Overwatch League Tokens 2020, what has changed with the new season?

Overwatch 2
February 4, 2020
Mel Hawthorne

For the past few seasons, dedicated Overwatch League fans have been able to get rewards for watching the League on Twitch. Subscribed users that watched matches would receive some Overwatch League Tokens to spend in-game. These tokens buy Overwatch League skins in the game – specifically, 100 of them can buy two skins for one character for one of the OWL teams.

Additional Overwatch League tokens can also be bought with money, but just watching the OWL streams on Twitch can earn a fair few of them. For every hour that a player watches live events, they received three tokens. Additionally, at the end of each match, a random selection of viewers also received an additional 100 free OWL tokens. However, this method of obtaining free overwatch league tokens is not yet available for the 2020 season.

Overwatch League Tokens 2020

© Blizzard Entertainment

Changing the deal for the new season

This season, things will be different – as of 2020, the OWL is no longer partnered with Twitch at all. This means that there won’t be any streams on the platform – all official streams will be happening on YouTube. What this means for the Overwatch League tokens system is still unknown – whether it will continue on the new platform, be dropped entirely or changed up some.

While other things like the OWL itself and the OWL rankings remain much the same (with some minor format changes such as the locations of the matches) the token system is likely to change quite a bit. It’s not yet known how to get Overwatch League tokens on YouTube, or if it’s possible at all. The previous system was tied to the viewers Twitch and Battle.net account and it was relatively easy to track who watched and followed the matches. The move to Youtube however, has not gone with some pre-planning on the side of Blizzard, as account merging between Youtube and Battle.net is still not an option.

What we know about the Overwatch League tokens in 2020

So far, the only thing we know for sure is that at the beginning of the current season, there won’t be any token drops for streaming fans. OWL Commissioner Pete Vlastelica confirmed that there will be rewards in the future, but not at the start of this season.

No details about further changes or rewards have been released, however, with the first matches of the season already underway, fans aren’t very happy with this change. Indeed, fans weren’t happy that Overwatch switched away from Twitch at all – the news that there won’t be more free OWL tokens only underlined this even more.

The OWL management came under fire for not having a thought-out plan for this season – the partnership with YouTube was announced at the very last minute, and important announcements like what would happen to the token system didn’t happen at all. With a minimum of a 3-year partnership with YouTube, there is at least some time to sort things out – however, it may take some time for a game-plan to be created and put in place.

All fans can do is wait and see – and enjoy the usual OWL matches on YouTube for now… even without the tokens. Keep in mind that the move to Youtube also made quick-lookup of the Overwatch League Rankings and Schedule a tricky endeavor. Spectators will have to check the official OWL portal for information.

Getting the new skins with OWL Tokens

If you are interested in obtaining Overwatch League Skins with your tokens, you are going to have to buy your Overwatch League tokens from the Battle.net client. Alternatively, you can wait for Blizzard to figure out their streaming system. It is likely that spectators will get a compensation in tokens once the new system goes live. As we already know, Blizzard does not like to let fans down so an adequate compensation is likely to arrive sooner rather than later.

The new set of skins including GOAT Brigitte are available in the in-client store.

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