Note: I use Overwatch to refer to both Overwatch and Overwatch 2 unless I explicitly draw a distinction between the two. I am very passionate about this game so please excuse the length of this post.
For this week’s critical play, I chose to analyze Overwatch. This game was made by Activision Blizzard, and is available on Windows, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and PlayStation. I have historically played on the most popular platform, Windows. Its ESRB rating is T for Teen (ages 13+) and the overall target audience is (ME AND ONLY ME! 👹) players who enjoy competitive team-based FPS hero shooters as well as the subset of those players that like character customization and gatcha game mechanics.
Since I have a toxic relationship with this game (one match easily turns into hours, which turns into days), I don’t allow myself to engage with it while school is in session. Therefore, I did not actually play the game this week. Rather, this critical play is based off my 1500+ hours of playtime and the knowledge I’ve developed over the past five years.
As a current recovering Overwatch addict, I have firsthand experience with the ways Overwatch uses chance and other design choices to get a player addicted to the game. Overwatch not only possesses exceptionally predatory monetization and gatcha mechanics to entice players but also combines them with other core game mechanics like a randomized competitive matchmaking, game rewards and a gameplay loop that collectively exploit players’ emotional reactions and keep them playing via both fun and frustration.
Monetization Scheme & Gatcha Mechanics
The original Overwatch (2016) was criticized for its loot box system where each loot box would provide the player with random in-game cosmetics for random heroes. The rarity of these items was not random; as one might imagine, lower rarity items appeared with higher probability than higher rarity items. This would encourage players to spend money on loot box bundles, which can cost up to $40 for 50 loot boxes, so that they could more quickly acquire seasonal skins and other cosmetics.
Figure 1: An old screenshot highlighting the cost of different quantities of loot boxes in the original Overwatch store. Image source: u/[deleted] on Reddit.
However, for all its faults, players could acquire loot boxes without paying money fairly easily since leveling up your player level (not to be confused with competitive rank) through playing matches always gave one loot box per level gained and additional loot boxes were given fairly generously through weekly and seasonal challenges. The fact that players paid an upfront cost of $20 to purchase the game may have also limited the degree of monetization Blizzard was willing to incorporate into the game.
Figure 2: An old photo (October 30, 2022) of the 764 unopened loot boxes I had in Overwatch before they were opened in the transition to Overwatch 2. I was able to acquire all of them for free through just organic gameplay.
The launch of Overwatch 2 (2022) moved the game over to a free-to-play model, which introduced monetization schemes so egregiously predatory that it made the original Overwatch look like an unmonetized indie game by comparison. OW2 drastically reduced the number of free cosmetics and other items available to the player. Old items that could previously be acquired through free loot boxes now required disgusting amounts of money—up to $20 for a single skin—to obtain and future cosmetics were locked behind a paid battle pass.
The free tiers of the battle pass, which unlike loot boxes, do not allow players to acquire higher rarity (e.g. Legendary) items for free, are breadcrumbs compared to the old system. Gatcha mechanics are also still preserved through mechanisms like “Maximilian’s Vault,” which gives you a random set of items that are discounted from their original price (yes, you have the privilege of spending less money to get something you would’ve gotten for free in the past).
This stark contrast and disparity between the two games is unique to Overwatch and sets it apart as a game that might possibly have one of the most shameless and greedy monetization models of all time, even among other live-service games that rely on similar systems. This caused Overwatch to be universally panned by players and critics alike. Even now, three years after its original launch on Steam, OW2’s rating has not fully recovered from the initial wave of furious reviews—the game started with an “Overwhelmingly Negative” rating and has now progressed to only “Mostly Negative.”
However, this also serves to highlight the disconnect between player sentiment and the success of Overwatch. Despite the continued negative reception and the years of players on r/Overwatch insisting that the game is dead/dying, the game is clearly still financially lucrative enough to justify continued live updates. This further exemplifies why companies will continue to incorporate these exploitative business practices: players’ opinions don’t matter as long as there are enough players willing to pay for the game and generate a net profit.
Figure 3: A graph of Overwatch 2’s reviews on Steam. Note the 90% negative reviews when the game launched on Steam.
Figure 4: Overwatch’s currently online players (15,134) and peak active players (32,330) as of May 27, 2025 at 1 AM PT. Keep in mind this is only on Steam and does not account for players that launch the game via Battle.net, which is the vast majority (at least 80%+) of the player base. The point is: Overwatch is far from being a dead game and is (perhaps unfortunately) still successful in spite of its anti-consumer business practices.
