In 2023, Blizzard opened up Overwatch’s world for third-party collaborations. The first was a set of skins and other cosmetics based on the anime/manga One-Punch Man, which naturally turned Overwatch’s own “one-punch man,” Doomfist, into the titular hero with a new skin. The cape is luxurious, but he’s not the only hero who got to cosplay during the event. Soldier: 76 gets to ride a bike as Mumen Rider, Kiriko’s green wig is wigging as the Terrible Tornado, and Overwatch’s resident cyborg Genji naturally becomes One-Punch Man’s cyborg Genos.
Looking back, the collaboration was strange because One Punch Man hasn’t really been doing much as of late, with the third season still in development and the last one having come out in 2019. But there’s a surprising amount of love shown in the skins, highlight intros, and other cosmetics, as silly as it is seeing Soldier: 76 pedaling like his life depends on it.
The second big collaboration was with K-Pop girl group Le Sserafim, and it was an absolute banger of an event. Take my hand, walk with me. Have you heard the good word of Le Sserafim’s catchy as hell bop “Perfect Night”? Have you basked in the glory of Tracer, Kiriko, Brigitte, D.Va, and Sombra geared up for a K-Pop concert, serving some of the most glamorous skins Overwatch has ever seen? And did you watch the music video, in which all the previously mentioned girlies attend a Le Sserafim concert and use their various abilities to have their own perfect night? It ruled. I’m still wearing the Sombra skin when I play her, and have no plans to take it off.
Le Sserafim / Blizzard Entertainment
While Blizzard looked outside of its stable for crossovers, it also looked to the other side of the office and had a Diablo crossover, as well. Moira mains rejoiced as she finally got a decent skin out of the arrangement, though the Diablo-themed co-op mode was extremely mid and tiresome. Also, John Cena showed up in a viral marketing campaign for some reason, though that had no impact on the game itself.
Even if you don’t watch One-Punch Man or jive with Le Sserafim’s music, Overwatch 2’s collaborative events have felt meaningful, not like they’re just cheap crossovers. The team at Blizzard has done a lot to capture the vibes of its partners without it coming at the expense of its own identity. Crossovers can be exhausting, as games like Fortnite can lose their entire sense of self as they clutter their worlds with pieces of other properties. But so far, Overwatch 2 has found a happy medium in paying tribute to something within its own framework. — KS
For a game like Overwatch 2, in which its story has been trickled out over dozens of disparate external media stories rather than in one, cohesive thing—you know, like, a video game campaign?—there are bound to be inconsistencies along the way. But lord, seeing the game’s 38 heroes suddenly get canonical birthdates and ages really just makes it apparent how weirdly incongruous these ages are with the timeline we know.
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This new birth-chart fodder comes from the official Overwatch website, which was updated this week to give each hero a canonical birthday and age. Some of these make sense, like how many of the old-guard characters like Soldier: 76, Ana, and Reaper are in their late 50s and early 60s. The new kids on the block—like recent addition Illari being an 18-year-old sun-powered queen, or D.Va being a 21-year-old esports champion—probably check out too, because they’re mostly removed from the larger timeline of Overwatch. It’s when we start comparing more central characters’ canonical ages that things start to get murky.
Kiriko, one of the new support heroes introduced in Overwatch 2, is one of the most glaring examples of the math not mathing. When Blizzard first revealed Kiriko, it claimed she grew up with Genji and Hanzo, and even trained alongside them in the ways of the sword. However, now that all involved have official ages, things aren’t adding up. We’re told Genji and Hanzo are 37 and 40, respectively, while Kiriko is supposedly 21. On paper, I believe those ages because each of those heroes feels written to be those ages, it’s the pitting those numbers against the lore, art, and story we know that doesn’t click. Look at this illustration of the three training in Kiriko’s Origin Story trailer. You expect me to believe there are nearly 20 years of difference between these characters? Sure, Kiriko looks young and could reasonably be under 10 here, but you expect me to believe that Hanzo is pushing 30 in this image?
Screenshot: Blizzard Entertainment / Kotaku
Attack of the Fanboy compiled some examplesof Overwatch fans pointing out other oddities and inconsistencies. Consider Sojourn, who’s now listed as 47 years old. Her sister Valentine, introduced in the spin-off novel “Overwatch 2: Sojourn”, would have had to have been 14 years old when giving birth to Sojourn’s niece Bonnie. Which sure, isn’t impossible, but it does seem highly unlikely.
