For the uninitiated, Overwatch is a fast-paced video game that looks chaotic on screen, but requires incredible coordination and communication, making it an excellent competitive sport in which teamwork usually trumps individual skill.
The league is making big changes for the coming season that could major ramifications not just for the competitors, but esports as a whole. Here’s everything you need to know about the upcoming Overwatch League season.
I’m super new here, what is Overwatch?
Overwatch is a 6-vs-6 class-based shooter in which two teams fight over objectives. Unlike Counter-Strike or Fortnite, where the only difference between characters is the guns they pick up, Overwatch characters have unique abilities.
If you’ve never seen competitive Overwatch before, I recommend this summer’s World Cup match between the United States and South Korea to get started.
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How does the Overwatch League work?
The league consists of 20 teams, split into Atlantic and Pacific divisions, that play 28 regular-season games apiece. The division winners get the top two seeds in the playoffs, followed by the next four teams with the best records regardless of division. The teams ranked seventh through 12th go to a wild card tournament to determine the final two playoff spots.
Playoffs are double-elimination, so any teams that slip up get a second chance to make a run to the final.
Are OWL teams actually playing in their home markets now?
Yes!
Overwatch League started in 2018 with teams named after cities, with the hope being that it could become the first game in esports to create local fandom just like traditional sports. The league started with 12 teams, then expanded to 20 squads representing cities in six different countries. Most of the teams are owned by esports organizations that compete in other games, and are promoted as part of those brands despite being named after cities and not their parent organizations.
Though the teams are tied to regions their names, they played exclusively at Blizzard’s studio in Los Angeles in Season 1. The show went on the road for a small number of local team-hosted matches in Season 2. For the start of the current season — Season 3 — the LA studio has been left behind entirely, and all the matches will be played in the teams’ home markets.
The league is hoping to build off the big success of its homestand weekends in Dallas and Atlanta last season. The league returns to Dallas in Week 1, and will also have matches hosted by the New York Excelsior in New York City.
Why can’t I find the Overwatch League on Twitch?
Almost every esports tournament that matters can be found on Twitch, so people who haven’t kept up with the news are going to be in for a shock when they don’t know where to find the Overwatch League on Saturday. Activision Blizzard has signed a deal to give its three biggest esports titles — Overwatch, Call of Duty and Hearthstone — exclusively to YouTube.
The platform draws hundreds of millions of eyeballs on its gaming-related content, but has not seriously competed with Twitch on live events. It is clearly willing to throw around a lot of money to change that. No one knows how much the YouTube deal is, but it’s rumored to be more than OWL’s last one, which was worth $90 million over two years.
Leaving the platform where most of your audience hangs out is a bold move!
Yeah. It’s possible that Blizzard has drastically underestimated how much of its audience is casual. Most Overwatch League streams sat between 100,000 and 150,000 concurrent viewers during matches. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, but the first week of Call of Duty League peaked at about 75,000 viewers on YouTube. A lot of people go to Twitch to see what’s on, notice OWL is popping, and check it out. That doesn’t really happen on YouTube, which currently has a bad live content recommendation system.
But it’s possible that Blizzard and its advertisers don’t really care about live viewership. Video on demand is a lot more easily accessible on YouTube than it is on Twitch, where Call of Duty League is off to a solid start. Week 1’s marquee match between the Chicago Huntsmen and Optic Gaming has roughly 516K views as of publish time.
OWL should see a dip in live viewership over the first few weeks of this season, but it could wind up with more total viewership in the end.
Where did my favorite caster go?
Controversially, the Overwatch League has seen some of its top commentators leave this offseason. The departure of former OWL commissioner Nate Nanzer, who joined Fortnite publisher Epic Games, apparently led to irreconcilable differences of opinion about staffing and creative vision between Blizzard and some of its talent.
