Blizzard made a few big announcements at BlizzCon, with both Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 being megaton reveals, but as it happens to often with reveals of this nature, both of them got prematurely leaked. Both leaks, as you would expect, were also a bit of a bummer for Blizzard.
Speaking with Kotaku Australia, Overwatch 2 director Jeff Kaplan got to talking about the leak for the hero shooter, bringing up the “incoherent” nature of the leak in particular, and saying that the “crappy version of what the art looks like” that accompanied it did not represent the final product, and the way that many reacted to it was a bit “demoralising” for Blizzard.
“Leaks are very interesting in that they have more of a moral impact on the team than anything else. It’s extremely demoralising,” he said. “You feel totally deflated.
“When you’re trying so hard to deliver something for somebody and to have it be spoiled in a way that’s not coherent, that’s the part that bothers us the most, where people are not given all the information and all of the context that they need to understand what we’re doing.”
“They take such care to make the art look beautiful, and then we get some crappy version of what the art looks like,” Kaplan went on. “And then people are like, ‘I don’t know it doesn’t look that good’ and we’re like, no it does, it looks amazing! It’s just a crappy screenshot that someone took, so it can be a bit demoralising.”
Blizzard is promising interesting things with Overwatch 2, with “deeply replayable hero missions” on top of the game already having PvE story missions. Meanwhile, the studio is also committed to “doing the right thing by players”, part of which seems to be their commitment to support legacy Overwatch players even after the sequel is out. In fact, before Overwatch 2’s launch, the first game will be receiving at least one more new hero.
And when will Overwatch 2 launch? There’s no telling yet, but when it does, it’ll be available on PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
