Jay Castello writes: "The games industry is well known for "crunch culture" and other exploitative working practices. The games community should be aware and speak out."
In 2023, developed by Blizzard Entertainment, Overwatch 2 was released, which was basically a big, glorified update of the original game that launched in 2016. Now, it’s simply reverted to being called just Overwatch, which is probably for the best.
The second iteration of Overwatch was released on the original Nintendo Switch, and while it’s still an enjoyable game with cross-play/progression functions, it’s still lacking in terms of performance and visuals, compared to its PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S counterparts. Well, it was.
As of today, the second iteration of Overwatch is natively available on the Nintendo Switch 2, just in time for Season 2: Summit.
The Nintendo Switch 2 version of Overwatch will have increased resolution both in handheld and docked modes, enhanced textures and lighting, up to 60 frames-per second, improved audio and more.
Blizzard is readying a patch to address the issue that the game is still running in Switch 1 build and just 30 fps.
you'd think they'd test it before pushing it live, lol.
that being said, clearly it's not running as intended.
They know it for sure. Maybe they didn't finish optimizing the game by the targeted release date. That's why they released the Switch 1 30fps version first. XD
Nexon has entered a publishing agreement with Blizzard for Overwatch in Korea, with the companies working to deliver services 'tailored' for the region.
The four-part Blizzard Showcase will reveal “what comes next” for each series…
lol the game community should speak out on our work practices? okaaaaaaaay. How about knocking off the “me too” crap and go back to playing your games on your couch there warrior.
What can we, as consumers, do?
Well, honestly? Probably not much.
The only real thing I can recommend is to become more patient in regards to the pace of AAA game releases, where I would like to believe most of the worst crunch time incidents happen, because budgets, responsibilities, and expectations are all much higher on top of gamers wanting those AAA games to come as quickly as possible, and learn to appreciate smaller games more often to fill up the time between major releases.
Of course, that would only be helpful to the industry if those on the development side slackened their release schedules to avoid crunch times in the first place, so outside of giving smaller games the creditmany of them deserve, and making gamers more well-rounded, it doesn't really help crunch times even if we did do that on a massive scale in the here and now.