$45 for a single skin: Overwatch’s Free2Play conversion could get really expensive for fans of visual customisation.
In early October, Overwatch 2 launches into Early Access and as you’ve no doubt noticed, this is where the Pay2Play title Overwatch becomes a Free2Play game with a new number in its name.
However, everything has its price: Although Overwatch 2 is not supposed to be Pay2Win, Blizzard could hit the prices for cosmetic content such as skins.
If you want to be beautiful, you have to pay 45 dollars
Just to clear things up for you guys: In Overwatch, there were previously Lootboxes with skins, emotes and other cosmetics that you could buy for real money, but also regularly get by playing. After the Free2Play update and the name change, these will be abolished in favour of Battle Passes and direct purchases in the in-game shop.
But the prices in the in-game shop could become quite expensive: The clue to this is provided by a user survey sent out by Blizzard to selected users and shared on Twitter.
Oof, friend of mine got an Overwatch survey for his account, some of these prices they’re gauging for OW2 are really expensive.
I hope this is just him getting one of the higher price surveys and not an indication that they’re leaning towards this much monetization. pic.twitter.com/RWr7LbwkLB
– Portergauge 🏳️🌈 (@Portergauge) July 30, 2022
From the pictures you can see the following prices:
- 45 dollars for a Mythic Skin
- 25 dollars for a Legendary Skin
- $10 for a Weapon Tag
While these prices are still a far cry from what some fanatical CS:GO players spend on the Steam marketplace for rare knife skins and the like, $45 is significantly more than Fortnite or Call of Duty: Warzone charge for their rarest skin packs. So if you want to really stand out visually, you might have to pay more than the purchase price of Overwatch 1 for particularly rare skins.
Prices aren’t set in stone yet, though: A Blizzard spokesperson told (PCGamesN) that the survey was to determine “relative preferences for skins” and not to test pricing – each survey participant was shown different prices.
We probably won’t know what the prices will ultimately be until October 4, when Overwatch 2 launches into Early Access.
