Credit: r/Overwatch Most recently, Blizzard Ent. sent out a survey in which they presented a few price points for certain skins, charms, and sprays their Overwatch 2 characters can have.
Although surveys are usually more than welcome among fans since they show a company cares about their customers’ opinions, surveyees weren’t pleased this time.
Namely, some of the suggested pricing was so out of whack that many users felt the need to share their dissatisfaction publicly.
Although Blizzard suggests that the prices were randomized to collect better data, fans had other theories. These theories stem from fears of Overwatch 2 planning to milk the fandom as much as possible.
Here’s what the survey ultimately meant and what most of the fans made out of it.
Surveywatch
Players were taken aback by the surveys about potential pricing for Overwatch 2 cosmetics, such as sprays, weapon charms, highlight intros, and skins, according to IGN.
The newest addition, the mythic skin, which wasn’t offered in the original Overwatch, costs $44.99 in the survey. Even though this price was just a survey prediction, it still caused controversy.
Although Blizzard stated that the prices were randomized and not final, many players doubted it as more and more expensive examples appeared on the internet.
The Blizzard spokesperson further stated that they’d reveal more info about the Shop and Battle Pass system a little before the October 4 launch date.
Nevertheless, the idea of players paying $44.99 for a mythic skin and $24.99 for a legendary skin showing up on various surveys across the internet certainly means that Blizzard is considering those price ranges.
This definitely isn’t a good way to near the launch day of your game, especially when the previous rendition of it is losing more and more players, as stats show.
Where Do These Trust Issues Come From?
(Sexual) Harassment Allegations
Suppose you want to understand Blizzard’s controversial behavior. In that case, you must look back at 2006, when then-CEO, Bobby Kotick, intervened in a sexual harassment investigation in the company.
The same year, Kotick made a death threat to one of Activision Blizzard’s employees.
The many incidents that took place in the company after 2006 have only been tackled in recent years. In fact, the lawsuits from 2021 only showed us how terrible the company’s employee harassment was at the time.
Diablo Immortal Disappointment
The internal corporate crisis wasn’t the only thing that caught the eyes of the fans.
The company’s image went from that of a dev paragon to a villain when it stopped caring about its long-time fans and products like Diablo, WoW, and especially Warcraft 3.
Who can forget the “is this an out-of-season April Fools joke” statement from a Diablo fan when Blizzard announced they are developing Diablo Immortal exclusively for mobile platforms?
Arguably, we might say that this is how Diablo Immortal immortalized disappointment in the Blizzard fandom.
Warcraft III: Reforged Fiasco
Fans of legendary Blizzard franchises apparently didn’t know the company had more unpleasant surprises up their unnervingly long sleeve.
At the beginning of 2020, fans witnessed one of the most careless and sloppy launches of a remaster.
Despite postponing the Warcraft III: Reforged remaster many times and promising a graphic update on pair with Starcraft 2, fans got a redesign that looked made for non-existent Alcatel smartphones. This unpleasant news came with a slew of outrageous decisions on Blizzard’s part. Suffice it to say, the Reforged affair was quite the debacle.
In short, despite players paying a premium pre-order price, they got an atrocious redesign (to say the least) of the game they already had.
Overwatch Losing Players
Even newer projects at the time, like Overwatch, suffered the fate of slow deterioration. It got so bad that the company announced the upcoming Overwatch 2 to replace the dead meat.
Most players liked the Overwatch franchise along with the eSports fanfare it offered, and they were willing to pay the price for it. However, they were soon disappointed when Valorant launched and showed them it can run the same graphics and gameplay as Overwatch but for free.
Logically, even the top Overwatch players started shifting to Valorant, so its popularity and gameplay slowly dimmed away, urging Blizzard to reboot the series.
And today, we see instances like the overpriced survey Blizzard sends out to their loyal fans, thinking about profits more than the company’s core values.
But who knows? Maybe Blizzard is testing us for the best. Maybe we’ll finally get a new Blizzard game that will live up to the company’s glory days. A little optimism never hurts, right?
Right?
