If you’re an Overwatch 2 player who also likes to donate money to important causes and charities, you’re in luck; the Overwatch 2 executive producer and vice president Jared Neuss has said “yes” to more charity-based events in the free-to-play FPS game. However, if you’re a Mercy main and you missed out on the infamous ‘pink Mercy’ skin, you might be out of luck – so to speak. Allow us to explain.
Way back in 2018, a ‘Pink Mercy’ skin was released for a limited time in Overwatch 2 with all sales going towards supporting the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. With Blizzard setting a minimum donation of $250,000 USD for the event, it’s hard to see how this was a bad thing. It’s also worth noting that the skin was so popular, people are still asking about it today – of which the following Twitch clip we’re discussing is a perfect example.
This Mercy skin wasn’t released in isolation, though. There was a Twitch Drops campaign for additional themed cosmetics – things like icons and sprays – and a physical t-shirt players could buy to also support the BCRF. On top of all this, a selection of streamers hosted charity streams throughout the duration of this event – something that raised more than $130,000 USD.
In total, as per this BCRF blog post on the conclusion of the event, it was revealed that Blizzard made a historic donation of $12.7 million USD to the charity. So, yeah. It was a pretty great thing for Blizzard and the Overwatch 2 community to do.
However, that was pretty-much the only time Overwatch had done it – we haven’t seen anything similar from the hero shooter since the 2018 event.
So, you might be pleased to learn that Neuss has confirmed that these sorts of things are coming in the future; it’s worth noting that Neuss only joined the company in October 2022 – we’re sure something like this takes time to sort out.
In an Overwatch 2 “dev hang” stream, Neuss said that “one of the things the team is super passionate about… including myself… is charitable causes and being able to use our game as a channel for things we care about. So… Expect to see some news soon” regarding these sorts of events.
We don’t know how soon we’ll see news, but it’s nice to know that something like the aforementioned BCRF event is on the horizon. We know we said Rainbow Six Siege should adopt this useful Overwatch 2 feature, but maybe this is more important for the hero shooter at the moment – something to bring the community together and an exclusive cosmetic worth getting is far from a bad thing.
But, what about the Mercy skin? Well, this was always pitched as an event exclusive and – despite not being available since mid-2018 – there has been confirmation that there are “no plans to bring back” this skin from as recent as a year ago (as you can see on this Overwatch Forum post here).
We don’t know if that will change come the new announcement, but we would hazard a guess that the Pink Mercy skin will remain as exclusive as ever and not be available again. Still, with any luck there will be a new skin just as good to tackle the Overwatch 2 competitive ranks with – hopefully for someone at the top of our Overwatch 2 tier list, too. But, only time will tell.