Overwatch 2 is reintroducing “different forms of 6v6” thanks to community feedback

In a recent blog post, Overwatch 2 Director Aaron Keller announced that the game’s dev team plans to bring back “different forms of 6v6.” This decision comes after the community had constantly called on Blizzard to bring back the classic PvP experience they had come to know and love from the first game. But its impending return (possibly in a permanent capacity) won’t be immediate.

Since a lot has changed with the jump from the first to the second game, 6v6 will only return for limited periods. “We’re exploring how we can test different forms of 6v6 in the game to gauge results,” Keller said in a recent blog post. “This is taking some time, however, for reasons that may not be readily apparent.”

He then revealed that the first and largest reason “is the need to do this in a way that allows the game to have optimized technical performance.” Since Overwatch 2 was essentially built with a primary 5v5 mode in mind, the game’s development team will have to make certain changes to accommodate the sudden increase in players per match. After all, additional players in a server mean each session will likely affect framerates and memory constraints even more, negatively affecting the in-game experience.

“While a limited-time test could arrive sooner, the team is still investigating exactly how long it would take to permanently increase performance across the game,” Keller added. “This would be a large effort that would most likely take at least several seasons to accomplish.” With this in mind, you, unfortunately, might have to wait a while until 6v6 returns to Overwatch 2 for good.

Another issue he pointed out was the queue times that would undoubtedly pop up as soon as a 6v6 mode becomes available. Long queues had previously been an issue in the first game, which, Keller admitted, they hadn’t been able to solve, making its return to OW2 even riskier. Of course, the game’s development could eventually find a way to tie up all these loose ends. But for now, you’ll have to enjoy the 6v6 mode you’ve been waiting for, albeit in a limited way.

Before you jump back in, why not check out some of our pages on how to get Jade weapons and the best graphics settings in Overwatch 2?