Personally, one of the biggest eyebrow-raising age questions of Overwatch is Pharah and Mercy, who became a canonical (possibly unrequited) pairing in the story when it was revealed Pharah is a lesbian during the game’s first Pride event. Mercy is 39, whereas Pharah is supposedly 34. Meanwhile, art of Pharah exists in Ana’s origin story that shows a very, very young Pharah standing with much of the original Overwatch crew; the gap between the two appears much larger than five years.
Screenshot: Blizzard Entertainment / Kotaku
Honestly, with all of Overwatch’s narrative changes and shake-ups over the years, I get it. Trying to get this game’s story off the ground has been tumultuous enough that expecting it to be airtight and perfect in its timeline and lore is just nitpicking. But it is funny to look at all the numbers next to each other and realize a majority of Overwatch’s story is about vibes more than getting into the nitty-gritty of the timeline.
If you’re curious, here are everyone’s ages and birthdays:
Tank
D.Va: June 22, (21)
Doomfist: May 25, (47)
Junker Queen: June 14, (31)
Orisa: May 9, (1)
Ramattra: March 29, (28)
Reinhardt: June 26, (63)
Roadhog: September 12, (50)
Sigma: March 12, (64)
Winston: June 6, (31)
Wrecking Ball: October 15, (16)
Zarya: December 4, (30)
Damage
Ashe: October 1, (41)
Bastion: ??? (32)
Cassidy: July 31, (39)
Echo: February 5, (14)
Genji: October 28, (37)
Hanzo: November 3, (40)
Junkrat: February 29, (27)
Mei: September 5, (33)
Pharah: April 15, (34)
Reaper: December 14, (60)
Sojourn: January 12, (47)
Soldier: 76: January 27, (58)
Sombra: December 31, (32)
Symettra: October 2, (30)
Torbjorn: September 21, (59)
Tracer: February 12, (28)
Widowmaker: November 19, (35)
Support
Ana: January 1, (62)
Baptiste: March 12, (38)
Brigitte: September 22, (25)
Illari: December 21, (18)
Kiriko: July 7, (21)
Lifeweaver: April 28, (31)
Lucio: March 20, (28)
Mercy: May 13, (39)
Moira: April 4, (50)
Zenyatta: July 14, (33)
Moving forward, we should all make a pact to no longer ask for people’s birthsigns; now, we’ll just ask each other which Overwatch hero we share a birth month with. Unfortunately, my own answer of “Wrecking Ball, the intelligent hamster” doesn’t sound particularly cool.
On Friday, Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller responded to the hero shooter’s Steam review bombing which led to the game becoming one of the most “overwhelmingly negatively” reviewed games on the storefront.
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When Overwatch 2 season six, titled Invasion, launched earlier last week, it brought with it a new support hero, a new game mode, PvE story missions, and the free-to-play game’s debut on Steam, Valve’s popular PC gaming storefront. While the game’s Steam launch was supposed to give players another, potentially more convenient way to play the colorful team-based shooter, it instead led to an incredible influx of negative reviews. Though some players merely left reviews joking about Overwatch 2’s Source Film Maker porn-creation scene being better than the actual game, a majority of players voiced their disappointment with Overwatch 2 failing to deliver on its once-promised story mode.
Keller acknowledged OW2’s less-than-stellar Steam reviews in a recent blog post, saying:
…Although being review-bombed isn’t a fun experience, it’s been great to see lots of new players jump into Overwatch 2 for the first time. Our goal with Overwatch 2 has been to make the game more accessible than ever for more people than ever before.
Many of the reviews on Steam mention the cancellation of the much larger component of PvE that was announced in 2019 as one of their primary reasons for dissatisfaction with the game. I get that. That announcement was about an ambitious project that we ultimately couldn’t deliver.
If we can’t turn back the clock, then what can we do? We can keep adding to and improving Overwatch 2. That is how we move forward. This means more maps, heroes, game modes, missions, stories, events, cool cosmetics, and features—an ever-expanding, evolving, and improving game. This is the future of Overwatch. One where we will continually create and innovate on what is making the game great now for the players who are playing now.
Keller ended his remarks by noting that Overwatch is “such a unique game and world,” especially when players remember to actually work together on in-game objectives, and encouraged people to give the hero shooteran earnest try on Steam.
