Game director Aaron Keller kicks off the new year by walking you through the thought process behind Season 20’s biggest changes and the tune-ups inspired by your feedback.
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OW classic 2020 when?
Also,
Open Queue is the second most popular way to play Overwatch and we’re currently talking about what it would look like to put more support into these modes this year.
Second most popular?
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Any news on a working anticheat to combat the prolific walling and toggle aimbotting and ximming?
A real push here for a semblance of competitive integrity would do wonders for everyone.
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If OQ is second most popular but still around as popular as it was when it was 5v5 OQ, does mean Stadium’s dead in a ditch right now?
Is that why they’ve talked about moving back to supporting the main game more?
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not gonna lie this is kinda just a big nothing burger
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Why would you give it a title like that if it’s mainly a revision, rather than a response to the poll you made in the last blog post?
“Call and Response” makes it look like you’d actually address one of those things.
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free durpee free durpeefree durpeefree durpee
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Great article, but I think I found some typos:
We still want Top 500 to feel like a race, but we heard your feedback and we’d like rank to count for a lot more than it did this season.
Do you mean you want rank to count more this season than last season?
The system will keep the Challenger name, but we’ll rename the leaderboards to Top 500.
I think you have this backwards. Isnt the leaderboards currently called the Top 500?
Let’s get this out of the way first: we introduced this system incorrectly. As Game Director, one of my top priorities is to protect the player experience and changing the feel of aiming—the most important control in the game — isn’t protecting that experience. We’ve had a lot of discussion around this internally, and we still like this new system, but if we could go back in time, we would have rolled it out a lot differently.
Did you just admit fault? Do my eyes deceive me?! 
This is very refreshing to see and yes, the system was rolled out very poorly. Thank you for finally taking accountability for that. 
…so next season we’re implementing the ability for you to optionally select the old system if you prefer it. Think of it as a legacy mode for aiming!
We have to wait till S21 to get the old aiming system back as an option? Come on now! Thats just silly! But I guess its better than nothing…
The easiest example to illustrate why this is a tricky situation to solve is that some Open Queue players jump in for fast queue times while some 6v6 players are looking for more balanced team compositions. Implementing features for either one could hurt the other. While we don’t have a lot of concrete evidence to support either of these directions at the moment, we’ll be collecting data and experimenting to find the best solution in the near future.
Ok, this is very exciting! 6v6 is my favorite mode so to see this attention getting *directed* towards 6v6 is very promising! Will we get some more 6v6 Trials again like in late 2024? Those were so fun and I hope they come back in a similar form. 
Its nice to see this Director’s Take address some recent pressing issues and topics. I very much appreciate it. Heres to 2026 Devs! 
Lets make it a great year for OW2! 
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Mostly, but this change regarding the ‘aim recalibration’ they did was significant:
“we’ve already reverted some of the changes that modified a player’s default aim settings. In the discussions we’re tracking, we see that many players now prefer the new system, but there are still quite a few that miss the old one. This is a matter of personal preference and aim feel is incredibly important to the player experience, so next season we’re implementing the ability for you to optionally select the old system if you prefer it. Think of it as a legacy mode for aiming!”
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Devs blatantly admitting stadium isn’t a popular mode but will still release 10 maps for it in 2026 while comp gets 1 flashpoint map yet again
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Good to hear about changes to the leaderboard and options to revert aim settings. All good things.
Does a mode have to be top 2 to be considered popular? It’s probably 3rd and likely still a huge chunk of the population.
Like USA is the 3rd most populous country in the world, so should we just stop wasting resources on it and send everything to China and India instead?
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Microsoft’s shareholder’s call is coming up.
On this Subject of what is going on here in our game. Question regarding Long-term Growth and Market Viability for the game of Overwatch.
With the Microsoft shareholders’ call approaching, I am concerned about the current strategic direction of Overwatch and how it aligns with sustainable IP growth.
From a market perspective, the current atmosphere appears to be shifting toward a “niche” ecosystem. By prioritizing hyper-competitive mechanics such as leaver penalties strictly enforced now in QP, over the “open-for-all” accessibility that originally built this brand’s value, we are seeing a widening wedge between the casual player base and the elite.
As a stakeholder in this community, I have to ask: How does shrinking the target audience and fostering internal hostility between player segments boost investor confidence? A business model that alienates the “daily casual” (the largest spending demographic) in favor of a narrow competitive niche seems to limit the IP’s ability to drive long-term profit and scale.
Is there a plan to return to a more inclusive design philosophy that ensures the game remains a broad-market asset for Microsoft?
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Not at all surprising! Maybe early on in OW1’s existence this game had a huge casual playerbase but now all that remains is a largely dedicated one. These players, including myself, play to either get better competitively or enjoy relatively balanced, high octane gameplay that base Overwatch offers.
Stadium is build for a casual audience without that kind of audience to sustain it. The only way it will become more popular is if they fix the competitive integrity of the mode and use it advertise future features for the base game like new heroes or abilities.
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Playing with tons of variable de-/buffs is not optimal for a PvP game imo. It’s like a Diablo PvP, which is a joke.
I don’t like perks for the same reason. Adding one more ability across the hero would be much better than perks.
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At the End it’s just something like
70% Role Queue
16% Open Queue
14% Stadium
2 . most popular doesn’t have to mean anything.
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the daily casual doesn’t exist. Hyper-causal players do not sustain the revenue of any game they play. It’s only dedicated players, who’ve committed hours of hours of time and resources into the game, that keep it going. There is a reason why virtually all monetisation models for popular games bank on a small handful of whale players spending millions to rake in revenue.
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Also Aaron makes a good final point about queue times because that is honestly the only reason why I ever play it. I even got GM in Open Q comp because matches are so much quicker to get but the downside is that GM Open Queue is basically Diamond Role Queue.
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I’d like to point out that it’s been over a year since Wrecking Ball has received a new Legendary Skin. And well over 2 years since his last Non-Recolor.
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Actual cinematics and not this cell shaded/animated comic garbage when? Y’all can afford it lol. Also bring back PvE modes, we miss them! We need variation!
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Last up, Open Queue and 6v6! In a recent livestream, I made a remark that caused some of the community to think that we’re intentionally withholding support from these queues. This isn’t true. Open Queue is the second most popular way to play Overwatch and we’re currently talking about what it would look like to put more support into these modes this year.
However, before we can move in any particular direction, it’s important to analyze why players are interacting with these queues. This mode is Open Queue and it’s 6v6. We’ve had Open Queue in the game for some time, but 6v6 became its standard team size in early 2025. Interestingly, this mode is roughly as popular now as it was before the change to 6v6 was made. The easiest example to illustrate why this is a tricky situation to solve is that some Open Queue players jump in for fast queue times while some 6v6 players are looking for more balanced team compositions. Implementing features for either one could hurt the other. While we don’t have a lot of concrete evidence to support either of these directions at the moment, we’ll be collecting data and experimenting to find the best solution in the near future.
Well this is quite the change from it being unsupported. Im pleasantly surprised.
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