Overwatch’s scrapped PvE mode was reportedly ‘fully playable’

The story mode in Overwatch 2 was originally pitched to be the new saving grace of the sci-fi shooter, varying the content from mindless blasting, healing, and respawning. 

But this time last year, amid the launch of the sequel title, Blizzard Entertainment sacked off PvE and the lore-twining that was supposed to come with it, pivoting to a different form of extra content with story missions.

Now though, these story missions look to be facing the same fate as the PvE mode, and developers are claiming that the writing is on the wall for the "fully playable" missions already made.

Overwatch 2's Story Missions could be facing the axe

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In the wake of the PvE collapse, several anonymous ex-Overwatch 2 developers have told Kotaku that their work appears to have been forgotten about.

The former Blizzard colleagues told Kotaku that "Blizzard Quality" was a crutch that was used to beat off any suggestions on pivots, and the recent layoffs have wiped out nearly the entirety of the team that was working on PvE.

"They just laid off all the people who were working on it," one person said. "Maybe there is some other way they could do it, but most of the people laid off from the Overwatch team were working on that pillar."

"It really doesn’t seem like, even from a business perspective, that Activision or Microsoft have any faith in the PvE," another ex-employee said.

Overwatch 2 has story missions ready to go, but not at 'Blizzard Quality'

Kotaku's report indicated that the Overwatch 2 team originally planned to ship multiple PvE missions, instead of the main game mode, with a new story landing roughly every 18 months.

Some of these missions were "fully playable" though, and could have been released already.

But Blizzard executives appear to have been holding an extremely high standard and used the barrier of "Blizzard Quality" as a bat to fend off any other suggestions on how to ship PvE missions.

"[Blizzard Quality] is a justification to essentially piss about forever and ever redoing the same work over and over," a staff member said.

"Some executive goes, 'Hm, but is it Blizzard quality?' It’s always leadership or game directors, deciding they need to spend the extra time."

"Honestly, if they could have just made any kind of decisions, the game would have shipped years ago."

So, the fate of the entire PvE experience in Overwatch 2 appears to be up for debate, as the future of the sci-fi shooter hangs in the balance.