By: NATHANIEL ROBINSON
In October 2022, Blizzard launched the sequel to their incredibly successful game, Overwatch. The main attraction with this one was that it was free to play instead of the $40 that its predecessor was priced at. Overwatch 2 is a 5v5 team shooter. Its teamwork requirements and recognizable characters are just two reasons for its popularity. However, the biggest complaint from fans and haters alike is the ridiculous prices for some of the available “skins” in the game. See, since Overwatch 2 is free to play, Blizzard has to make a consistent profit. So they’ve turned skins, things that change the characters and weapons to look differently which were also somewhat free in the first game, into overpriced purchases. Blizzard was charging up to $20 (half the price of the first game) for a SINGLE skin in the game. This caused a lot of discord and outrage in the gaming community. While Blizzard made comments on social media about changing the pricing for these skins, they failed to actually do anything about this situation until now.
Along with the release of a new “season” of the game (seasons being periods of a game where there are unlockable goodies and changes to the game), Blizzard confirmed that players will be able to gain enough credits in the game to buy a skin for free. Credits are the currency in which you buy skins and other things in the game. They’ve also confirmed that they’re going to be lowering the price of “legendary skins” from 1,900 credits ($20.00) to 1,500 ($15.00). While this price drop is somewhat significant, it still has a lot of players on the fence. The majority of players, however, seem to love the idea of being able to earn at least one free legendary skin during the season. Hopefully, this is the first step of many from Blizzard to make their pricing more affordable for players of their game.