The PvE offerings out of Overwatch 2 haven’t been what one might call impressive: The shooter put out John Cena-endorsed story missions in August, released a May event with limited PvE elements, and most recently stealth-added a wave survival mode amid loud crowing about Cowboy Bebop skins – all while Blizzard cancelled PvE content plans and admitted the change in strategy was quietly decided over a year ago despite PvE gameplay being the stated primary reason for a sequel in 2019.
Now multiple anonymous former devs of the shooter are expressing their concerns that the work they’ve done on future story missions will never be seen.
Many of these developers – members of the PvE, narrative, and event teams that hit by Microsoft’s ongoing layoff spree – believe that their effort put into PvE will be pushed aside in favor of competitive modes. This revelation paired with an apparent visual cue in the game’s menus suggest that priority of PvE content will be further kicked down the road – or not released whatsoever.
“If they’re gonna make more of that stuff, they just laid off all the people who were working on it,” one source is quoted as saying. “Maybe there’s some other way they could do it, but most of the people laid off from the Overwatch team were working on that pillar.”
The devs also provided insight into the tumultuous work of making PvE gameplay for the PvP shooter, including claims that the project was tied up in pipeline issues for as long as five years, a supposed chase for “Blizzard Quality” that reportedly gave leadership a reason to bog down campaign mission development, and a “pessimistic” view of PvE development’s trajectory. Devs also claim that PvE content didn’t do the numbers that leadership wanted to justify the work and the costs. “It really doesn’t seem like, even from a business perspective, that Activision or Microsoft have any faith in the PvE,” one dev says.