Lifeweaver has been in Overwatch 2 for just under a month, and already the plant-based support hero has had some pretty significant reworks in both his control scheme and abilities. Personally, I’ve had a much better experience with the character since his last update, but it sounds like Blizzard is planning more changes as it tries to figure out where the character should fit into its popular hero shooter.
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In a new post on the Overwatch website, director Aaron Keller talked about the team’s mindset regarding Lifeweaver moving forward. While they’ve made some improvements to his healing output (he now has one of the higher ones in the game), the team says changes like tightening the spread on his offensive alt-fire Thorn Volley haven’t had much effect on his kill rate. On the bright side he also has one of the lowest death rates of any support hero, so I’m glad to hear you all took my advice and are keeping your distance from the fight.
All that said, Keller says the team is still looking to better figure out Lifeweaver’s intended role in the game, which is exactly what I’ve been trying to do since he joined the roster. Before Lifeweaver, Baptiste and Brigitte were my go-to support characters depending on my team’s makeup and the map type, but Lifeweaver feels like this very situational character that I mostly run just because he’s new, I like him as a character, and his kit is fun, rather than because his utility feels objectively better than the other options.
His abilities—like Petal Platform, which raises a player to high ground, or the controversial Life Grip, which pulls an ally to Lifeweaver’s position—are best used within a coordinated team. The trouble is, most randos online don’t understand or don’t care about how they can create effective plays, and it feels like most just want support players to act as heal bots, rather than leaning into more varied support abilities. It feels like my teammates, and sometimes myself, don’t know how to coordinate around Lifeweaver, so I can see why Blizzard hopes to make his ideal role clearer in Season 5.
Keller continued:
When it comes to future changes for Lifeweaver, here’s what we are thinking. We want it to be clearer why players may select Lifeweaver over other heroes. If your current hero pick isn’t working for some reason (whether it be the map or enemy team comp), what’s a strong incentive for swapping to Lifeweaver? We may make other changes along the way, such as lightly buffing his Thorn Volley and reducing hit volumes, but ultimately, we’ll have changes targeted at further pronouncing Lifeweaver’s strengths and clearly defining his role on your team. This could be leaning harder into his healing effectiveness through a new passive or bringing additional benefits to some of his utility-focused abilities. With a defensive-based hero, we have to be careful how far we go in terms of buffing raw healing and defensive abilities – too far can negatively disrupt the overall flow of an engagement. These are some of the early things we’re iterating through, hope to have our next set of changes ready for Season 5.
Even when Lifeweaver first debuted, I figured he would be a character that would evolve a great deal over time, similar to Symmetra, whose moveset has changed more than once since she debuted at the original Overwatch’s launch. As someone who’s already put over a dozen hours into Lifeweaver, I’m hopeful whatever changes come will help him be the effective support character everyone wants him to be, as Overwatch 2’s beleaguered support players could really use some wins.
Roadhog is one of Overwatch 2’s quieter heroes. Where some characters like Tracer and Junkrat are real chatterboxes, the chain-slinging, shotgun-toting Tank is a man of few words. That changes with the game’s latest limited-time mode, which makes him the announcer. Not only is he the one to declare your team the victor, but he also has nicknames for several members of the cast at the hero select screen. They’re delicious roasts of nearly every character that also offer a deeper look at a character who doesn’t usually get a ton of spotlight in Overwatch’s grander story.
The PachiMarchi event includes several cosmetics based on the in-universe Pachimari mascot that Roadhog is a big fan of, a few of which originate from when a similar event ran in the first Overwatch back in 2021. However, the new 3v3 deathmatch mode Catch-A-Mari is the real treat because Roadhog voice actor Josh Petersdorf delivers a concise, pitch-perfect roast of most of your faves as you build your team before a match. Unfortunately, there isn’t one for every character. According to senior writer and narrative designer Justin Groot, the nicknames in the mode now were part of an hour-long brainstorming session before deadline, which means a few favorites didn’t get a nickname. But the ones that are here are delightful.
