Maybe not for the PvE cancelation, but how do you explain the other abysmally slow changes? I doubt corporate management has any influence on Brigitte rework, you know the rework they worked on for so long only to give her a slightly bigger shield. A rework that apparently took months. Or any of the other balance changes that were supposed to come out quickly now with OW2 yet we only get one or 2 patches in a season that have slight number changes in them.
That depends.
Are you are open about it to the customers and inform them as soon as possible?
Then no.
Do you not only keep it a secret from the public, but also continue to advertise it to prevent your customers from making an educated purchase decision?
Absolutely yes.
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Pride celebrations? We call a few rainbow flags and a shop update a celebration now?
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I think some would argue there was never any purchase available for the PvE content. anything that was sold for OW2 was specifically for PvP like skins and the BP so I’m not entirely sure the educated purchase argument would really hold much weight in any courtroom
Maybe this is different in the USA, but if you sell something in the EU and promise that there will be upgrades/more functions available for it at a later point (be it paid or free), despite already knowing that this is never going to happen, then you are opening yourself up to a case of false advertisement, because you are intentionally misleading customers.
If you sell an annual pass for an amusement park and tell people that later that year there will be a great new attraction in the park, then you better get that attraction ready, cause saying “we are sorry that we didn’t manage to open the attraction in time, but we won’t refund you, because you can still visit the rest of the park” isn’t going to fly.
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I think this is the key point here, there’s nothing to refund you. none of us paid up front for the PvE content and I’m sure blizzard covered themselves in the terms of service. no doubt they have a section saying something along the lines of things may or may not be completed and may even be taken away at will. i also think they tried to cover themselves by labelling the game “early access” when the PvP dropped, it’s a convenient excuse for this very situation. I’m not sure if any of it would be legally binding or cause for a lawsuit since I’m not a lawyer
I’m gonna blame everyone at Blizzard idc.
They’ve all contributed to the mess that is OW2, whether that’s through PvE or just balance.
damn, even the cleaners?
The cleaners should have taken the scrapped PvE out of the trash and developed it themselves. So yes, even the cleaners.
boi this ain’t good will hunting
People bought cosmetics, battle passes and ingame currency in the expectation to be able to use all that stuff in the promised PvE mode.
They advertised this stuff with a promise of extended functionality/features being added in the future, despite knowing that this is not going to happen.
One example, the Overwatch 2 Trailer that is heavily focused on the PvE content, to this day shows the Overwatch 2 Watchpoint Pack beneath it:
https://i.imgur.com/mhvK2mV.png
I loved the first book but haven’t read the second. It’s funny how Halo Wars was the result of execs demanding that the devs just “make it Halo” now. It was never intended to be a Halo game. Gave me a lot of empathy for developers since it covers big teams, small teams, and solo devs.
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Yeah yeah heard it all before, dev thing hard.
Mate we lost features and content for anticipated pve, which was then scrapped but the garbage remained.
You made a mistake? Fine, revert it back then, don’t leave us with this alleged “2” when the whole reason behind it was the pve.
Lets not forget the garbage balance and hero designs, are we ignoring sojourn plaguing the game for several seasons because of arbitrary reasons or weaver “changing the game at the highest level” ?
Are we going to ignore the ranked salad?
Now sombra’s getting reworked meanwhile it’s sniper galore there, if their widow is better than your widow, though potatoes mate, gl next match.
Did you know overwatch has a hotfix tool?
What is all this extra dev time being spent on? Obviously it’s not pve and it doesn’t look like its pvp either.
I read some of his posts on Twitter lately and he comes off as a smarmy dink. He’s also younger than me so he probably has no idea what he’s talking about 
I’m wildly not interested in reading excuses for poor management, and I’m intricately aware of how poor certain managers are in the tech world (because it’s extremely uncommon to be both great with tech on top of having excellent people skills, as well as have CEOs in tech familiar with how everything works from intern-level to the top). Also, most of us aren’t here because we’re bastions of exemplary social behaviour.
Some of us are, but most of us aren’t.
I think he’s earned his respect as a journalist and a writer. he’s almost always on the frontline of a story and goes to insane lengths for it.
his second one is really great too, he goes into detail about the closure of studios, before and after. the first chapter is all about the development of bioshock and for fans offers a really interesting insight
Then you are a liar as well.
They knew they were cancelling PVE before OW2 released. Aaron told us the talents were still coming back in January 2023.
They’ve been reusing PVE assets to make Kiriko and Rammatra and Battle for Olympus.
That is manipulation. They padded what OW2 was to seek skins and BP and get attention.
There is not excuse for it.
you only know the result of what happened, not what lead to it, you have no more insight than anybody else here. it’s easy to point fingers and play the blame game but none of us truly know why it happened.
could have been a variety of things and it’s almost always upper management.
I’m not blaming the individual developers. Hell, I can’t even bring myself to blame Aaron Keller, since the majority of what he says sounds like PR stuff he’s forced to say at gunpoint. I blame the company. Blizzard struck gold 7 years ago, then threw it away. The Overwatch IP is easily among the most popular they have, yet the video game associated with it is - and has always been - an Early Access budget title.
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it is a shame to see what was once a joyous and colourful game turn into a cynically driven storefront with a game attached
but what else was going to happen with a publisher like activision behind it
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The devs knew PVE was cancelled a year ago. This absolutely is
on them. They are replacing PVE with garbage battle passes and phony corporate pandering.
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