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Overwatch heroes and maps will always be free

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Answering the most vital question the community had regarding the future of the game, Jeff Kaplan has appeared in a new Developer Update video for Overwatch to confirm that any new maps or heroes – or, we would assume, any gameplay-effecting multiplayer content – will be patched in for free. They won’t be DLC, or bought with an in-game currency, but available to everyone immediately.

Overwatch is probably going to end up on our best FPS games list.

Jeff also deals with a number of other community concerns from beta testers. Here’s the highlights:

  • A kill feed is on the way to make it more obvious who is alive and dead without checking the score screen.
  • Options regarding the kill cam and in-game music are on the way.
  • The end-of-round card system is something they like, but needs work.
  • This is also true of the “on-fire” state that triggers when you’re doing particularly well.

The video was aimed more at players already in the beta and their concerns, so there was no information about when more players will be invited to the beta, or how many. It has been confirmed previously that once the beta comes back up after the Christmas breakmore invites will go out.

There wasn’t really a way out of this situation other than Blizzard confirming they won’t charge for new heroes or maps. I wouldn’t have hated the game being expanded more traditionally, with a large pack of paid-for heroes and maps arriving at some stage, but Blizzard aren’t sure what they want to do and communities don’t take lightly to that sort of news without specifics. We will probably see something like the CSGO model begin to develop, where there are a lot of cosmetics for a base game that slowly drops in price over time.

It’s also possible that game modes, some sort of campaign or whatever else might be paid-for in the future, but expect the big blue to finish up and really polish the ‘normal’ multiplayer before moving on.