Overwatch

Overwatch Could Kill Off A Hero One Day, But They’d Still Be Playable

“Heroes never die,” says Mercy on a regular basis. The Overwatch team begs to differ. But don’t worry, says the game’s director Jeff Kaplan—even if an Overwatch hero were to bite the dust, they’d still have a life after death. Last week, I attended an event at Blizzard HQ to preview the new Overwatch event,…

The Internet Reacts To Overwatch‘s New Sombra Skin

Blizzard has been releasing previews of new Overwatch skins in anticipation of the game’s upcoming event, Retribution. Sombra’s new skin has people wondering if she’d like to speak to your manager. Overwatch’s resident hacker, Sombra, is getting a new skin that shows her in a uniform for the villainous Talon organization. Sombra, who usually sports…

Overwatch League Player Suspended After Being Accused Of Sexually Preying On Teen [UPDATE]

Overwatch League team Boston Uprising has suspended star player Jonathan “DreamKazper” Sanchez, 21, following allegations that he pursued a romantic and potentially sexual relationship with someone he believed to be a 14- or 15-year-old girl. [Update 4/9/2018, 2:47 PM: The Uprising cut Sanchez today after a second woman accused him of similar behavior. The original article…

Overwatch Characters, Only They’re Cars

There’s a line of Rocket League car toys, but reader Kim has decided to branch them out a little and customise them into cars based on everything from Breath of the Wild to Overwatch to Spyro Most of them are Overwatch, and what’s cool about these is that despite them being based on existing models,…

One Overwatch Fan Is Tracking The Best Widowmaker Duelists In The League

Widowmaker is Overwatch’s femme fatale sniper, and many pros in the Overwatch League wield her rifle with deft precision. With her prevalence in the league on both offense and defense, one Reddit user is working to find out which Widowmaker trumps them all. User /u/zeftorias has created graphics tracking the stages so far, 1 and…

Tips For Playing Pharah From An Overwatch Pro

In Overwatch, I’m a Pharah main, but I have a problem: I’ve ridden her signature jetpack boosts all the way to my personal ceiling. So naturally, when confined in a small room with a person who, at times, has been called one of the best Pharahs out there, I had to ask: what should I…

Overwatch Pro Says He Wishes His Dramatic Reprimanding Hadn’t Been Filmed

After a hot-and-cold season with Overwatch League team the LA Valiant, DPS player Brady “Agilities” Girardi found himself in a rainy In-N-Out burger parking lot with team CEO Noah Whinston. And a camera person. The resulting official “Inside LA Valiant” video segment, in which Whinston informed Agilities that he had one last shot at making…

Overwatch Brigitte Cosplay Is Pretty Much Perfect

Henchmen Studios have once again performed wonders with a new Overwatch character, building a suit for cosplayer Moosefixthat looks like it jumped straight out of the game and straight into PAX East. Here’s a group shot, and these guys aren’t too shabby either: Remember: in addition to Moira’s reveal, Henchmen also made a terrifyingly accurate…

Look At This $175 Mercy Statue

While I wait fora Mercy Figma, this fantastic Mercy statue will have to do. It stands 13.75 inches tall, and…it’s a statue, that’s about all there is to it. It’s available from Blizzard’s online store

Overwatch Players Want To Queue For Roles, Blizzard Says It’s Complicated

Imagine, for a moment, a world in which Overwatch allowed you to select a role—tank, support, DPS, etc—and hop into a match expressly for the purpose of playing that role. No more squabbling over who does what. Peace. Quiet. Serenity. People have asked, but Blizzard hasn’t delivered. Here’s why. During an interview with Jeff Kaplan…

Geguri’s Overwatch League Debut Was A Beautiful Moment

When CrackerJess, the wife of my Overwatch buddy CrackerJack*, heard there were no women in the Overwatch League, she was livid. She’d never played a first-person shooter before, preferring Lindy Hop dancing to long computer sessions yelling over a microphone. She had no attachment to the scene, no serious gaming ambitions. What set her off,…

All The Items For Sale At The Overwatch League Gift Shop, Ranked [UPDATE]

Blizzard’s arena in Los Angeles, California is the real deal. And by that, I mean it has a gift shop, the surest marker of any worth-its-salt sporting enterprise. I have investigated the gift shop; here is a definitive ranking of the items for sale in it, from worst to best. [This post originally ran on…

The Shanghai Dragons’ Signings Were Good, But Not Nearly Enough

Kim “Geguri” Se-yeon finally made her debut for the Shanghai Dragons last night, a huge deal—the first game ever for the first woman in America’s most prominent esports league yet. And like every other match they’ve played in the Overwatch League, the Dragons got trounced, this time by the Dallas Fuel. But there were some…

Overwatch’s next in-game event is called Retribution. It’ll include a four-player PVE mission in which you play as Blackwatch, Overwatch’s rebel maverick squad, in Venice. The hero lineup will be Reaper, McCree, Moira, and Genji, but as with last year’s Uprising event, there’ll be an all-heroes mode as well. Retribution runs from April 10-30.

Overwatch League Player Gets Three-Game Suspension And “Streaming Privileges Revoked” For Racist Gesture

The Overwatch League’s leaked code of conduct gives Blizzard and the OWL an incredible amount of control over players, including anything that happens on their own streams, so part of the latest punishment for a heated gaming moment comes as no surprise. After the Philadelphia Fusion’s Josh “Eqo” Corona made a slant-eye gesture and said…

Overwatch Star Has Advice For Mercy Players: “Be Selfish”

Overwatch’s Mercy is a “support” hero, which in layman’s terms means she’s mopping up trails of blood left behind after Overwatch battles. Mercy’s job is to heal her weak teammates, assisting them as they lay waste to enemies. It’s an apparently subservient job often painted as easy, and therefore, undervalued—that is, unless you’re Hong “Ark”…

Blizzard Is Trying To Teach Computers To Spot Overwatch Jerks

Despite arriving too late to prevent what some might call a full-blown crisis, Overwatch’s anti-toxicity efforts seem to be bearing fruit. The next step in the battle, says game director Jeff Kaplan, might be having computers, not humans, find the bad actors. “We’ve been experimenting with machine learning,” Kaplan told me during an interview at…

New York’s Overwatch League Team Finally Came Home To Meet Its Fans

At Overwatch League team New York Excelsior’s first-ever New York fan meet-and-greet, a preteen girl in braces broke out sobbing after coming face-to-face with player Joong-hwa “Janus” Song, a sub. Janus doesn’t play much. When he’s called in, he almost exclusively operates the ape hero Winston, and only on specific maps. In front of Janus,…

D.Va Makes Life Difficult For Overwatch‘s Developers

Between her mech and her true, Dorito-munching gremlin form, D.Va is basically two characters in one. That’s led to problems behind the scenes of Overwatch. A lot of problems. During a roundtable interview at Blizzard HQ yesterday, Overwatch assistant director Aaron Keller explained that, of all 27 of the game’s current heroes, D.Va is definitely…

An Overwatch Battle Royale Mode Would Be Tricky To Make, Jeff Kaplan Says

Unless you haven’t looked out the window or spoken to Drake recently, you’re probably aware that battle royale mania is sweeping the nation. Jeff Kaplan, director of Overwatch, certainly is. He’s seen the requests for a battle royale mode in his own game, and he’d love to make it happen. It is, however, a taller…