A few standouts include:
Cassidy – Cactus Bootbuckle
Doomfist – Largefist
Genji – 500 Edges
Mei Princess Icicle
Ramattra – Thunko, the Metal Man
Sigma – Gravity Frank
Zarya – Gravity Janice
Soldier: 76 – Legs of America
Widowmaker – Scopetta Baguette
Winston – Mister Nanners
All of these are very funny caricatures of each of these heroes, but my favorite one is Sojourn, who gets her full government name “Former Overwatch Acting Commander Vivian ‘Sojourn’ Chase.” It shows she is not to be fucked with and that Roadhog, despite roasting everyone else, respects her. 500 Edges is such a good name for Genji because he’s got a bunch of sharp weaponry at his disposal, but he’s also an edgelord, and it’s fun to see Overwatch poke fun at itself like this. Legs of America points to Soldier: 76 being from the US of A, but the character’s history has always made him feel like a Captain America analog for the series, so needling his patriotism is a good gag. They could have called him America’s Ass if they really wanted to lean into the comparison, but Soldier famously has no ass.
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It’s a small touch, but it feels like Overwatch 2’s writing has leaned harder into both fleshing out how characters relate to each other and into the fandom’s perception of them, as well. And it’s nice to get a sense of how Roadhog views other heroes, even if the relationships aren’t quite as overt. Hopefully the next time this mode rolls around, the team will add more nicknames for the whole cast.
There’s a phenomenon in the Overwatch community that has persisted through the original game’s 2016 release, its gradual decline, and the launch of the sequel. This phenomenon is an interesting one, a sort of “IYKYK” situation that requires membership in a specific community in order to recognize its members: in Overwatch, a lot of queer players choose to play as healers. Maybe you haven’t noticed this—maybe you’re straight (I’m sorry) and can’t spot an alphabet army soldier in your lobby, but if you’re in the LGBTQIA+ community and play Overwatch 2, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Mercy mains with rainbow player icons, Moira one-tricks wearing her Bowie skin, two-stacks who instalock support with some iteration of “-ussy” in their gamertag—if you pay attention, you’ll see that the gays are everywhere in Overwatch, and most of the time they’re playing healer.
But this is all anecdotal evidence, right? Surely gays don’t gravitate to playing healers that disproportionately, do they? After hundreds of hours logged in Overwatch 2 comp , most of which I played as a healer, I felt a burning desire to delve deeper into this phenomenon and figure out why I kept encountering fellow gays in the support role. I had my theories: queer people are used to supporting their found families in the real world, support roles are notoriously less toxic, many of the healer characters are femme or androgynous—but I needed more.
So, I put out a call for “gay people” on Twitter, I interviewed players and peers, and I spoke to a queer-identifying counselor, all in an attempt to properly investigate Overwatch’s gay healing agenda. The result is a fascinating look at a subculture within a subculture, one marked by real-world social queues, kink play, emotional connections, and, unfortunately, a frustrating lack of scientific research.
Gay icons
Image: Blizzard / Nico D.
The most obvious answer (and one of the more common ones I received on Twitter) as to why queer people play healers in Overwatch is that the characters themselves are gay icons. Even though the only two openly queer characters are both DPS heroes, the lineup of support characters looks a lot like the line outside of Happyfun Hideaway on a Saturday night: the uber-feminine and soft Mercy, the muscular and bold Brigitte, the sweet but strong Baptiste, the spunky and sarcastic Kiriko, the calm and collected Zenyatta, the androgynous and tall Moira, the soothing and maturely sexy Ana. Compared to your typical FPS lineup, and even most of the other Overwatch characters (save for outliers like Zarya and Mei), the support squad in this game feels demonstrably queer.
Overwatch player and freelance writer Nico D. echoes this sentiment via email, saying the characters “are designed in such a way to be desirable to queer communities—Moira is a REALLY good example of this, but I also know a lot of queer women or other queer people who are attracted to women that love Mercy, Ana, and Brig.” Nico suggests this has to do with the futuristic, sci-fi fashions depicted in the game “that also happen to be on characters with typically queer-coded appearances like slightly more atypical body types/silhouettes/haircuts.”
That definitely describes most Overwatch support heroes. And though Mercy is slim and white and traditionally attractive (Blizzard does, after all, historically have a problem with portraying women’s bodies), she still doesn’t feel as aggressively sexualized as someone like Widowmaker, whose impossibly long legs and massive tits scream The Male Gaze everytime she runs (in heels) across the screen.
Others who identify as queer and play Overwatch predominantly as healers tell me that the support characters are “gay icons” whose presence/vibes suggest queerness even though it’s not outright stated. “They feel queer” is a sentiment that, while scientifically impossible to prove, is consistently echoed in both messages to me and Overwatch community spaces. But “feeling queer” is a helluva lot different than being canonically queer—so why doesn’t it seem like members of the community play Tracer and Soldier: 76 as much as they play healers?
