In the past unless it was considered an expansion pack, updates to games were free. In fact Blizzard has been and is still doing this until today, where even though there has not been any new expansions being announced for titles like Diablo 3, the company has still pushed out updates that add new items, changes, and features to the game for free.Blizzard also confirmed last week that future Overwatch content like maps and heroes will also be free, and recently in an interview with Eurogamer, Overwatch’s direct Jeff Kaplan explained the company’s decision behind that surprise announcement. According to Kaplan, “All the heroes were going to be included and as gamers, we thought it was a very straightforward, easy to understand business model. You focus less on the business model and more on the game itself.”
Kaplan also added that one of the reasons they had to address it publicly was due to a lot of distrust gamers had from bad experiences in the past. That being said naturally Overwatch as a live game will need to be funded, but Kaplan states that it’s not something Blizzard has figured out yet.
He says, “We haven’t locked in exactly whether there’ll be additional monetisation after launch or not. Some of that is because we want to watch the launch itself and see how successful that is, and see what sort of playerbase we end up with and see how engaged they are.” However we suppose for now gamers can take comfort in knowing that for the foreseeable future, new maps and heroes will be free additions to the game.