We Finally Know Why Overwatch 2 Never Got a Netflix Animated Series

Activision Blizzard‘s once-celebrated team-based hero shooter, Overwatch 2, has been failing to meet player expectations for quite some time. A primary issue with the sequel, which seems increasingly superfluous, is its absence of a cohesive narrative. Fans have long pondered why Activision Blizzard never leaned into Overwatch‘s charm by committing to a fully fledged animated series akin to their impressive DreamWorks-style animation shorts. Now we know why Activision Blizzard never pulled the trigger on Overwatch 2 getting a Netflix animated series: the former sued the latter.

In a recent Reddit AMA, Bloomberg reporter and games journalism’s epicenter for aggregation Jason Schreier revealed a vested interest in Activision Blizzard’s branching into animation with film and TV shows for its games at Netflix. Those plans ultimately fell through because of a legal butting of heads between the two companies.

“The book reveals that they had series in development with Netflix for StarCraft, Overwatch, and Diablo,” Schreier said while plugging his upcoming book, Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment. “But uh,” he continued while linking to a 2020 Variety article about Netflix being sued by Activision Blizzard for poaching.

Here’s a quick rundown that’ll hopefully give more context to Schreier’s link out and why that threw a wrench into Overwatch 2 player’s lofty animated project dreams. In 2019, Activision Blizzard sued Netflix for poaching the company’s then-CFO Spencer Neumann. According to Variety’s report, Neumann was amid a fixed-term agreement with the video game developer in 2018 before the company terminated his contract “for violating his legal obligations to the company.” Chief among the central tenants of his contract termination was a “no shop” clause, which forbade him from soliciting work from other companies. TLDR: It would be awkward for either party to broach greenlighting an Overwatch 2 series with all the hard feelings and legal red tape between the two companies.

What makes the situation all the more distressing for the hanger-on Overwatch 2 players is how integral its animated shorts were in drumming up interest for the game. These character-centric shorts not only provided a peek into how its heroes would play, it also teased the overarching narrative of the game. A narrative that, by and large, no longer exists thanks in part to years of retconning and a shift in focus from making its sequel the game that centered its story to being a game predicated on an all-encompasing live service battle pass model.

Nowadays, all fans have to look forward to is purchasing season passes where its heroes cosplay as popular characters from other IP like Transformers, Cowboy Bebop, and My Hero Academia, which really sucks when you sit back and reflect on what could’ve been. Then again, that is the Overwatch 2 experience in a nutshell outside of it not getting a Netflix animated show.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.