Christopher “Montecristo” Mykles and Erik “DoA” Lonnquist, who were extremely popular League of Legends casters before signing on with OWL full time, are the highest-profile departures. Fans won’t be happy to see Auguste “Semmler” Massonat or Malik Forté go, either. (Chris Puckett is no longer with Blizzard full time, but could potentially make appearances, since he’s still working with the company on a freelance basis.)
Alarmingly, the league has yet to announce a complete talent lineup. The league’s signature voices, the duo of Mitch “Uber” Leslie and Matt “Mr. X” Morello, have yet to confirm they’ll be back for Season 3. And while they’re expected to return, the OWL wouldn’t feel the same without them.
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Hey so … it seems like a lot could go wrong here
Yeaaaaaaaah. If you care about esports in general, not just Overwatch, you should be keeping an eye on the league this season. Considering the big risks that the league has made by going to an all-homestand model, changing platforms and declining to re-sign top talent, it’s possible that this season could go very badly for OWL. And given that investors have collectively sunk over a billion dollars into the league, failure could have long-term consequences for esports as a whole.
This is not to say that a massive failure on the part of OWL would stop the growth of esports. Rather, that it would inform the business model going forward. Is it viable to run franchise leagues like traditional sports leagues? Or does esports need to follow a completely different model?
Enough of that, let’s talk about the games. What am I looking at here?
Overwatch currently has 31 heroes, and teams play six of them at a time. Heroes are not exclusive to one team, like League of Legends or Dota 2; both teams can play Mei at the same time, for example.
The characters are split into three different classes. Tanks have high survivability and damage mitigation. Support characters can heal teammates. And damage characters focus almost exclusively on eliminating enemies. Teams have to pick two characters in each class. Games are often decided by which team can combine these abilities with the best coordination, rather than simply who’s good at shooting.
When you watch Overwatch League, you’ll hear casters refer to the meta on occasion. This means the metagame — the game inside the game, or the current preferred strategy.
“Meta” alludes to how how hard it is to balance a video game like Overwatch in a way that makes all characters equally viable in professional play. There will almost always be a composition of six characters that is ideal for a particular situation, given their combination of abilities.
Blizzard recently released a new version of the game with small tweaks to the strengths and weaknesses of a few characters. While these small differences are hardly noticeable if you play the game yourself at low ranks, they’re extremely important to how the game is played at the professional level. No professional matches have been played on the latest version of Overwatch, so even the best players can only guess at what the current meta is.
We will likely see a variety of strategies in the opening matches, before teams finally settle into a clearly defined meta. But there’s a wrinkle this year …
New for this season: Hero pools
Every week, four of the strongest characters in the game — one tank, one support and two damage — will be banned from Overwatch League play in an effort to shake up the meta.
Last season, fans got sick of seeing the same characters and strategies over and over again. Before the league mandated that teams picked two characters in each class, the meta was something called GOATS, named after the team that popularized the strategy. This three-tank, three-support, no-damage character composition forced star players who preferred damage dealers to use the tank hero Zarya or the support hero Brigitte instead. This was annoying to fans as well as players, who were bored with having to play Brigitte, a character with a low skill ceiling.
Mandated 2-2-2 was initially celebrated by the community, but ended up making things worse. The double shield composition led by tanks Orisa and Sigma was even less fun to watch (and play) than GOATS.
To avoid running into a problem like that again, Blizzard introduced the banned hero pool system. So even if the meta is bland one week, you can be sure that different characters will be played the next week.
I’m not from any of the cities that have teams, want to give me a rooting interest?
Front-runners: If you’re a fan of the Yankees, Patriots and Barcelona, may I suggest the San Francisco Shock? The Season 2 champions are widely expected to win the league again this season. The introduction of hero pools could have been a massive shakeup, but it actually just benefits San Francisco more than anyone else. The Shock don’t have the best player in the league on any character, but have a top-five player in the league on literally every character. They don’t have a set starting lineup, but 10 players they can swap in and out seamlessly depending on the map and which heroes are banned.
