Blizzard has confirmed that any new heroes or maps added to Overwatch will be free for all owners of the game.
Overwatch‘s pricing model has been a point-of-contention for quite some time now. At first, we didn’t know if it would be free-to-play or not, but it was confirmed to be a single paid purchase game at this year’s BlizzCon. Then, Blizzard was a bit coy over how post-launch heroes would be handled but now, game director Jeff Kaplan has confirmed that any new heroes and maps added to the game after launch will be completely free for everyone. Hooray!
“We have ideas for additional maps and heroes that we’d like to add to the game,” said Kaplan in the developer commentary video above. “So we’ve thought about this and decided the best way to add them to the game is to patch them in as free content and not as DLC.”
Note that Kaplan does not 100% rule out the possibility of micro-transactions. The game’s two collector’s editions come with an assortment of in-game “skins”, so it is fairly likely we will see some sort of in-game cosmetics store.
Still, in this age of $50 season passes and pay-to-win microtransactions, it is incredibly refreshing to see Blizzard sell a product that you pay for once and will not split the community in any way.
While Kaplan did said that his team already has some ideas for future heroes, he didn’t offer any sort of timeline on when they may be added.
Overwatch is currently set for a Spring, 2016 release, on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.
Source: Blizzard
