There are plenty of Overwatch 2 skins for players to earn in the Blizzard FPS game, either through the free and premium battle pass, free events, or Twitch drops and rewards for watching Overwatch League. Problem is, many players are coming out of the woodwork to report that despite watching enough of Overwatch League to earn some in-game skins, they’ve been locked out of doing so, and with cosmetics being a huge part of player expression in multiplayer games, the wasted time stings even more.
So, let’s break down how this works quickly first. Players who watched the Overwatch League playoffs and grand finals could earn a large number of character skins per three hours watched (if they linked their Battle.net account), with in-game Overwatch 2 skins and other cosmetics appearing “on or after November 15, 2022.”
This, however, has not happened for many. The official rules state that you have until December 31, 2022, to redeem any awarded skins before they vanish (in the fine print, mind you), and this makes sense. Give players enough time to redeem their skins once they have them. Here’s where the issue arises though, if you don’t have them now, despite watching the Overwatch League, you can’t ever get them.
According to a screenshot of a support ticket from Blizzard, the items could be earned between October 30 and November 4, with the items set to be delivered on November 15. But, as user Hohoho-you notes, the message from Blizzard support also says “if you still haven’t got the cosmetics it means that you were not eligible.”
Hohoho-you claims they were eligible for the rewards, after “35+ hours of watching” Overwatch League for Overwatch 2 skins, but it appears they’ll never get that time back.
Personally, you shouldn’t go into an event expecting a reward, but if it’s been advertised (and for watching up to 30 hours mind you) you should absolutely get what you came for. Otherwise it’s just another instance of souring your playerbase for no reason at all.
From the comments, this Overwatch 2 skins issue with the League playoffs and finals seems like an absolute mess. Some have got the later rewards but not the earlier ones, and vice versa, while others watched a fair amount and were only rewarded as if they watched very little, and still didn’t get any rewards.
There are some theories, but they don’t really inspire comfort if I’m honest, they just highlight what is potentially a broken system. It could be that the stream is not the active tab when it’s on, or that you opened the stream before it officially started, and didn’t count once it started unless you refresh it. Or my personal favourite, it’s just because YouTube sucks at this compared to Twitch.
Sadly though, it doesn’t currently look like you’ll be getting all your Overwatch 2 skin rewards, and that’s just unfair. You can find the relevant Blizzard Overwatch 2 email on Reddit.
With Overwatch 2 season 2 on the horizon there are even more skins to get in the game, but I doubt they’ll make up for this. In fact, there’s been another Blizzard botch up as the original description of new hero Ramattra’s ult was actually pretty wrong. In the meantime why not check out our Overwatch 2 tier list, or our breakdown of all the Overwatch 2 characters and their abilities.
