Today Blizzard announced that it’s "transitioning from the Overwatch League and evolving competitive Overwatch in a new direction.” In other words, OWL is dead. What more is there to say about the big league that couldn’t that hasn’t already been said? Not much, really – and that was always the problem.
Overwatch League launched in 2017, when Overwatch 1 was at the peak of its powers. It was immediately met with questions: Would an NFL-style model – in which teams had home cities and would regularly travel to play against each other – snap neatly into esports’ unique contours? Could Activision Blizzard take what was previously a very nascent competitive scene and juice it full of money until it matured? Or were time and attentive cultivation of a grassroots scene the only path toward a truly self-sustaining esport?
Every step of the way, OWL was met with more questions, which seemed to have clear answers: Would team slots actually prove worth the $20 million investment each competing organization made during the first season? Or the $35-60 million price tag of season two? (No.) Was Overwatch too chaotic of a game to produce matches parsable by a mainstream audience? (Yes.) Would a shift in development focus from accessibility for players of all kinds to high-level play result in a game that did not live up to its potential in either direction? (Yes.) Would a lucrative Google deal that made the league exclusive to YouTube after two years on Twitch tank viewership? (Yes.) Would staging a season in Overwatch 2’s beta cause a whole host of issues? (Duh.) Would the dual travails of a grueling practice/play schedule and eventual travel demands cause players to burn out? (Yes and then some.)
To undercut my own argument slightly, I covered OWL credulously for years. I, like many, spent ample time treating it as though it was a real sport and not just Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick's vanity project. Even then, these questions were there, bubbling beneath the surface and often rising far above it.
Certainly, the covid-19 pandemic and ensuing lockdown were not good for OWL’s fortunes. And of course, Activision Blizzard’s industry-rocking sexual misconduct scandal caused the league to bleed sponsors in 2022. But the deal was sealed long before that. From the get go, the Overwatch League reeked of inevitable death. However, it was Bobby Kotick's baby, so it persisted. Against plausibility, against inertia, against common sense. Along the way it picked up a small cadre of diehard fans – as well as players and a production staff – who really cared, but it felt like their passion was regularly squandered in Activision Blizzard’s effort to squeeze blood from what was always self-evidently a stone.
Now OWL has had even its last legs hacked out from underneath it, with teams accepting $6 million “termination fees” from Activision Blizzard to bow out. It’s a fitting end to a project that spent even its best years as a money sink. All the fans, players, and staff who actually gave a shit deserved better, but no amount of hope was ever going to make this rocket – exploding in slow motion since its first day upright – achieve liftoff. At least now all involved can put their time and energy to better use.
