Overwatch 2’s monetization has been a point of contention since the game’s shift to free-to-play has made cosmetics that were once free through the original game’s loot boxes fairly expensive. It turns out one of the in-game items is also for sale in Blizzard’s online store and costs more in Overwatch 2 than it does in real life.
As VG24/7 and users on Reddit have pointed out, Overwatch 2 has a cosmetic weapon charm featuring Pachimari, an in-universe mascot character, that costs 700 coins in the game’s currency, which roughly equates to $7 USD. Meanwhile, a real keychain with the same design costs $5 on Blizzard’s Gear Store.
Notably, the 700 coins you would need to buy the Pachimari charm in Overwatch 2 are difficult to come by without paying for one of the preset currency bundles, and the cheapest one that would get you 700 coins is the $10 transaction that gives you 1000 coins.
As of right now, Overwatch 2 doesn’t have any option to pay for the specific number of coins you’d like, so if you don’t already have the 700 coins through earning them through challenges (you can only earn 60 a week through this method, so even if you completed all these challenges since the October 4 launch, you wouldn’t have that many coins yet), you’ll have to pay extra to get the charm.
Overwatch 2’s shift to free-to-play did away with loot boxes, which were free and unlockable through standard play, and made it much easier to gain in-game currency by converting duplicate cosmetics into money that could be spent on skins, emotes, and other unlockable content.
Credit: Blizzard Entertainment.
The change has put the game under scrutiny for its monetization practices, as items that were once attainable for free are now pretty expensive or require a significant grind to unlock while only being available for a limited time during weekly shop rotations and events like the ongoing Halloween Terror event.
Despite criticism surrounding its monetization and some significant troubles with DDoS attacks and certain characters, Overwatch 2 has amassed a pretty high player base in its first month, with its daily player peak outpacing the original game’s launch.
Kenneth Shepard is a writer covering games, entertainment, and queerness all around the internet. Find him on Twitter at @shepardcdr, and listen to his biweekly video game retrospective podcast Normandy FM, which is currently covering Cyberpunk 2077.