Overwatch 2 battle pass means no more loot boxes

A new Overwatch 2 battle pass will arrive at the start of every season, Blizzard confirmed today in a special presentation about the upcoming sequel. The battle passes will replace loot boxes, which offered randomized content drops and could be purchased en masse by players or earned through playtime.

Overwatch 2 is adopting a free-to-play model, and most F2P games have battle passes that offer players a chance to buy a premium version of the pass with extra shiny goodies. A brief screenshot shown during the Overwatch 2 presentation shows a battle pass that appears to have four free tiers within every set of 10 tiers, and about 100 tiers total. That means a little less than half of the battle pass cosmetics will be available for free. The cosmetics seem to be organized just like they are in Overwatch 1 with various rarity levels, as well. It's unclear if players will be able to get these items after a battle pass ends, or how the in-game store will work.

During a roundtable interview with GamesRadar+ and other media outlets, Blizzard declined to comment when asked about the battle pass model, the differences between the premium and free pass, and the availability of cosmetics outside of the battle pass parameters. "All of those details of exactly what you get at each tier, and how long it takes to progress them, and how much it is, and what you get for free - all of those types of things, we know that players care about that a lot. And by proxy that all of you do, too," commercial lead Jon Spector says in lieu of a concrete answer. "That's stuff that we will get into detail with ahead of October 4, but are not ready to do that right now and want to make sure that it's not just, 'Hey, let's answer this small piece of the puzzle now', but rather a more comprehensive, 'This is everything you need to know about the new battle pass system altogether'."