Core Gameplay Mechanics: Competitive Matchmaking, In-Game Rewards, Gameplay Loop
Like many other live-service shooter games, Overwatch incorporates competitive matchmaking as a core aspect of gameplay. Two teams of five or six players are randomly matched up with other players of a similar skill level and play different objective-based maps (payload, king-of-the-hill, etc.) until one team wins and its members are rewarded with competitive points that can be used to acquire special themed weapons (gold, jade, galactic, etc.) as well as progress towards higher ranks. These rewards are different from battle pass rewards in that they do not require money to unlock, but are exclusively acquired via competitive matches.
Figure 5: Gold weapons for 32 of the heroes from the original game. Keep in mind that there are now 43 playable heroes, each with gold, jade, and galactic weapons. Source: Reddit post entitled “Nothing huge but I’ve finally collected all the golden weapons!”
The following passage from the reading does a great job at describing the dynamic that these mechanics create.
Zombified live service games are where you see the greatest emphasis on progression for its own sake, on the piecemeal acquisition of gear and the incremental improvement of stats, because the promise of quantifiable “more stuff” is the simplest way to keep players coming back. At the same time, there can be no real progression in these games, because when a game is characterised as indefinite, the idea of progress becomes meaningless. There must always be another level to shoot for, more gear and abilities to unlock, more synergies to discover. — Edwin Evans-Thirlwell
In other words, Overwatch dangles free rewards through both competitive matchmaking and monetized mechanics like the battle pass that continuously prey upon players’ sense of FOMO and the sense that they are working towards in-game goals and putting in the work to get their rewards. At its worst, the hunger for more and greater rewards never ends: additional competitive seasons bring new themed battle passes with more beautiful cosmetics to acquire for the heroes that you main, as well as future heroes that are introduced in the game.
Even if you manage to detach yourself completely from the monetization and reward models, you may still be at risk of addiction in this game. Other than my initial purchase of $20 to get the original game, I have only spent an additional $20 on battle passes and other in-game purchases, and I have no intention of spending exorbitant amounts of money to get additional cosmetics, yet I am still aggressively addicted to this game. Why?
The answer for me, is that the actual game itself hits all the right types of fun to keep me coming back for more. To be specific, these are sensation (aesthetically pleasing visuals, masterful sound design, and fast-paced reflex-dependent combat mechanics), challenge (mastering the abilities and mechanics of a particular hero, learning map geometry and positioning during fights), fellowship (strategizing with your team and working with them to create strong team compositions and win fights), and competition (outplaying enemy players, climbing ranks). When you create a delightful—in the sense that it successfully exploits the player’s different senses of fun—gameplay loop, you create an addiction spiral that is difficult to escape even if you estrange yourself from the monetary aspects of Overwatch entirely.
Figure 6: Video of a professional-level Overwatch e-sports competitive match demonstrating the sensory madness and team coordination required to win in a full-scale team ult (ultimate ability) fight. The duration of this one fight (3:57:34–3:58:13) is 42 seconds—which is on the longer side.
Matches in Overwatch at the higher ranks are intense and heavily skill reliant. These environments are hostile to casual players, both in the sense that competitive players tend to be toxic towards team members that they perceive as incompetent, and that the learning curve and time investment required to refine your skill enough to be in higher ranks is more than most players are willing to put in.
High gameplay hours do not necessarily translate to high skill—I have encountered many players who have hundreds or thousands of hours of playtime and barely break the median competitive ranks. Thus, if you’re not already part of the upper echelon of competitive ranks (Top 500 and Grandmaster), you are incentivized to continue to strive for higher ranks (which is sometimes a fruitless and Sisyphean task).
When you combine this with players who are drawn to the same types of fun described above, you create a subset of players whose sense of fun and frustration are preyed upon to lure them into an endless cycle of winning and losing matches many matches in a row. They are made to believe that all it takes is “one more match until I hit rank X,” “I would be winning if my team weren’t so TRASH,” and when they win, they are led to think that they did so out of their own skill. Oftentimes, winning is taken for granted and losing leads to keyboard smashing and rage-queueing for the next match.
I wholeheartedly admit that I am part of this group of players (“It’s me, hi! I’m the problem, it’s me!”).
When is it morally permissible or impermissible to use chance in your games?
I was struck by the example in the optional Rosengren reading, which describes how Scott Stevens fell into a gambling addiction that consumed his entire life. He hid his addiction extremely well from his family as he was losing millions of dollars and embezzling funds from his company to fund his addiction and ultimately took his own life as a result of the consequences of his addiction.
This story inspired the following (non-exhaustive) factors I believe can be used as guidelines to evaluate the morality of chance in games:
- the degree in which the game entices the player to spend real money or large amounts of time on it
- the probability of a player getting the outcome they desire
- whether there are limits (that are ideally unable to be bypassed) on the number of times a player can attempt to reach their desired outcome
- the cultural and social context in which a game is designed to be played
- the degree to which chance is an expected and integral part of a game’s core gameplay loop rather than an auxiliary system that is layered on top of the game (the latter is less acceptable)
To illustrate this framework, consider “morally permissible” games like Monopoly, Uno, or Mario Party. These games rely on chance or randomness mechanics for game progression via dice rolls, card draws, etc. as part of their core gameplay but players are not actively encouraged to bet real-life money or allot large amounts of time to progress through the game. In addition, these games are typically played as party games where players use the game as icebreakers to bond or casually compete with others before players move on, rather than playing many high stakes matches in a row.