Pure fun: If you care about play style more than wins and losses, the Chengdu Hunters are for you. They were the only team to consistently buck the GOATS trend and play damage characters on a regular basis early last season, and are expected to keep playing off-meta compositions thanks to Ameng, the only player in the league whose best character is the tank Wrecking Ball.
Moneyball: If you really liked that book or movie, you’ll be able to get into the Boston Uprising, who have become the OWL’s Oakland A’s. Boston specializes in picking up undervalued players from the second tier Contenders, developing them, selling them to other teams for a profit, then replacing them with fresh Contenders talent.
Lovable losers: Despite disappointing results, the core of the Houston Outlaws has remained intact for three seasons, mostly because of their strong fanbase and lovely personalities that make them very hard to fire. Muma, Rawkus and Linkzr are among the league’s most popular players, even if they lose more than they win.
Yoooooooo! Deadass, I just want a team that’s dope as hell. That’s facts, bro: Los Angeles Gladiators.
I want a team that wins but I don’t want to seem like a really obvious bandwagoner, you know what I mean?: Hell yeah, I know exactly what you mean. The Shanghai Dragons set a global sports record for futility by losing their first 42 matches. But the team finished a respectable 13-15 last season, then made some big additions during the offseason. They’re going to be really good, so get on board now before the bandwagon fills up.
LONDON (AP) — Most people have accumulated a pile of data — selfies, emails, videos and more — on their social media and digital accounts over their lifetimes. What happens to it when we die?
It’s wise to draft a will spelling out who inherits your physical assets after you’re gone, but don’t forget to take care of your digital estate too. Friends and family might treasure files and posts you’ve left behind, but they could get lost in digital purgatory after you pass away unless you take some simple steps.
Here’s how you can prepare your digital life for your survivors:
Apple
The iPhone maker lets you nominate a “ legacy contact ” who can access your Apple account’s data after you die. The company says it’s a secure way to give trusted people access to photos, files and messages. To set it up you’ll need an Apple device with a fairly recent operating system — iPhones and iPads need iOS or iPadOS 15.2 and MacBooks needs macOS Monterey 12.1.
For iPhones, go to settings, tap Sign-in & Security and then Legacy Contact. You can name one or more people, and they don’t need an Apple ID or device.
You’ll have to share an access key with your contact. It can be a digital version sent electronically, or you can print a copy or save it as a screenshot or PDF.
Take note that there are some types of files you won’t be able to pass on — including digital rights-protected music, movies and passwords stored in Apple’s password manager. Legacy contacts can only access a deceased user’s account for three years before Apple deletes the account.
Google
Google takes a different approach with its Inactive Account Manager, which allows you to share your data with someone if it notices that you’ve stopped using your account.
When setting it up, you need to decide how long Google should wait — from three to 18 months — before considering your account inactive. Once that time is up, Google can notify up to 10 people.
You can write a message informing them you’ve stopped using the account, and, optionally, include a link to download your data. You can choose what types of data they can access — including emails, photos, calendar entries and YouTube videos.
There’s also an option to automatically delete your account after three months of inactivity, so your contacts will have to download any data before that deadline.
Facebook and Instagram
Some social media platforms can preserve accounts for people who have died so that friends and family can honor their memories.
When users of Facebook or Instagram die, parent company Meta says it can memorialize the account if it gets a “valid request” from a friend or family member. Requests can be submitted through an online form.
The social media company strongly recommends Facebook users add a legacy contact to look after their memorial accounts. Legacy contacts can do things like respond to new friend requests and update pinned posts, but they can’t read private messages or remove or alter previous posts. You can only choose one person, who also has to have a Facebook account.
You can also ask Facebook or Instagram to delete a deceased user’s account if you’re a close family member or an executor. You’ll need to send in documents like a death certificate.
TikTok
The video-sharing platform says that if a user has died, people can submit a request to memorialize the account through the settings menu. Go to the Report a Problem section, then Account and profile, then Manage account, where you can report a deceased user.
