Overwatch is changing the requirements for its rarest anniversary event reward after realising playing 240 games over 3 weeks may be too much of a grind

Overwatch’s anniversary event has come under quite a bit of fire over the last few weeks. While the nostalgic modes were a hit, fans have complained that the rewards are simultaneously not good enough and too much of a grind, and they’re not wrong.

While the anniversary loot boxes weren’t too bad—allowing players a chance to get everything on offer with no duplicates over the three weeks—the player titles were a slog. The rare title required you to complete 24 anniversary challenges, the epic needed 36, and the legendary needed a whopping 48.

(Image credit: Blizzard)

Bear in mind that there were only 24 base challenges in the game, which were a mix of playing one to 20 games each week alongside playing five games on tank, DPS, and support in that week’s anniversary mode.

So, to reach 48 challenges meant you needed to complete an extra 24 challenges. The catch is that these extras were the ‘Decennium Contributor – Repeating’ challenges, which meant players had to complete 10 games (wins and Stadium granted double progress).

That means if you won every game or just played Stadium you’d need to play 120 games, but at the high end players had to complete 240 games over three weeks, which boils down to 5.7 or 11.5 games a day. That’s a lot of Overwatch. I play too much Overwatch and I nearly didn’t get it—I only finished the Meta Challenge: Decennial Hero and got the legendary title yesterday, hours before the timer was set to run out.

(Image credit: Blizzard)

You shouldn’t have to grind to get the anniversary rewards. They should be accessible to everyone who’s played Overwatch over the last 10 years, regardless of how much they play. And Team 4 has finally cottoned onto this, albeit too late.

Yesterday Overwatch’s game director, Aaron Keller, announced that Team 4 would be “making changes to the anniversary event because the requirements to earn the Table Flip (legendary title) weren’t entirely clear.”

“We do want some rewards to feel rare and meaningful, but many folks didn’t realize the effort required to earn this particular title,” Keller continues. “As a result, many people who could have earned it may have missed the opportunity. These changes are meant to address that.”

So, the requirements to earn the legendary title have been lowered from 48 challenges to 38, and players will get until the end of the season in two weeks to complete them. Good stuff, right? Well, although it’s now easier to get this legendary title, the issue of having an unachievable reward for some still stands, as Team 4 is now handing out an even rarer player title to those who already grinded the challenges.

“Players who earned the original Table Flip title before that will receive a special Double Table Flip title in a future patch,” Keller explains.

Honestly, I don’t think there was any way out of this. As someone who grinded the event I’m really not bothered if people get extra time to get the same reward, but I understand why some people would be frustrated at the notion. Really, this should have never happened in the first place.

There’s always plenty of opportunities to grind for exclusive rewards in Overwatch. But this event should have been about celebrating Overwatch and every single player that made it so special over the last 10 years, regardless of how much they play. Because time played doesn’t necessarily equal dedication or love for the game. The time you have to put into a live service game is largely circumstantial—lord knows I won’t be able to play as much as I do now in 10 years.