Overwatch League pins down a May 5 start date for its 2022 season

    
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Overwatch’s professional esports league has been a bit quiet of recent in terms of its presumed 2022 season. Readers will recall that there were rumors of the league taking a year off that OWL quashed, followed by plans for a start window of April 2022, to say nothing of sponsors dropping the league due to Activision Blizzard’s ongoing scandal. Now, a league update post confirms that the fifth season of OWL competition will indeed be going on regardless, beginning on Thursday, May 5th.

This year sees the East Region with 7 teams and the West Region with 13 teams. Each team will play a minimum of 24 regular-season matches, including six seeding matches per tournament cycle, with an extra day and week per cycle to “achieve a more balanced strength of schedule.” The regional tournament format will be expanded this year, adding a Midseason Madness tournament, while midseason and postseason tournaments will both feature a hefty prize pool of at least $1M. There’s also been some tweaks to how teams earn points with an eye on rewarding top performing teams yet keeping the field close.

A schedule for the opening matches of the 2022 season has already been shared online, while the video below offers some more details and attempts at comedy.

Activision-Blizzard is considered a controversial gaming company owing to a long string of scandals over the last few years, including the Blitzchung boycott, mass layoffs, labor disputes, and executive pay fiasco. In 2021, the company was sued by California for fostering a work environment rife with sexual harassment and discrimination, the disastrous corporate response to which compounded Blizzard’s ongoing pipeline issues and the widespread perception that its online games are in decline. Multiple state and federal agencies are investigating the company as employees strike and call for Bobby Kotick’s resignation. As of 2022, the company is being acquired by no less than Microsoft.
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