Blizzard locks off two Overwatch heroes to fix unexpected ability bugs

Overwatch 2 has had its fair share of issues since its launch. Player demand on day one, in addition to a DDOS attack effectively locked thousands of players out of the game for long stretches during the first week. Now, Blizzard has had to take two heroes offline for emergency maintenance due to bugs.

Last night, Blizzard took Bastion and Torbjörn out of the rotation for competitive play, while Bastion was also taken out of the game for unranked play too, in part due to bugs that “heavily impact gameplay”. It seems that Bastion's ultimate ability was a little too effective, and one of Torbjörn's abilities was lasting twice as long as it usually should – which would explain why I saw so many Bastion and Torbjörn players in games yesterday.

Blizzard did have to perform some additional emergency maintenance in the late hours too, as they accidentally locked off other heroes too, in addition to Bastion and Torbjörn, which made for a frustrating couple of hours for some players. At this point, all the heroes that should be playable are accessible, while Bastion and Torbjörn are still locked off while the bugs get ironed out.

Initially, Overwatch 2's October launch was billed as ‘early access' but as the date got closer, Blizzard began treating it like a full launch. Given the number of issues we've seen in week one, that probably wasn't the smartest move.

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KitGuru Says: As much as this first week has been rough, I have been having a lot of fun playing Overwatch again. I dropped off the original around 2018, and while Overwatch 2 still doesn't make much sense as a numbered sequel, I have been reminded of how much fun this game can be, particularly with a group of friends.

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