Two months ago, the Overwatch League died. Now the eSports league has a new name: the Overwatch Champions Series.

It’s a multi-regional league that will culminate in two events at Dreamhack. It will be run in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa by the Savvy Games Group (which has been expanding quite a bit in the gaming industry and was forced to shut down the Embracer Group, which was behind the failed deal with Volition, of Saints Row fame), which is affiliated with the Saudi Arabian leadership. The Asian events will be run by a South Korean promoter, WDG. Each region will have its own qualifier and championship events, and eventually there will be two in-person events. The first will be the Dreamhack Dallas Major (May 31-June 2), followed by the World Finals at Dreamhack Stockholm (November 22-24).

The new direction, which Activision Blizzard talked about when it shut down the Overwatch League, is more of a typical eSports structure. The live events were put on hold by the pandemic, and the publisher said the Overwatch League was in trouble last May, so the final agony phase lasted six months as they canceled the original event in November. The follow-up has some bumps in the road, though.

China still doesn’t have a publishing partner for Overwatch after the deal with one of China’s tech giants, NetEase, ended in January 2023, and since they can only launch in countries with live service support, China is out of the deal because it doesn’t run there. The other issue is one that was added to the game this month: self-healing. So the game is less about teamwork and more about who has a stronger and/or faster weapon.

This has simplified the Overwatch 2 metagame and opened the door for more Kazoo players to play the game… and that’s just part of the big changes the FPS is getting in its ninth season. The question is whether they’re distorting the game too much, because that’s absolutely not what Overwatch 2 is about.

Source: PCGamer