Overwatch 2 servers down for some as Blizzard removes two heroes temporarily

Overwatch 2 servers have been down intermittently following Blizzard’s emergency maintenance period late last night.

The maintenance saw Blizzard remove two characters, Bastion and Torbjörn, from the game, although the latter can still be used in Quick Play.

“Bastion and Torbjörn will be taking a quick trip to the workshop while we iron out a few bugs in their ability kit,” read a tweet from Blizzard. It’s believed that Bastion’s removal is due to a bug which saw his ultimate ability being usable infinitely.

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While Blizzard later tweeted that the emergency maintenance was complete, since then players on social media have reported that the Overwatch 2 servers continue to struggle.

Kotaku also reports that some players regaining access to the game have been finding half their roster locked, not just the two characters Blizzard has temporarily removed.

The Battle.net service itself has also seen players forced to queue to connect, even if they’re not planning to play Overwatch 2.

Players are also reporting that the game’s account merge feature still isn’t working. Due to Overwatch 2 using Battle.net accounts, players on console were asked to merge their console profiles with their Battle.net one, which in theory,should allow players to also transfer all previously owned cosmetics onto this new account.

When opening the game for the first time on console, players should be prompted with an option to merge the accounts, however many are still reporting that they haven’t been offered this, or that once the accounts have merged, all of their cosmetics are still missing.

Blizzard has apologised for Overwatch 2’s rocky launch and axed a policy requiring all players to have a phone number attached to their Battle.net account in order to access the game.

Blizzard’s controversial two-factor authentication system, SMS Protect, which locks out users on pre-paid plans from playing the game, will be removed for the “majority of existing Overwatch players” via an update expected to be released on October 7.

Further reading

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Overwatch 2 servers are down following a ‘mass DDoS attack’ on launch day

UPDATE: Blizzard apologises for the game's launch issues and details plans to address them

Overwatch 2’s launch issues were exacerbated by two distributed denial of service attacks.

“While they did not directly cause any of these issues, they made the environment in which we work on these issues more challenging,” Blizzard said. “We have not suffered any further attacks.”