Overwatch 2 Devs Blame Blizzard For Negligence With Steam’s Launch; Review Bombing Was Expected

The departure of Bobby Kotick was expected since the talks for Microsoft Activision acquisitions began. Now that his days as a CEO have come to a halt, many devs have shared criticisms regarding certain decisions adopted by Blizzard over the years. The ex-Overwatch community dev manager, Andy Belford, claims on Twitter that the company supposedly “flatly denied” to help with the Steam launch of Overwatch 2.

Breaking my silence to share a fun fact: when we planned OW2’s steam launch, my team warned (months in advance) that we’re going to be review bombed. We begged for more information, more details, and more resources to help us with the anticipated influx, all flatly denied. https://t.co/bALYcb0lg0

— Andy Belford (@andybelford) December 29, 2023

Andy claims the devs had already expected a review bombing spree by gamers. As a result, the devs requested more information, resources, and details to deal with the imminent launch of Overwatch 2 on Steam, the first for the franchise. Regardless, Blizzard did not heed the team’s warnings that were months in advance, causing a lot of turmoil within the studio.

He further divulges that the task of moderating Overwatch 2 on Steam was given to the community team, which is not usually handled by it at the studio. Andy allegedly did not want to expose his team to the intense toxicity on the OW2 Steam page at the time. The dev found out afterward that Bobby had greenlit the FPS to be released on Steam without any additional help provided to the team.

At the end of everything, player experience/worker meant nothing to CSuite and exec leadership. It was all about that quarters earnings call

— Andy Belford (@andybelford) December 29, 2023

On the flip side, a plethora of gamers on threads like NeoGAF are split on the story, with some taking the side of the CEO on this one. Andy has been criticized because the users claim that reading Steam comments is supposedly not that traumatizing and should not require extra staff and resources. Moreover, it is argued that a disliked game with many issues was going to get review-bombed by the community for valid reasons.

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Overwatch 2 was dubbed as a glorified DLC by many fans of the series upon launch. A slew of loyal OW players wondered about the need for a sequel as it failed to live up to the hype. As a result, the entry drowned in negative reviews soon after release on Steam, becoming one of the worst-rated titles there. However, it has also seen a lot of success despite the ratings, crossing 25 million users in just ten days after launch.

The FPS came out in early access on October 4, 2022, before officially launching along with the Sixth season on August 10, 2023. It is available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PC. eXputer’s Muhammad Haris Umer reviewed Overwatch 2 with a 2.8/5 score, criticizing it for bad servers and lacking content but praised for fast-paced action and a more balanced gameplay.