Activision Blizzard‘s once-celebrated team-based hero shooter, Overwatch 2, has been failing to satisfy participant expectations for fairly a while. A major challenge with the sequel, which appears increasingly superfluous, is its absence of a cohesive narrative. Followers have lengthy contemplated why Activision Blizzard by no means leaned into Overwatch‘s allure by committing to a fully fledged animated series akin to their spectacular DreamWorks-style animation shorts. Now we all know why Activision Blizzard by no means pulled the set off on Overwatch 2 getting a Netflix animated collection: the previous sued the latter.
In a latest Reddit AMA, Bloomberg reporter and video games journalism’s epicenter for aggregation Jason Schreier revealed a vested curiosity in Activision Blizzard’s branching into animation with movie and TV exhibits for its video games at Netflix. These plans finally fell by means of due to a authorized butting of heads between the 2 firms.
“The e book reveals that that they had collection in growth with Netflix for StarCraft, Overwatch, and Diablo,” Schreier mentioned whereas plugging his upcoming e book, Play Good: The Rise, Fall, and Way forward for Blizzard Leisure. “However uh,” he continued whereas linking to a 2020 Variety article about Netflix being sued by Activision Blizzard for poaching.
Right here’s a fast rundown that’ll hopefully give extra context to Schreier’s hyperlink out and why that threw a wrench into Overwatch 2 participant’s lofty animated challenge goals. In 2019, Activision Blizzard sued Netflix for poaching the corporate’s then-CFO Spencer Neumann. In line with Selection’s report, Neumann was amid a fixed-term settlement with the online game developer in 2018 earlier than the corporate terminated his contract “for violating his authorized obligations to the corporate.” Chief among the many central tenants of his contract termination was a “no store” clause, which forbade him from soliciting work from different firms. TLDR: It might be awkward for both occasion to broach greenlighting an Overwatch 2 collection with all of the laborious emotions and authorized purple tape between the 2 firms.
What makes the state of affairs all of the extra distressing for the hanger-on Overwatch 2 gamers is how integral its animated shorts had been in drumming up curiosity for the sport. These character-centric shorts not solely supplied a peek into how its heroes would play, it additionally teased the overarching narrative of the sport. A story that, by and enormous, no longer exists thanks partly to years of retconning and a shift in focus from making its sequel the game that centered its story to being a sport predicated on an all-encompasing live service battle pass model.
These days, all followers should sit up for is buying season passes the place its heroes cosplay as common characters from different IP like Transformers, Cowboy Bebop, and My Hero Academia, which actually sucks if you sit again and mirror on what might’ve been. Then once more, that’s the Overwatch 2 expertise in a nutshell exterior of it not getting a Netflix animated present.
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