Free-to-play Overwatch 2 is a rip off bigger than a loot box

readers think overwatch 2, despite being free, is less cost effective than the original, Blizzard make changes.

There is no truer adage than the suggestion that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Something being free means that someone wants something other than money from you, and that’s never a good sign.In video games, something being free is a sign the publisher wants to extract more more money from you than they normally would.

In the old days, you bought a game full price and owned it. Stick a cartridge or disc into your console, play the game as long as you like, beat it in maybe a week or two, and sell it or keep it in a cupboard somewhere. None of these things will happen anymore without at least a lot of effort on your part to get a physical copy and find a place to sell the game later.

I always told myself I would buy a physical, but these days it’s pointless. Because most games don’t even come on disc, not only when it comes to patches to make them work, but most importantly when it comes to DLC and microtransactions. It’s part of the game for most publishers.

EA makes more money selling loot boxes in FIFA than in the actual game. They could easily do it for free, with little impact on their profits. Blizzard found themselves in a slightly different position. They also make more money from loot boxes than they do from Overwatch sales, but draw a line under things because interest in the game has dwindled and the fanbase has been so confused A sequel had to be released.

This is fairly rare in live service games. call of duty:Warzone is the only other obvious one I can think of. It was so badly received that they had to start over. But is Overwatch 2 free to play a good thing? No one can argue with that, right? Wrong.

In theory, you don’t have to pay anything to play Overwatch 2 (it’s not a sequel at all, it’s the same game with 3 new characters and 1 new mode). No more loot boxes. This sounds like a good thing on the surface. Except when there were loot boxes, there were still plenty of ways to get in-game cosmetics for free. You can buy loot boxes that way as long as you’re playing on .

That’s gone too, so the only way to get free items in Overwatch 2 is the free Battle Pass with 6 skins per season that lasts about 3 months (there are 2, you have to pay for the other is available). That alone takes a lot of grinding to get even the smallest items over a week or more, unless you’re in the game every hour of every day.

Your only option is to pay real money for the item. All of these are incredibly expensive… more than the price of an indie game. I’d love to compare the price to the original game, but the servers are off so of course it’s not worth it.

Yes, Overwatch 2 is free, but it has almost nothing cosmetically. This is why people keep coming back to play the game every day. Unless you’re willing to pay, there’s little reason to play, and that’s what Blizzard expects. Instead of paying honestly upfront, they try to draw you in and make you spend more money than you think.

It’s not just them, everyone does it, but this is a rare case where a game that was fair in itself goes from one system to a system that’s very obviously bad. There was an issue, but Overwatch 2 is such a rip off that it makes me miss loot boxes. I really hope Blizzard reverses it, but I’m sure they won’t because the worst thing is that the plan seems to work…

From Reader Kobe

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