The Overwatch 2 director responds to Steam review bombing

Overwatch 2 director Aaron Keller took the time to not only respond to the game’s unfortunate review bombing on Steam, but also reassure fans of the amount of content ahead of them.

For those unfamiliar, Overwatch 2 launched on Steam on August 10th and quickly became the worst user-reviewed game on the platform ever. As of the time of our story, Overwatch 2 has just a 0.96 based on an approval rating of 10% from 92,028 votes.

on Blizzard.com, Keeler took up blowing up the review in stride. While he admits that it’s no fun for your game to be the target of these online attacks, the fun of seeing new players join the game is far outweighed by it.

“We also launched on Steam last week, and while reviewing isn’t a fun experience, it was great to see so many new players jump into Overwatch 2 for the first time,” Keller wrote. “Our goal with Overwatch 2 is to make the game more accessible than ever before to more people than ever before.”

Keller then talked about the controversial decision to cancel Overwatch 2’s long-awaited PvE Hero mode and how that was definitely a factor in blowing up the review. Plus, he shares the vision of Overwatch 2 moving forward and promises that it will be a vision to watch.

“Many reviews on Steam point to the cancellation of the much larger PvE component announced in 2019 as one of the main reasons for dissatisfaction with the game,” Keller said. “I get it. This was the announcement of an ambitious project that we couldn’t deliver in the end.

“If we can’t turn back the clock, what can we do? We can keep adding and improving Overwatch 2. That’s how we’re progressing. That means more maps, heroes, game modes, quests, stories, events, cosmetics and great features – a game that expands.” And it’s constantly evolving and improving. This is the future of Overwatch. One where we’ll constantly innovate and innovate what makes the game great now for the players who play now.”

Despite the cancellation of PvE Hero mode, Overwatch 2 fans will still have smaller PvE story missions to look forward to, including those from the game’s final season – Invasion. In this new season, story missions see players fight against the Null Sector and will show how heroes like Lucio, Reinhardt, and others met before Winston banded together in Overwatch.

For more, check out how Overwatch 2 has now moved out of Early Access and how Activision Blizzard has acknowledged a decrease in Overwatch 2 engagement and player investment.

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Adam Pankhurst is a news writer for IGN. You can follow him on Twitter @tweet and on twitch.