Gender roles
Image: Blizzard
Venture into the Reddit or TikTok trenches in search of an answer as to why gay people play healers and you’ll likely stumble across the “I can’t aim” meme. Like many internet fables, this one is somewhat rooted in reality. Evie Mae Barber, writer and narrative designer, tells me via Twitter DM that when she played Overwatch, she mained Lucio and Mercy because she finds healers in FPS titles “require less precision and more strategy,” whereas the DPS characters’ effectiveness are largely rooted in accuracy.
A desire to avoid roles that require accuracy could be a side effect of traditional multiplayer FPS titles being largely unsafe spaces for women and non cis-het men—it’s hard to feel comfortable or competent in these roles when the skills you need to excel at them should have been honed in the dark and scary servers of Halo 3 or CS:GO, during a time when the mere hint of “otherness” was met with viciousness, slurs, and threats.
The boys’ club of FPS titles may not exist in such severity today as it did in the early 2000s, but its effects linger. “There was a meta-analysis done that had several results, specifically about Overwatch,” says Dr. Sarah Hays, a queer-identifying counselor at nonprofit org Game to Grow and director of programming at Queer Women of Esports, during a video call. “Of course, it was on a gender binary, but male esports competitors are seen as more competitive than female competitors. Female players believe support to be the easiest position to play and prefer to play it because they don’t want to be blamed for not doing well.” She pauses. “That meta study has a whole bunch of data. I just hate that it’s done on a gender binary.”
It’s clear that the lack of adequate research around LGBTQIA+ gamers and the roles they choose to inhabit in multiplayer titles frustrates Dr. Hays. “My plea is: ‘people, let’s do research on this because it’s so cool,’” she says earnestly before returning to the meta study, combing through it to try and find some more connections to the theory at hand: “Non male-identified people tend towards picking a character that they can feel confident in. So they reduce harassment and they reduce some of that input. ‘It’s easier to play support because I’m not getting as much shit, I’m not getting blamed for that.’ That’s something we’re seeing both based in research and generally: people want to look and appear and feel like they know what they’re doing, so they’re not going to receive flack for being another ignorant non-dude. Which sucks. But it’s true.”
Dr. Hays doesn’t say this word during our chat, but it lingers overhead: toxicity. “I think queer folks trend toward support as it feels like the least toxic role or at least one that has less toxicity associated with them,” says Threshold Games’ community manager Colin Cummings in a DM. So, part of the reason queer-identiying gamers may be choosing healers is to avoid the rampant toxicity that comes with playing competitive FPS games. But how much do real-world experiences outside of gaming tie into choosing the support role?
Support systems
Image: Blizzard / Nico D.
I’m pleased when one of my theories is echoed by a few fellow healers: queer people, so often forced to protect themselves because the government won’t protect them, so connected to found families made up of supportive friends, would naturally gravitate towards characters who provide safety and security.
“I don’t think that it’s a far stretch to imagine that the fantasy of support or healers is appealing to groups of people who require communities around them for safety and affection,” Nico writes.
When I mention my theory in a DM with Eric Ravenscraft, product writer and reviewer at Wired, he’s on board, too. “Honestly, that wouldn’t surprise me too much,” he writes. “Support is very much herding cats, keeping your precious babies alive while they’re getting chased down by a mean dude with a hammer…most of the LGBTQIA+ folks I know live in a very found-family kinda space that becomes very protective of outside threats. Every single person I know in that space knows what it’s like to protect their friends—or even randos—from a bigoted parent or institution or whathaveyou. That kinda mindset maps pretty cleanly onto keeping four randos you just met safe online.”
This social connection between support roles IRL and in Overwatch is something Dr. Hays “loves” during our chat—it clearly sparks her interest, and I can see her cogs turning on our video chat as she begins pondering the larger ramifications of this idea. “I wonder if there isn’t a correlation between oppressed identity and feeling better as a person in the position of healer, because it means that you get to avoid the blame, but also you get to be reinforced as someone who’s helpful and supportive, and more effective in that role? Yeah, because of the way that our real-life experiences have catered to that, as well.”
While Dr. Hays is clearly inspired by these ideas, she reiterates that there’s just not enough research about this kind of stuff to provide us with much concrete evidence. She does, however, bring up a scientific study that leaves my jaw on the floor.
