[Update #2]: Overwatch 2's Anniversary Event 2023 has arrived with 'free' cosmetics and reruns of popular events.

[Update]: Blizzard games are coming to Steam, starting with Overwatch 2 on August 10th.

After mostly bad news related to the long-awaited PvE content, I'm pleased to say that Overwatch 2's latest update is entirely positive! Thanks to the July 11th patch Overwatch 2 has now added the Summer Games 2023 event and accompanying cosmetics, a competitive 5v5 Team Queue mode, as well as a bunch of nifty buffs to some of the forgotten heroes.

First and foremost, Summer Games 2023 has brought with it an additional seasonal event. So you can now not only mess around with Lúcioball and Lúcioball Remix, but also the brand new Winston’s Beach Volleyball mode. It's nothing too groundbreaking, but it's a fun little diversion and an easy way to score the new free Doomfist skin.

Team Queue on the other hand is a brand new competitive mode that requires you to play with a full group of five players. It features no ranking restrictions of any kind, so if you want you can have a full team of Grandmaster players, Bronze players or anything in between. Team Queue is still highly experimental so it'll be going away at the end of Season 5, though if it proves to be popular and decently balanced I'm sure it'll reappear in the not too distant future.

The final thing worth mentioning are the various buffs and tweaks. A bunch of tanks have received minor yet highly welcome improvements, Soldier 76 has been buffed across the board, Symmetry has been slightly reworked, while Torbjorn has had some of his power shifted from the turret to the hero itself. These are relatively simple changes in the grand scheme of things, but I have a feeling they're going to end up being quite impactful regardless.

But enough of my babbling! You can check out the full list of balance changes, as well as the accompanying bug fixes, over at the patch notes.

Oh, there's actually one more thing! Blizzard has just released a brand new short story about Echo, so if you're looking to learn a little bit more about her and her backstory, you should pay a visit to the Overwatch website. Enjoy, and I'll leave you with the most recent cinematic short - Genesis: