Skip to main content

Overwatch 2 closed beta is coming to PC next month

Overwatch 2 is getting a closed beta for its PvP mode next month. A developer update video released today provided a wealth of new details on the upcoming game and its upcoming beta.

Overwatch 2 | Developer Update

Players and community members can sign up for the closed beta now, which will take place in late April. The closed beta will include a new damage hero named Soujourn, the new Push game mode, 5v5 multiplayer, several hero reworks, and four new maps.

In the developer update, game director Aaron Keller explained that the dev team is “decoupling” Overwatch 2‘s player vs. player mode from its player vs. enemy mode in order to give the community access to multiplayer PvP modes faster. He apologized for the lack of meaningful content released in Overwatch during the development of its sequel and for the silence that followed the announcement of Overwatch 2

According to Keller, the team is looking to build on what made Overwatch great by expanding its communication systems, fine-tuning its combat and hero balance, and introducing entirely new modes of play in Overwatch 2.

Prior to the closed beta, a closed alpha will be taking place starting today. Blizzard employees, Overwatch League pro players, and a handful of others will be the first to test Overwatch 2‘s new systems, features, and reworks before a wider group of players receives access to them in the beta. Keller promised regular updates leading up to the game’s release and reiterated the team’s commitment to delivering both quality PvP and PvE experiences to players for a long time coming.

Editors' Recommendations

Emily Morrow
Emily Morrow is a games journalist and narrative designer who has written for a variety of online publications. If she’s…
Dragon’s Dogma 2’s first updates will tackle its PC performance issues
A character with a bow and arrow in Dragon's Dogma 2.

Capcom revealed what the first updates for Dragon's Dogma 2 will fix and change following the RPG's first weekend on the market.

Dragon's Dogma 2 launched on March 22. While it garnered positive reviews, it also had a bevy of technical issues, particularly on PC. Capcom admitted it was aware of Dragon's Dogma 2's optimization problem on the day it launched and is now outlining the first steps being taken to improve things via game updates. On PC, Capcom will release an update that will improve DLSS Super Resolution quality and fix "an issue where models appeared low-quality under some specific settings."

Read more
Overwatch 2’s story-driven PvE missions are being abandoned by Blizzard
A giant turret in set up in Gothenburg in Overwatch 2's story missions.

Overwatch 2 finally got some of its long-awaited PvE content last August, but it doesn't look like more is on the way, according to some new reports.

Earlier this week, a story from Kotaku indicated that the future of Overwatch 2's story-driven PvE missions was in question after the first batch of missions, which were released as paid DLC for a free-to-play game and sold poorly. Now, a new report from Bloomberg affirms that. As part of a newsletter outlining wider frustrations Blizzard's developers have with how the company ties profit-sharing bonuses to the performance of games that specific teams make, Bloomberg touched on how the Overwatch 2 team's bonuses were negatively impacted by the failure of the PvE content. A lot of that PvE team was apparently laid off in January when Microsoft cut 1,900 games-related jobs, and sources now tell Bloomberg that Blizzard does not plan to finish its previously planned PvE content.

Read more
Capcom responds to negative reception of Dragon’s Dogma 2’s PC port
A beastren in Dragon's Dogma 2.

Dragon's Dogma 2 launched today, and while it had a warm critical reception, players are having a lot of problems with its PC port in particular. Currently, it has an overwhelmingly negative user score on Steam, with over 13,000 reviews as of the writing. Capcom has addressed common criticism of the game in the hopes of quelling the frustration of PC players.

Players are a bit peeved at the inclusion of microtransactions in all versions of the game, as well as the fact that it uses Denuvo anti-cheat software that's known to impact game performance. I already found the game to be poorly optimized on Xbox Series X/S, but the issues get even worse on PC. For a game that already has demanding minimum required PC specs, performance still isn't good for a lot of players, with frame rate drops, crashes, and freezing happening often. Players have had to find odd ways to improve the frame rate by doing things like murdering NPCs.

Read more