Blizzard has reversed a massively unpopular Overwatch 2 change just 72 hours after it was implemented, proving it's listening closely to its community even while pushing the value of experimenting with fresh ideas.
Per PC Gamer, Overwatch 2 recently added a MOBA-style draft system to the game's Stadium mode, introduced this year as part of Season 16. However, the draft system removed mirror matchups, which was the catalyst for what can only be described as a bullying campaign by Overwatch players on Reddit.
Mirror matchups allow the same heroes to appear on both teams, and their removal meant there was an even more limited pool of heroes to choose from in the already slim roster available in Stadium compared to other Overwatch modes. Unsurprisingly, this didn't go down well at all in the Overwatch community, and Blizzard seems to have heard the message.
"Hey everyone! We've just disabled the mirrored Hero restriction in Stadium Draft, said game director Aaron Keller on Twitter. "You'll be able to draft any Hero you'd like, even if the enemy team has already selected them.
We're grateful to everyone who tried it out and shared feedback. As a team, one of our goals is to make the game that you want to play. This involves listening, responding, and taking those desires into account."
We’re grateful to everyone who tried it out and shared feedback.As a team, one of our goals is to make the game that you want to play. This involves listening, responding, and taking those desires into account.Thank you for all the feedback! Keep it coming. We’re listening.…August 28, 2025
Of course, Blizzard has long proven itself to be receptive to community feedback thanks to the seemingly endless cycle of Diablo 4 updates, player blowback online, and then, like clockwork, new updates targeted toward addressing those complaints.
Still, Keller indulged in some "additional rambling" in which he seemed to defend the dev team's desire to continue adding new and unexpected stuff to Overwatch instead of basing every new update on feedback from players, which I can get down with.
"The team is still invested in creating new and unique features for Overwatch," said Keller. "While we are listening we still love to surprise and delight. Sometimes that means releasing an amazing new experience for the game, like Stadium," which has indeed been very popular since its launch in April.
"But it also introduces risk and means not everything is just right each time," added Keller. "That doesn't mean we'll stop trying to innovate, but that we'll adapt and iterate as quick as we can when something doesn't land the way we want."
On paper, that seems like the right approach. Game developers are creatives, after all, and while their job is to make players happy, I'd argue that the best way to do that is by sometimes thinking and creating independently from outside influences, and if something flops, removing and learning from it, even if in this case that just means learning that Overwatch players really like mirror matchups.
