Blizzard has published an article about Game Pass rewards with 358524 ID number on their support page.
It’s clear that permanent rewards must be redeemed through Battle.net for PC (or Xbox itself for console players) with connected Game Pass account and rewards are transferred on the other platforms which are connected.
“Game Pass seasonal benefits are only available on Xbox and Battle.net.” but this one is so perplexing. Do we have to always stay on Battle.net or will we get benefits while playing another platforms (e.g. Steam)?
I’m playing this game through Steam and I don’t want same game occupies in my disk two different platforms.
I would say… no?
I think what they mean is that you can only redeem them through Battle.net and Xbox. Why I think this is because previous Game Pass benefits would only activate if you opened the game on Xbox at some point, or at least this happened to me. I recently bought an Xbox and downloaded Overwatch, only after opening the game and logging in I got the old rewards, even though I had Game Pass since many years and the accounts were linked already.
Note: Game Pass permanent rewards are only redeemable on Xbox and Battle.net. Once redeemed, the permanent rewards are available on all platforms. Links made after November 11, 2024 are not eligible for the one-time permanent grant.
Note: If you have a PC tier, you will only be able to redeem on Battle.net. Console tier will only be redeemable on Xbox consoles. Game Pass seasonal benefits are only available on Xbox and Battle.net.
It seems that they kept it that way, and the reason why I didn’t get it last time was because I had the Ultimate tier. Back then it wasn’t clarified like this, just that you needed to log in to Xbox to redeem the benefits, no tier distinction. Okay I found out it was specified as only for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and I indeed had to redeem them through an Xbox.
The seasonal benefits from what I understand is the special shop with the old skins from previous seasons.
So maybe yes, you need to download and log in to Overwatch through Battle.net to access the permanent skins benefits of the PC Game Pass. If you want the seasonal store, you’ll need to keep it downloaded after that. Otherwise you can just keep playing on Steam.
If you pay for the other tiers of Game Pass, you will need to use your console.