The Winter Fair Event for Overwatch 2 will be launched on December 19. Even though the event won't go live until a couple of days, the community is already up in arms about one particular detail, and while no less than the executive producer of the game tried to calm things down, his statement just stoked the fires even more.
The Controversy
Overwatch 2's Winter Fair Event is a limited-time affair that lasts from December 19 to January 15. During this period, players can earn tickets that would allow them to buy Winter skins for certain heroes.
Those who are on the free track can only earn up to 120 tickets (40 tickets per week), thus severely limiting the rewards they can get. They can choose either the Formalwear Legendary skins for Cassidy or Baptiste, or the Winter Jammies Legendary skin for Illari. These cost 90 tickets each, which means that players are limited to just one free legendary skin during the event period.
For players who do not mind spending $5 (for 500 Gold Coins), they can earn 160 tickets per week up to a maximum of 480 in the four weeks that the Winter Fair Event is live. This allows them to purchase the more expensive cosmetics of the bunch, such as the "Legendary Wrapping Paper" skin for Reinhardt and the "Legendary Kerrigan" skin for Widowmaker. These skins cost 160 tickets apiece. Since the premium track only has a 480-ticket cap, this means that players are limited to getting just three legendary skins from the event.
That last bit caused a huge uproar in the community because even if a player decides to get the premium pass, they are not even able to acquire all of the Winter-themed skins.
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Fan the Flames
Over on Twitter, user @xblazrx said that the premium path should provide players with access to all of the rewards. No less than the game's executive producer, Jared Neuss, replied to this tweet saying that he and his team have heard that the community wants to unlock everything. However, his reply ended with something controversial because it seemed like the developers wanted to experiment on something. "Will be interested to see if FOMO overshadows that benefit," Neuss said.
User @DylanHuff10 said that Neuss' response was so bad that he should have hired a PR team to help him. They added that if a person spends money to get the premium pass, they expect to get every single reward from the event.
Another user opined that the premium pass is not worth the purchase. "Spend five dollars to get two recolors and an old widow skin! Sounds reasonable to me," they said. True enough, the Kerrigan Widowmaker skin was actually first introduced in 2018 as a way to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Blizzard's other popular IP, Starcraft.
Overwatch 2, unlike its predecessor, is a free-to-play game. While it is reasonable for developers to employ monetization schemes to recoup the costs of running a live-service title, doing it this way is not the ideal path to take.
What can you say about the Winter Fair Event skins controversy? Do you think that Blizzard is now employing shady tactics to capitalize on people's fear of missing out?
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