modes with robust tools and rudimentary programming, has given rise to all sorts of unexpected oddities: a Smash Bros. clone, airplane races, portal guns, Mercy reinventions, and heaps more. The most popular mode of all, though? Uno. Yep, the card game. This information comes straight from…

Recreation Of Smash Bros. In Overwatch Is Shockingly Accurate

If I was a betting man, I’d put my entire accumulated fortune of [single, chirping cricket inside a wallet] on the idea that there have been several very serious conversations inside Blizzard about the idea of a Smash Bros.-like fighting game starring Overwatch characters. In the meantime, one fan has made that idea a reality.…

Feedback Makes Me A Better Gamer–When You’re Not An Asshole

I’ve begun to think of my weekly, local Super Smash Bros. tournament as a sort of doctor’s appointment for my ego. Regulars tell me that it’s normal to just win one or two games at these things, yet selection bias mandates that the people who attend a lot tend to be confident that they’re really,…

Overwatch League Commissioner Leaves Blizzard For Epic

The Overwatch League’s founding commissioner, Nate Nanzer, announced on Friday night that he is leaving one of the most-hyped pro esports leagues in the world. The news was first broken by ESPN, which reported that Nanzer is leaving the league for the team-based shooter to join Epic Games to work on competitive Fortnite “This has…

Overwatch Modder Turns Heroes Into Racing Airplanes

It’s easy to get caught up in rosy nostalgia when talking about long-lost series from years past, but there’s something to be said for the classics. Remember slamming down snaking neon streets in F-Zero? And who among us (of a highly specific age range) didn’t spend hours of their childhood staring with starry eyes at…

Overwatch‘s New Anniversary Skins Are All Over The Place

Overwatch’s third anniversary event is live, and it is as Britney Spears once famously said: “The taste of your lips, I’m on a ride. [Roadhog]’s toxic, I’m slipping under.” The new batch of skins runs the gamut from cutesy (albeit infantilizing, when it comes to some fans’ takes on D.Va’s schoolgirl outfit) to literally toxic…

Time To Dream About An Overwatch Cartoon

Bruce Vernon is a freelance animator who has made a range of amazing lil’ clips based on everything from The Witcher 3 to Overwatch to Bayonetta You can see more Bruce’s work at his personal site

Thrilling Overwatch League Match Sees Only Undefeated Team Lose

For the San Francisco Shock, locking up the first perfect stage in Overwatch League history was a nice cherry, but the team always had their eyes on the sundae: victory in Sunday’s stage two playoffs. Yesterday they once again faced off against Vancouver Titans, running back the stage one match-up that they lost (in what…

Overwatch Map Returns After Mysteriously Vanishing For Weeks

“What happened to Numbani?” “Where is Numbani???” “When was the last time you played on Numbani?” These are just a handful of the many thread titles that have popped up on the Overwatch subreddit since the game’s “Storm Rising” update in the middle of April. Players, for some reason, could no longer bless the rains…

The Overwatch League finals will take place in Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center on September 29, Blizzard announced today. The prize pool is a plush $1.7 million, $1.1 million of which goes to the top team.