Piss play
I have used this image three times on Kotaku.com.Image: Blizzard / Kotaku
When I wrote about how Overwatch 2’s shorthand is a specific brand of twisted, the slang term for Moira’s healing (pee) was at the top of my mind. So when Dr. Hays starts talking about a scientific study about Overwatch’s “healsluts,” I am, as the kids say, gagged—the connections are there, drawn together by queer players who are, in fact, little freaks.
Assuming the role of a healslut, according to the study from Finnish academic journal Widerscreen, “[invites] players to deploy elements of BDSM kink and sexuality not merely within the vocabulary and design of the game, but also in a communal paratext surrounding the game involving forums, voice chat, and viral fan-designed images.” Kotaku already wrote about this kinky phenomenon almost eight years ago—a r/healslut moderator toldwriter Luke Winkie that healsluts take classic dominant and submissive roles that are synonymous with traditional BDSM and apply it to the roles laid out in Overwatch.
The tank (dom) protects and compliments the healers (subs), occasionally scolding them if they fail. Healsluts have one main duty, and it’s to protect their doms (DPS characters are considered darker, more violent versions of tanks, which makes sense if you’ve ever tried to pocket heal a Genji). Though much of the writing about this community was published several years ago, I can confirm that r/healsluts is still an active subreddit.
In many cases, the Venn diagram of kink and queer communities is a circle, with kink playing an important role in Pride events and in the history and legacy of LGBTQIA+ people. Kink play in Overwatch is a “a way for resisting ‘masculine-normative hegemonic fandom’ in video games,” according to the aforementioned study, and it persists even after Overwatch 1 was sunset in place of a free-to-play sequel.
So whether it’s because of cishet-y FPS pressure making support a more attractive role, social roles within found families that translate to games, the indefinable but still somewhat tangible queerness of the healer characters, or a preternatural need to heal big, dommy tanks, it’s very clear that there are a lot of LGBTQIA+ people playing support in Overwatch 2.
I could happily unpack this phenomenon in another 2,000 words, but maybe I should just leave it at what Kaitlin Jakola, managing editor at The Trace and former Gizmodo employee, had to say about it:
“I assume we all heal because gays love to be both extremely powerful and woefully unappreciated in our own time????” Work, bestie.
An inappropriate Overwatch 2 game mode reappeared, but it’s not one to get excited about. The mode, titled “sexual harassment simulator,” was played enough times that it appeared as one of the most popular over the weekend for some players, according to PC Gamer, which spotted the reappearance just before Blizzard quickly pulled it down.
Another “sexual harassment simulator” was discovered in October 2022, but both tasked players with knocking down Overwatch 2‘s female heroes (like Mercy and Widowmaker) while playing as the cowboy Cole Cassidy and repeatedly crouching over their bodies, apparently, as PC Gamer reported, with the word “raping…” until the character in question is labeled “pregnant” as an AI-controlled Torbjorn supposedly fills the role of the baby. This is disgusting on so many levels it’s not even funny, especially because players are forced to play as Cassidy, previously known as McCree, the same name as the ousted Activision Blizzard developer who took part in the controversial “Cosby Suite” meetups.
A screenshot of the custom mode was posted to Overwatch’s official subreddit by user Joyolo13, who simply asked: “What in god’s name?”
“Lol I remember seeing this every day in [Overwatch 1],” said Redditor sw1nky. “Can’t say I’m surprised it’s still around, [to be honest].”
“McCree is back in the game I guess,” said user FoulfrogBsc.
Kotaku was unable to find the custom game mode in Overwatch 2 as it appears Blizzard took the “sexual harassment simulator” offline—for now. So, it seems the company is aware that such a mode exists but might be having a hard time preventing it from reappearing in the game.
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“Inappropriate or explicit content has absolutely no place in our game,” a Blizzard spokesperson told PC Gamer when the outlet asked about the first version of the mode last year. “We immediately removed the user-created game mode once made aware of its existence. We are continually working to improve automatic filters to prevent inappropriate user-created content, and manually removing any that are not caught by the system.”
Kotaku reached out to Activision Blizzard for comment.
While this is at least the second time the “sexual harassment simulator” has popped up in Overwatch 2 specifically, players noted that a similar mode existed in some form in the original Overwatch game. At the time, players posted PSAs to warn the community about the offensive content. Of course, not all player-created game modes are this egregious. But it is concerning that this issue has come up more than once within a few months.
