Blizzard is removing the Hero Mastery Gauntles PvE mode from Overwatch three months after it launched as “it hasn’t resonated with players”.
The mode will no longer be available to play from Season 11 on 18th June, after it launched in March this year.
Players therefore have until then, during Season 10, to complete the Lifetime Challenges for the mode and compete on its Top 500 leaderboards.
“As we prepare for Season 11, we’ve taken the time to evaluate a variety of game modes based on how much they are being played,” reads a notice on the Overwatch forum.
“Hero Mastery Gauntlet was intended to bring the high score-chasing excitement of Hero Mastery missions into a multiplayer format. Unfortunately, it hasn’t resonated with players in the ways that we hoped.”
Individual Hero Mastery Solo Courses will continue to be available, with more expected in future seasons.
Overwatch PvE has been a bone of contention for Blizzard. The online free-to-play shooter’s expected Hero Mode was scrapped in 2023 as development “hasn’t made the progress we would have hoped,” it said at the time, though it promised other PvE modes were on the way.
Then in March this year, Bloomberg reported all PvE content had been scrapped due to “poor” sales and Blizzard would “double down” on PvP gameplay.
Despite this, the Hero Mastery Gauntlet was added in March: a three player co-op mode that featured tower defence-style gameplay.
An earlier blog post from Blizzard in February insisted the developer had “heard [the] feedback” from players about competitive play and stated plans to introduce “big updates” for players to “see how you progress through the competitive ranks”.
Still, the reputation of Overwatch has plummeted since its early glory days, with Blizzard seemingly testing new features and modes that don’t seem to stick.
A new Hero was added last month called Venture, revealed in the trailer above.
