OW2 devs confirm in-game credits & more will transfer over, but there’s a catch

Philip Trahan

The Overwatch 2 development team confirmed that in-game currencies like OWL tokens and competitive points will carry over from Overwatch with a bit of a catch.

Blizzard Entertainment has slowly been giving out new information surrounding Overwatch 2 following the major release reveal live event held on June 16.

The game’s Director, Aaron Keller, also spoke in interviews about things like Overwatch 2 leaving behind loot boxes and new maps coming to the game.

Now more details surfaced from a Reddit Ask-Me-Anything held by 10 members of the Overwatch 2 development team, including how Overwatch 2 will handle legacy currency going forward.

Overwatch 2 AMA details new currency changes

Overwatch lootboxes
Though Overwatch 2 is leaving loot boxes behind, older in-game currencies and points will transfer fully between games.

The topic came about when one Reddit user asked how Blizzard will handle Overwatch 1 currencies in the sequel, with Overwatch’s Commercial Lead Jon Spector confirming that all older currencies and points will transfer over to Overwatch 2.

This means players can expect Overwatch’s in-game credits, OWL tokens, and competitive points to show up in their account when Overwatch 2 launches.

However, this did not come without a caveat: according to Spector, Overwatch 1 credits will transfer but “our new virtual currency will be the main currency, and there will be things in OW2 that will not be purchasable with those OW1 credits.”

That means that while players will likely have some use for older in-game currencies, it likely won’t take precedence over the new currency debuting in Overwatch 2.

screenshot of overwatch 2 reddit ama currency transfer and loot boxes

Spector also clarified what will happen to any unopened loot boxes in players’ accounts, in that they will simply receive the contents of each loot box en-masse.

This seems to be good news, as some players like ‘Dr_StevenScuba‘ simply figured Overwatch 1 currencies would simply be kept to the original game or would be unusable in the sequel.

Others such as user ‘Ahridan‘ speculate Overwatch currency will be used on ‘freemium’ items and that “The use of the coins will be finite I’d imagine, once you’ve bought the base items, that’s it, they have no more use, and everything else after comes from the battle pass.”

Fans will just have to wait and see how Blizzard plans to use the legacy currency in Overwatch 2, but for now, all we know is that they will carry over and have some use.

About The Author

Philip is a Staff Writer at Dexerto based in Louisiana, with expertise in Pokemon, Apex Legends, and general gaming industry news. His first job in the games industry was as a reviewer with NintendoEverything.com while attending college. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in Communication focusing on Multimedia Journalism, he worked with GameRant.com for nearly two years before joining Dexerto. When he's not writing he's usually tearing through some 80+ hour JRPG. You can contact him at philip.trahan@dexerto.com.