Is Overwatch 2 Getting a Battle Royale Mode?

After a long wait, Overwatch 2 finally went live yesterday. Among the long queue times and the DDoS attacks, players are finally discovering everything the game has to offer. Among these new features, Overwatch news account Overwatch Cavalry shared an image on Twitter of what seems to be a battle royale mode.

Overwatch Custom Battle Royale mode?

Overwatch Cavalry discovered a mode titled ‘Survivor’ in the Custom Games menu. The tweet described the mode as “currently only available in Custom Games and has settings mentioning a 'Circle' that closes over time (Battle Royale style)”. Unfortunately, when they tried to access the mode, it didn’t seem to work properly.

Blizzard emphasized a number of features including new game modes like Push for Overwatch 2 but there was no mention of the addition of a Survivor game mode. As of now, the Survivor game mode seems to only appear for some players in the Overwatch 2 Custom Games menu, indicating that this may indeed have been work-in-progress and released prematurely. As evident in the image, you can tweak the settings for the Survivor mode by adjusting the circle close speed, circle close start timer, final circle radius, and score to win.

Given the success of several battle royale games like Fortnite, Apex Legends and Activision’s Battle Royales, it isn’t surprising that Overwatch 2 may want to test the waters with such a game mode for their Overwatch player base.

This isn’t the first leaf Blizzard seems to be taking out of Fortnite’s book. In an interview with GameInformer earlier this week, Vice President Jon Spector said that Blizzard Entertainment was open to collaborations for Overwatch 2 as long as it made sense for the franchise. We will have to wait and see when Blizzard decides to make Survivor widely available and how it is received by players. As of now, Blizzard has its hands full fixing the massive player queues.