At a GDC talk today, Overwatch game director Aaron Keller said that Marvel Rivals has “definitely had an impact” on the Overwatch team.
Keller recalls seeing the excitement around Rivals, which launched with over 30 heroes in 2025 (and is now at 47), and thinking, “Hey, what if we could just drop 30 new heroes into Overwatch?”
Blizzard didn’t go quite that far, but Keller implied that NetEase’s competing shooter influenced its decision to add five new characters to Overwatch at once in the latest season: Domina, Anran, Emre, Mizuki, and most importantly, Jetpack Cat.
Overwatch’s revitalization effort has been going well. The new season, which also saw the ‘2’ leave the game’s title, saw player counts rise for two consecutive weeks, rather than peaking quickly and then dropping, something Blizzard says hasn’t happened since the Overwatch 2 launch in 2022.
Another five new Overwatch characters are coming before the end of the year.
