Overwatch 2 players uncover Jeff Kaplan claim that heroes should never be paywalled

Overwatch 2 players have found some old footage of former Lead Director Jeff Kaplan discussing access to heroes, and a lot of it hasn’t aged very well.

The change to Overwatch 2 brought significant alterations to how the game was monetized. The adoption of a free-to-play live service model meant that other aspects of the game needed to make a profit, leading to the expansion of the in-game store and the battle pass.

However, as an added incentive, new heroes released after Overwatch 2 launched have initially been locked behind the battle pass, meaning many players won’t be able to access them right out of the gate unless they fork over real cash.

However, players have unveiled a clip from an interview with Jeff Kaplan, who left his position as the game’s director before the sequel launched, that contradicts this new method of gating new heroes.

Overwatch 2 players remember older game design philosophy

In the 2015 interview, Jeff had said that it was against the design philosophy of Overwatch to lock heroes behind walls for players to get through, as it damages variety and experimentation.

He said: “We felt like the defining characteristic of Overwatch is the heroes. The heroes are the content of the game… In fact, we don’t let other maps or game modes get in the way. If they start to encroach upon the fun hero gameplay we pull back.

“And the same thing goes for the business model. We couldn’t imagine a business model for this game where you didn’t have access to all 21 of those heroes that we’ve introduced. We feel there’s a gameplay variety there.

“We didn’t want players stressing out about how to get their hands on [heroes], and we really wanted to encourage hero switching… in models that didn’t have all the heroes available to our players, it became very difficult to reinforce this concept of fluidity, hero switching and experimentation.”

While a lot has changed in eight years, it’s interesting to see how much had to be altered for the game to fit a live service model.

For more news and updates on Overwatch 2, check out the fears in the community that Mauga’s ultimate signifies power creep in the Tank role.