New Overwatch 2 PvE mode launches despite “majority” of its dev team being laid off

The new Overwatch 2 PvE mode, Cosmic Crisis, has launched despite the “majority” of its dev team being laid off before Season 9’s release.

As Season 9 kicks off its first week, it brings with it a plethora of major changes and additions, from the massive Competitive overhaul to the dizzying amount of balance adjustments made to every single Hero’s health pool.

Aside from the massive meta shifts, it also saw the arrival of a new PVE game mode (albeit non-canon), called Cosmic Crisis as the Season’s big event, coinciding with the Battle Pass theme.

However, leading up to the release of Season 9, Blizzard faced a massive round of layoffs which allegedly saw the “majority” of the OW2 PvE team let go.

“I’m just so proud of the PvE team for this event mission!” Monika Lee, ex-Game Producer for Overwatch said of the Cosmic Crisis game mode.

“From pitching to production and bug fix, everyone really killed it. Even though majority of the folks that worked on this got laid off, I’m so happy with what we created.”

Monika was part of the dev team that produced Overwatch 2’s story missions that came out in 2023, alongside the Underworld event missions in Season 6.

It’s unknown how big the PVE team was in Overwatch, and how the mass layoffs will affect future story missions as Overwatch’s current Producer has already teased more PvE events will be coming in 2024.

The layoffs came months after Activision Blizzard’s formal acquisition from Microsoft, which then followed with the tech giant laying off a staggering 1,900 employees across the two game publishers.

The layoffs affected more than just the studios, as Acti-Blizz’s esports divisions and various other sections were also impacted, with an untitled survival game that was in development being reportedly canceled amid it all.