This differs from games of chance like Poker, Blackjack, roulette, slot machines. Even if the former set of games could theoretically be played in gambling contexts, they have historically not been and the mechanics and structure of the games do not lend them to be as easily incorporated in those environments compared to games of chance, which encourage monetary investment in order to achieve a low probability outcome and does not place limits on the amount that a player can spend. Games like these that follow into gambling territory then become less morally permissible given their potential to exploit their players and cause real harm to them that persists outside of the game, as in Stevens’s case.
If we evaluate Overwatch’s chance mechanics under this framework, we can see that it meets most if not all factors. Players are encouraged to spend money to unlock exclusive cosmetic items that disappear after a season is over, and even after spending money on a battle pass, they have to continuously play the game until the battle pass rewards are unlocked.
Under the old loot box system, the probability of acquiring high-rarity items was low and encouraged grinding for more boxes; under the new system, additional mechanics like Maximilian’s Vault preserve the gatcha mechanics of the old system. There are no real limits to the grinding a player can do to acquire cosmetics—even after finishing a battle pass, players are still nudged to spend real money to get even more items. Additionally, Overwatch, even though it is not technically meant to be played as if it were a casino game, exists as part of the landscape of live-service games that are almost tailor-made to take time and money from the player.
Finally, what makes Overwatch different from “morally permissible” chance-based games and even worse than games of chance, from my perspective, is the fact that predatory chance mechanics exist entirely separately from the core game mechanics and are not necessary for gameplay progression, meaning that there is an explicit effort by the game makers/parent company to design an entirely separate system meant only to plunder and steal money from their player base.
If the intent when designing a game is to minimize economic, temporal, and psychological exploitation, the bare minimum starts at not incorporating exploitative monetization systems that do not need to exist in order to enjoy the core gameplay of a game.
Conclusion
For players that really enjoy competitive shooter games that are dependent on managing abilities, having strong game sense, and good mechanical skills (aiming, movement, etc.), Overwatch is already addictive from just its core gameplay loop. When you add monetization and a player base of young people who are often teenagers (or early 20s adults) that have not yet developed the mental tools to recognize the dangers of these systems, Overwatch becomes a perfect storm generating swaths of players with crippling video game addiction (or rather, just an Overwatch addiction).
In my personal experience, there have been times where I have played the game so much that during my peak gameplay time, a battle pass with the standard 80 levels and 120 additional prestige levels (200 total)—where each level usually requires between 3-5 matches— and is meant to be completed over the course of an entire season (60-70 days) could be completed by me in the span of 1-2 weeks (when combined with XP multipliers and special events). I can literally sit in front of a computer and play for 18 hours (I’ve done this multiple times) with minimal breaks and while consuming very little food and water.
Evidently, I can get so sucked into the game that even if I know I can stop, I don’t want to stop. I am fortunate enough to be able to step away when I make the conscious decision to do so, and when more important things require my attention (e.g. school). Other young people may not have the tools to do so, especially kids of middle and high school age who are left to their own devices and large amounts of free time. The responsibility falls on parents, game designers, and law makers to implement protections against the addictive nature of games like Overwatch to minimize real-life harm that comes from engaging with them, particularly when it comes to monetization.
Works Cited
Evans-Thirlwell, Edwin. “We Should Redefine Live Service Games as the Living Dead.” Rock Paper Shotgun, 2 May 2024, www.rockpapershotgun.com/we-should-redefine-live-service-games-as-the-living-dead. Accessed 27 May 2025.
Rosengren, John. “How Casinos Enable Gambling Addicts.” The Atlantic, Dec. 2016, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/12/losing-it-all/505814/. Accessed 27 May 2025.
“When a Game’s Current Anti-Consumer Practices Are So Terrible You Develop Stockholm Syndrome for Their Previous Practices…” Reddit, 28 Oct. 2022, www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/yioqi0/when_a_games_current_anticonsumer_practices_are/. Accessed 27 May 2025.
u/tomy0612. “Nothing Huge but I’ve Finally Collected All the Golden Weapons.” Reddit, 5 May 2022, www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/ukdc03/nothing_huge_but_ive_finally_collected_all_the/. Accessed 27 May 2025.
Overwatch League 2021 Season | June Joust Qualifiers | Week 2 Day 3 — West. YouTube, uploaded by Overwatch Esports, 30 May 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLaAGprUwGQ&t=21073s. Accessed 27 May 2025.
