The release of Overwatch 2 wasn't the end of the original Overwatch. The Overwatch game that came out in 2016 hasn't existed in a long time. That game had 12 playable characters. The game was changed and that 12 character version stopped existing less than a year after the game came out. Now there's 32 characters with vastly different skills and play styles, really changing the game. The maps are different. Even the original 12 characters have had some changes.
Should it have been illegal for them to add characters to the game? It's not what I originally paid for. They took away the original Overwatch the second they rebalanced or added characters.
> Should it have been illegal for them to add characters to the game?
Sure, why not? Or at least illegal to forcefully change my game without giving me an option of not updating (at the cost of maybe not having anyone to play with). One could argue that I as the customer should be allowed to decide when to patch my game client and server.
There obviously needs to be consensus between players so some version is going to be more popular than others, probably the latest version, and the developer has an interest in keeping the game fresh so as to sell more copies (or lately, skins), so as a customer I'm driven towards the latest version, but I don't see why I should be forced to it.
It would be such a terrible outcome, having the player base fractured over tons of different versions. It would be a far worse experience than them adding some new characters and game modes and renaming the game Overwatch 2.
Yeah but that's not something you actually expect would happen do you? Like 99% of players won't bother and will just go with what the developer provides until the developer decides to kill the game, at that point you have the self-hosted servers available.
Yeah, but one could argue by making updates to the game they're destroying the experience of the old game, taking it away from me. I see little difference in the argument about the "original" Overwatch servers getting migrated to Overwatch 2 and them releasing updates which would ultimately make older versions effectively unplayable (no players).
Like cool, you've now put the force of law into making them continue to manage old versions, versions that practically nobody plays on. By adding a single new character they've now changed the game, and if you didn't like that addition, it's an unplayable game even if you had the option to not update. This is fundamentally the same as Overwatch getting shut down (the old version becomes effectively unplayable).
If anything, they shouldn't be legally allowed to modify the game at all, because making a modification to it makes the original effectively unplayable because there'd be effectively no player base. Or maybe they should be allowed to make updates to their game platform...
If the release of Overwatch 2 was effectively taking Overwatch away from the people who paid for it, every update to the game was effectively taking away that edition of Overwatch from people. But people didn't care until the launcher got updated to say "Overwatch 2", suddenly now that's a travesty and Blizzard is somehow taking it away.
I got Overwatch on release day. I still can play Overwatch today. I don't get why one would say they took it away from people unless you agree every update to the game is taking the old game away from people.
I've never played Overwatch, it was just an example, but my point stands regardless of whether players want changes or not; I simply want there to be some accountability for mega corps so they can't just abandon games, release the new iteration for $60, and then kill the old version off.
Or rather, so that when they eventually do, a potentially still popular game isn't rendered unplayable since there are no official servers and no software for me to use to host my own.
It's more aptly fit to use CoD as an example to be honest, I just used Overwatch because I'd read some were unhappy how they just killed it and replaced it with "sort of but not really the same game".
Since I'm not in the Overwatch scene, can you answer something I'd been wondering? Did they migrate cosmetics from 1 to 2? Cosmetics seems to be the big cash cow these days so if the new one has similar characters, but they kill the old one off and don't let me bring my hard earned or bought cosmetics then I'd be pretty pissed personally.
> I simply want there to be some accountability for mega corps so they can't just abandon games, release the new iteration for $60, and then kill the old version off.
Well then definitely don't point to Overwatch for that, because they released the new version for $0 and migrated everyone's equipment.
> It's more aptly fit to use CoD as an example to be honest
You mean the game where I can play multiplayer for games released well over a decade ago? I haven't heard of an instance where they shut down the old servers for that series yet at all. Other than that they'll be doing that for their free to play platform, but that's practically the same argument as Overwatch to Overwatch 2. You should be able to import accounts, it's no cost for the new version, etc.
EDIT: I guess some CoD versions ran on GameSpy which shut down a while ago. That was a third party system not made by the publisher though, dunno if you can really hold the publisher responsible for that third party service going offline.
Should it have been illegal for them to add characters to the game? It's not what I originally paid for. They took away the original Overwatch the second they rebalanced or added characters.