Overwatch 2’s new heroes can be unlocked via the free track of Battle Pass

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Fans were growing concerned that new heroes would have to be paid for

Junker Queen - Overwatch 2
(Image credit: Blizzard)

The new heroes in Overwatch 2 will be available "on the free track" of the Battle Pass, a developer has confirmed. 

Following confusion surrounding the Overwatch 2 Battle Pass yesterday, Jon Spector - the Commercial Leader for Overwatch and VP at Blizzard - took to Twitter to clear a few things up. "Addressing some incomplete info posted early about our Overwatch 2 Battle Pass," the tweet begins, "we'll be sharing all details ahead of launch, but want to confirm that new Overwatch 2 heroes will be available on the free track of the Battle Pass."

Whether or not new Overwatch 2 characters will be locked behind a paywall was the topic of discussion yesterday after a new description for the upcoming Battle Pass was "posted early," as Spector explains above. 

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The since-deleted description, which has been shared around on sites such as Reddit and Resetera, read: "With the Season One Premium Battle Pass you can unlock 8- tiers of rewards including Mythic Cyber Demon Genji, Legendary Hinotori Kiriko, and more." It continues, "In addition, as a Season One Premium Battle Pass owner you will automatically receive access to Overwatch’s latest hero Kiriko!"

This understandably had a lot of Overwatch players frustrated with the fact that they may need to pay for the new characters coming to the free-to-play FPS when previously, in the original Overwatch game, new characters were just added to the game and were available for all players. Thankfully though, as we now know, this simply isn’t the case. 

It’s not been an easy week for the Overwatch team who, aside from this slip-up, have also had to contend with a character leak of the highly-anticipated fox girl hero. Spector once again had to clear up the rumors by simply revealing: "Yes, this is fake." You can’t blame fans for believing such a leak though when Blizzard has been hinting at the next hero for several months now. 

Need something to play before Overwatch 2 releases next month? Take a look at our best FPS games list. 

Hope Bellingham
Hope Bellingham
News Writer

After studying Film Studies and Creative Writing at university, I was lucky enough to land a job as an intern at Player Two PR where I helped to release a number of indie titles. I then got even luckier when I became a Trainee News Writer at GamesRadar+ before being promoted to a fully-fledged News Writer after a year and a half of training.  My expertise lies in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, cozy indies, and The Last of Us, but especially in the Kingdom Hearts series. I'm also known to write about the odd Korean drama for the Entertainment team every now and then.