Overwatch 2's PvE mode cancelled

We've seen many developers fail when trying something new lately, and you can to some extent say Blizzard just joined those ranks.

Because the studio streamed a new developer update today (that you can see at the bottom) where we're told Overwatch 2's long-delayed story-based PvE mode has been cancelled. The closest thing we're getting to that will the story-based cooperative events coming when Season 6 starts sometime this summer. The reason for this is that the developers want to focus on the live game, and that the story mode didn't progress the way they wanted. To quote executive producer Jared Neuss:

Development on the PvE experience really hasn't made the progress that we would have hoped. The team has created a bunch of amazing content, so there's awesome missions that are really exciting. There's brand new enemies that are super fun to fight, and some truly great and ridiculous hero talents. But unfortunately, the effort required to pull all of that together to a Blizzard-quality experience that we can ship to you is huge, and there really is no end in sight or defined kind of end date where we can put that out into the world. And so, we're left with another difficult choice: Do we continue to pour all that effort into PvE, hoping that we can land it at some point in the future or do we stick with this set of values that we've aligned on and focus on the live game and focus on serving all of you? With everything we've learned about what it takes to operate this game at the level that you deserve, it's clear that we can't deliver on that original vision for PvE that was shown in 2019. What that means is that we won't be delivering that dedicated Hero Mode with talent trees, that long-term power progression. Those things just aren't in our plans anymore."

Story-based events will have traditional heroes, and not the new abilities, progression system and more that Blizzard used to justify putting the number 2 behind the title. The good news is that the first event will come along with a whole bunch of other exciting stuff with season 6. This includes a new support hero, the player progression system, hero mastery, the Flashpoint mode, Firing Range, the Anniversary event and more.

Before then, when season 5 starts on June 13, we'll get a limited-time event called Questwatch, Creator Workshop mode, the return of both the On Fire meter and Summer Games, a cinematic reveal and more. You can see an overview of what's coming in season 5, 6 and 7 in the image below.

What do you think about Blizzard failing to live up to its promise?