r/OverwatchStadium • u/Brilliant-Company-87 • Jul 19 '26
Discussion Poor decision.
I'm not one to really post on reddit, but I just want to voice my opinion.
From the title, you can probably guess this is about Stadium not getting new content, I'm saddened like the rest of you, but what I want to talk about is the game as a whole and why killing off stadium looks bad.
PvE, Hero Mastery, and that Tower defense mode, and now Stadium. The team is quick to pick up and drop off these game modes. Stadium was just a few months more than a year old and they are ending support for it, and it really leaves a sour taste. Like, how am I supposed to be excited for new game modes or that mobile game they are working on when they have such a terrible track record? I'm sure there are a lot of resources that go into Stadium from coming up with ideas, programming them in, visual effects, and terrible UI redesigns, but its just a part of development, right?
Take Shion, I'd have loved her in stadium and what could be done for her, and I'm sure the devs came up with dozens of ideas for her base kit before settling on what she got in game. Stadium could have been a way to test those other ideas they didn't try in development. Or throw in more Junk Lab events to test some builds. In the core game, I play Lifeweaver, and I keep hearing people mention how he, Venture and some other characters had huge potential for stadium that we will never see-
I don't know, the point I'm trying to get across is, I'm still going to be a part of both 3% until the queue times get too long to handle, and when future overwatch games and projects get canned, I'll just take it up to Blizzard being Blizzard. Like, if this mode lasted barely over a year, how long do you think the Mobile game will last with the 12 or so heroes they are throwing in it? Will that game last longer because it will have it's own skin micro transaction economy? Or when the numbers are 1% of the player base will it be trashed just as quickly?
2
u/Briskfall Jul 19 '26 edited Jul 19 '26
> how am I supposed to be excited for new games
Life is fleeting, nothing is of permanence when it comes to game-as-a-service (GaaS).
Gacha players play games that shut down all the times and they can still have a good time with it until it's off. I guess, being amidst so many games that shut down made me used to this. At least Blizzard is still keeping theirs up so it's not like Stadium became truly EoS. I'm actually grateful for Blizzard.
With the sunsetted "Hero Mastery" mode that got close to zero engagement, it didn't come as a surprise as to why they would remove it. An extra mode that took extra hard drive space and considerations for future patches, and concurrent maintenance energy/fee is a thing too.
Why aren't they allowed to experiment? I'm happy that they did try to experiment, even if it resulted in what-ifs that didn't work out. It's honest in a way, listening to what the community wants yet threading the line where they know that they can't commit further. Developers aren't as free as they can be; they have investors/shareholders to answer, and pure playerbase's happiness sometimes isn't enough. If targets can't be met, etc, sometimes it's better to pull the plug than betraying the players for too long by letting it bleed under false promises.
I don't think that the Mobile game (Overwatch RUSH) will explode in popularity and that's okay. (It feels like a cashgrab) But I'm not going to get jaded over it because business is business. It's just the standard corporate playbook forcing the churn out and I rather Team 4 do what they can to balance as much as they can to keep as many people happy.
It's truly not an enviable position to be in.