Blizzard has decided to delay Overwatch’s ranked competitive mode until July, Blizzard has confirmed. It was expected to launch in June.
The official Overwatch Twitter account responded to a message asking about competitive seasons by saying they will be “introducing our Competitive Play (hopefully) later in July.” It later followed up with clarification that Blizzard was looking at “mid-to-late July” for competitive play.
Competitive play was part of the game’s beta back in April. It allowed players who reached level 25 to work their way up ranked divisions and tiers. There were rewards exclusive to ranked, like skins, icons, and voice lines to unlock. There was also a penalty system that would punish players who leave mid-match. Players who would abandon a game would have their completion percentage lowered. If it dropped below a certain percentage, they received a warning. If they continue to abandon games, they would lose 75 percent of collected experience in future games.
“We worked extremely hard to get competitive play in the game for closed beta,” designer Jeff Kaplan said previously about the omission of competitive play in retail. “We’ve been reading feedback from the community and taking it all to heart. As a result, we’ve temporarily disabled competitive play for open beta so that we can rework the system and make it better.”
