Overwatch 2 is free to play so it has other ways of monetization. Like any other free-to-play game, Overwatch 2 has its inner currency which is called Overwatch Coins. We will tell you more about them and explain how to get Overwatch Coins.
What are Overwatch Coins?
Overwatch coins are the game currency used in Overwatch 2 to buy in-game content like skins for characters. There is no limit on how many coins you have, but if you what to have more of them you need to farm them or buy them for real money.
The total amount of Overwatch coins you can see in the shop menu on the right top. If you didn’t have Overwatch 1 and didn’t play Overwatch 2 the number will be 0. But Overwatch 1 owners had a little boost and got around 100 Overwatch coins for free.
Also in the shop, you can see all the new cosmetics available for purchase. There are also event skins that can be purchased only during a limited period of time. Like the Shin-Ryeong bundle for Diva or the Calavera Reaper bundle for Reaper. These cosmetic bundles are purchasable only during Halloween events in Overwatch.
In the tab Seasonal you will see the new cosmetics that were released during the current season. The vast majority of them will be purchasable all the time. But as for the last tab in the shop called Overwatch League, it is a separate shop-buying system, there you purchase skins for League tokens, not Overwatch coins. We will explain them another time.
This is pretty much all that Overwatch 2 sells for Overwatch coins. Let’s move on to how to get those coins.
How to get Overwatch coins?
The most obvious and easy way is to buy them in the game. Just click on the plus near the number of your owned Overwatch coins and you’ll see the prices in your local currencies if Blizzard works on your market (our in Ukrainian hryvnias).
The prices are not low especially when you remember the prices for cosmetic bundles that can cost around 2000 Overwatch coins. If we mention in dollars 500 Overwatch coins cost around $5.
But there is also another harder way to get a small amount of Overwatch coins for free. To do that you’ll need to play frequently and complete Weekly missions! Daily missions will not grant you Overwatch coins, only Battle pass EXP. We wrote about it in Overwatch 2 Battle Pass Rewards and Progression Details.
You can get 60 Overwatch coins per week for free. For that, you are required to complete 11 weekly missions. Some weekly missions are very time-consuming or hard for newbies, so if you want to get Overwatch coins for free you need to play every day.
But even if you do play and get all free Overwatch coins you will not be able to get enough during the season to activate premium rewards in the active battle pass. You can get around 550 Overwatch coins, which is not enough as you need 1000 Overwatch coins to upgrade to a premium battle pass in Overwatch 2. So whether you get 2 times fewer premium battle pass rewards as a free player (which means that you will collect enough amount for an upgrade once in two seasons) or you play a lot to get all free Overwatch coins and buy 500 OC more for $5 to get all the rewards from battle pass every season.
But in both cases, you will not have OC at all to buy other cosmetics from the shop. This means you need to buy OC for skins in Overwatch 2. Or you can give up on battle pass rewards and collect and spend all OC from weekly missions on cosmetics (which will be possible once in 4-5 months).