Once an account has been memorialized, it will be labeled “Remembering.” No one will be able to log into the account, which prevents anyone from editing the profile or using the account to post new content or send messages.
X
It’s not possible to nominate a legacy contact on Elon Musk’s social media site. But family members or an authorized person can submit a request to deactivate a deceased user’s account.
Passwords
Besides the major online services, you’ll probably have dozens if not hundreds of other digital accounts that your survivors might need to access. You could just write all your login credentials down in a notebook and put it somewhere safe. But making a physical copy presents its own vulnerabilities. What if you lose track of it? What if someone finds it?
Instead, consider a password manager that has an emergency access feature. Password managers are digital vaults that you can use to store all your credentials. Some, like Keeper,Bitwarden and NordPass, allow users to nominate one or more trusted contacts who can access their keys in case of an emergency such as a death.
But there are a few catches: Those contacts also need to use the same password manager and you might have to pay for the service.
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Is there a tech challenge you need help figuring out? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your questions.
LONDON (AP) — Britain’s competition watchdog said Thursday it’s opening a formal investigation into Google’s partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic.
The Competition and Markets Authority said it has “sufficient information” to launch an initial probe after it sought input earlier this year on whether the deal would stifle competition.
The CMA has until Dec. 19 to decide whether to approve the deal or escalate its investigation.
“Google is committed to building the most open and innovative AI ecosystem in the world,” the company said. “Anthropic is free to use multiple cloud providers and does, and we don’t demand exclusive tech rights.”
San Francisco-based Anthropic was founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, who previously worked at ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The company has focused on increasing the safety and reliability of AI models. Google reportedly agreed last year to make a multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic, which has a popular chatbot named Claude.
Anthropic said it’s cooperating with the regulator and will provide “the complete picture about Google’s investment and our commercial collaboration.”
“We are an independent company and none of our strategic partnerships or investor relationships diminish the independence of our corporate governance or our freedom to partner with others,” it said in a statement.
The U.K. regulator has been scrutinizing a raft of AI deals as investment money floods into the industry to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom. Last month it cleared Anthropic’s $4 billion deal with Amazon and it has also signed off on Microsoft’s deals with two other AI startups, Inflection and Mistral.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The tiny Mideast nation of Kuwait has banned the release of the video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops 6,” which features the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and is set in part in the 1990s Gulf War.
The video game, a first-person shooter, follows CIA operators fighting at times in the United States and also in the Middle East. Game-play trailers for the game show burning oilfields, a painful reminder for Kuwaitis who saw Iraqis set fire to the fields, causing vast ecological and economic damage. Iraqi troops damaged or set fire to over 700 wells.
There also are images of Saddam and Iraq’s old three-star flag in the footage released by developers ahead of the game’s launch. The game’s multiplayer section, a popular feature of the series, includes what appears to be a desert shootout in Kuwait called Scud after the Soviet missiles Saddam fired in the war. Another is called Babylon, after the ancient city in Iraq.
Activision acknowledged in a statement that the game “has not been approved for release in Kuwait,” but did not elaborate.
“All pre-orders in Kuwait will be cancelled and refunded to the original point of purchase,” the company said. “We remain hopeful that local authorities will reconsider, and allow players in Kuwait to enjoy this all-new experience in the Black Ops series.”
Kuwait’s Media Ministry did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press over the decision.
“Call of Duty,” which first began in 2003 as a first-person shooter set in World War II, has expanded into an empire worth billions of dollars now owned by Microsoft. But it also has been controversial as its gameplay entered the realm of geopolitics. China and Russia both banned chapters in the franchise. In 2009, an entry in the gaming franchise allowed players to take part in a militant attack at a Russian airport, killing civilians.
But there have been other games recently that won praise for their handling of the Mideast. Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed: Mirage” published last year won praise for its portrayal of Baghdad during the Islamic Golden Age in the 9th century.
