Overwatch director says addressing the 5v5 versus 6v6 debates late 'cost us trust': 'We should have listened sooner'

The single most controversial change in Overwatch 2 (now Overwatch) was its shift to having five players on each team instead of six. Dropping one player dramatically changed the way the hero shooter worked, driving off many players who fell in love with the 6v6 format in the original game.

"This was one of the most, if not the most, controversial gameplay decisions in Overwatch's history," game director Aaron Keller said during a panel at this year's Game Developers Conference.

From the moment Overwatch 2 was released in 2022, players debated whether 5v5 was right for the game. Each team lost a tank hero which required substantial reworks to how the role functioned. Heroes like Orisa went from the kind of tank that protects the frontline to a tank that was just as capable of securing kills as a damage hero. Many players wanted 6v6 to come back and filled Reddit and Twitter threads up with their arguments for why it would fix the game.

The development team didn't acknowledge this topic until July 2024 with a blog post discussing the pros and cons of both formats. In it, Blizzard promised to run a few limited-time 6v6 modes to gauge interest, and those lead to the permanent mode being added to the game.

Keller reflected on all the pivotal decisions the team made with Overwatch 2 in his GDC talk, but specifically called out the 6v6 debate as one he thinks they dropped the ball on. "We waited at least a year before we meaningfully addressed the 5v5 versus 6v6 debate, kind of hoping that the conversation would settle on its own," he said. "We should have listened sooner."

Overwatch players, Keller explained during the presentation, wanted more rapid evolution of the game than he originally thought. After observing how other live service games, like Marvel Rivals, were run, the team theorized that Overwatch needed "intentional novelty within a competitive framework," and more regular communication from the team.

The 6v6 tests showed that a lot of players wanted the format back, so Blizzard released a mode that remains the second most popular mode in Overwatch today. However, Keller said the amount of people playing it still had a sharp drop-off like most other modes in the game. "If I'm being honest with the room and everyone else who's watching," Keller said, "we're still not really sure what to do with this data right now, and we're not really sure having multiple main identities for our game is the healthiest thing for the long-term game."

Experimental modes and changes to help identify what players like is now a main part of the development process, Keller added, and it's what led to the most recent season launching with five heroes all at once. He said the team knows there's a "signal" coming from players who want 6v6 to stick around forever and that it's "equipped to make some progress" on it in the future.

Waiting so long to respond to the 6v6 debates was one of the few things that "cost us trust," Keller admitted. "Overwatch didn't need to be reinvented. The core game needed to be understood, protected, and allowed to evolve," he said at the close of his talk. "And what ultimately changed things for us wasn't a single feature or a system, it was a shift in how we listened, how we acted, and how we consistently showed up."