Blizzard is being accused of downgrading a premium Zenyatta skin by removing his special balls.
Overwatch 2 has been no stranger to skin controversy with the cost of cosmetics rubbing many players the wrong way for their expensive pricetags. As such, players were outraged when they noticed a skin was quietly modified in a recent update.
Season 4 introduced a very cool Pinocchio skin for Zenyatta, turning the Omnic monk into a puppet with wooden balls and all, but Zen mains weren’t pleased when they noticed the skin had changed, and not in a way that turned him into a real boy.
In a post making rounds in the Overwatch community, players complained that Zenyatta’s wooden balls for his Pinocchio skin had been changed without warning sparking backlash.
Blizzard downgrades Zenyatta skin’s balls and OW2 players are furious
When the skin was first released, Zenyatta’s Orbs of Destruction, often referred to as “balls” by the community, were in fact made of wood.
As you can see in this YouTube video by ‘CyFyGG’ showing off the skin on release, the Pinocchio skin originally had smooth, wooden balls, but that has since changed.
On Reddit, users noted that they now look silver and grey with a different design than the launch version.
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“It also has a symbol on it, Idk if this is a bug or an update but it sucks,” a player moaned.
“Could be that someone added a new file for the texture and it overwrote the old one because they had the same name so now we have like a new zen skins balls on an old one,” another suggested.
“There’s a lot of skins that either miss old effects they had or effects in their gold variant. No fixes in sight so far,” someone else chimed in.
Previously, players had taken issue with an Orisa skin being quietly edited in a patch by removing the unique spear for the tank’s Forest Spirit skin.
It’s not clear exactly why this change was made to Zenyatta, but the problem currently isn’t on in the “known issues” list for the Season 7 patch.
We’ll have to wait and see if the skin gets reverted back to its original design, but in the meantime, keep it locked to Dexerto for more Overwatch 2 news and updates.