Blizzard will completely remove planned PvE content from "Overwatch 2" and instead "double down" on PvP. This is according to a Bloomberg newsletter and information separately corroborated by PC Gamer.

It's a disappointing conclusion after a year and a half of waiting, though not too surprising considering the cancellation of Hero Mode last year. Even though Overwatch 2 was originally pitched as an experience heavily focused on the PvE side when it was released in 2019, plans slowly began to deteriorate: in March 2022, it was announced that the PvE portion would not be released alongside the rest of the game, and that the PvE portion would not be released alongside the rest of the game. Three co-op missions were released last June, but the $15 price tag and lack of replayability did not attract players. [According to a Bloomberg newsletter, the poor sales of these missions dashed any chance of bonus payouts for the team; Blizzard has traditionally paid bonuses across the board, but a policy change introduced by Activision allows individual franchises to teams will now be rewarded based on their performance. Following that, nearly everyone on the PvE team was laid off as part of a brutal mass cull in January.

Fingers seem to be pointed at Activision and Microsoft for their incredibly poor handling of Overwatch 2's PvE mode, with Bloomberg's newsletter citing the increasing tension between Blizzard and Activision Blizzard and Activision, which PC Gamer also heard about from another source. Whatever the reason, this is a tragic outcome for players interested in PvE missions and for the developers who have spent the past few years working on them.

As someone who was very excited about the co-op promise of "Overwatch 2" when it was first announced, I am quite disappointed. The game deserves much better than it is and I wanted to explore its lore and characters in a more meaningful way. For now, I can only hope that the game will do better by shifting its focus to pure PvP. Sadly, I have a feeling that the day is not far off when this game will be put on hold.