Blizzard has changed its mind about Aim Assist for consoles in the cross-play lobby of Overwatch 2. The game's latest patch now enables Aim Assist for console players in all but competitive games.

In the November 17 patch notes (opens in new tab), Blizzard stated that they found that having this feature disabled was causing problems on both sides of the peripheral pond." Our data showed that many of the groups were cross-play groups between PC and console players. This means that if you are playing on a console and grouped with PC players, you are choosing a bad experience for yourself in order to play with your friends. Also, if the console was the main group and one of your friends was a PC player, you had to remove the PC player in order to have a good experience.

Blizzard reiterated that Aim Assist is for console players and PC players will not have this option available regardless of their peripherals. The developer also stated that it will "closely monitor the rollout of this change and make changes quickly if necessary."

The lack of Aim Assist in cross-play parties was a point of contention when "Overwatch 2" launched in October; the feature had been disabled since Blizzard introduced cross-play in the original "Overwatch" last year, the sequel, so to speak The flood of new and returning players to "Overwatch 2" has brought it back into the spotlight. As Morgan Park pointed out when cross-play tensions were simmering (open in new tab), aim assist in modern games is not as obvious an option as it once was, in games like "Apex Legends" and "Call of Duty: Warzone. Aim Assist is assigned, and some people argue that using a controller is more advantageous than keyboard or mouse input. Therefore, implementation in a cross-play environment would be a gray area and would need to be balanced to satisfy both sides.

Equating two different ways of playing the same game can be tricky, especially when those two ways clash in the same match; how much of a difference will it make for both PC and console users, and will Blizzard back off its decision? It will be interesting to see. For PC players, who have been shunned by their console peers, let's hope the change sticks.