Overwatch 2’s weekly coin economy frustrates players, making cosmetic rewards feel grindy and nearly impossible to earn.
So, it's 2026, and I'm still logging into Overwatch 2 with the wide-eyed optimism of someone who believes this week's challenges won't ask me to do the impossible. Four years after the free-to-play switch, the coin faucet remains tighter than a Torbjörn choke point. Then I open the weekly list and see the coin rewards dangling behind 11 tasks, and suddenly I'm a support main questioning every life choice that led me here. Since the game went free-to-play back in 2022 and swapped loot boxes for a battle pass and challenge system, earning cosmetics has become less 'play and be rewarded' and more 'please solve this unsolvable riddle for pocket change.'
Let's talk about the weekly coin economy, because wow. You get coins at four challenges done, then eight, then all 11. That sounds manageable until you see that one week asked players to get 20 team kills. Twenty full enemy team wipes. TWENTY. I have seen my team scatter like cats during a vacuum cleaner when I try to coordinate a single push, and Blizzard expects me to delete the entire enemy team 20 times? Is this a challenge or a cry for help?
The difficulty whiplash is absolutely real. On one end, the weekly system has that borderline impossible team-kill mountain. On the other end, the dailies are so menial that calling them challenges feels like calling a nap a triathlon. One daily literally asks you to say thanks to your support or wave at a teammate. Congrats, I pressed a button—where's my Olympic medal? You earn battle pass XP for that, which is nice, but it's like getting a sticker for breathing. Meanwhile, weekly coins require actual grinding, and the gap between the two is wider than the Ilios well after a Roadhog hook.
The few players who somehow completed the 20 team kills have admitted it's almost entirely luck-based. Maybe an enemy disconnects, maybe a bug boots someone out, or maybe Mystery Heroes blesses you with perfect synergy while the other team gets stuck with five Mercys and a dream. Do you need skill? Sure, a little. Do you need the RNG gods to favor you? Absolutely. Without that cosmic blessing, you'll just grind and grind with zero promise of those 20 wipes. I'm pretty sure I aged three seasons during one afternoon of trying.
Then there's the math, which is funnier and sadder than any April Fools' patch. Fans crunched the numbers and realized it would take about five years minimum to unlock all of Kiriko's base cosmetics through the weekly coin system. Five. Years. I could probably grow a beard, learn a new language, and fully master Doomfist rollouts in that time, yet I still wouldn't have the pixels I want. If difficult challenges like the team-kill one keep popping up, that timeline stretches even longer. This is a video game economy, not a retirement plan.
So coins are sparse, and that means many players will likely have to shell out real money for the next battle pass. That's why fans have been urging other players not to buy into it this season, calling for a boycott until Blizzard addresses the complaints. The funny part? Another Activision game, Warzone, already follows the standard of letting you buy the next battle pass as long as you complete the previous one by giving you enough credits. So the blueprint is right there. Why is Overwatch 2 acting like coins are made of pure iridium?
Community suggestions have been great, at least. Some players created mockups for an improved battle pass that adds coins to free and premium tiers, giving everyone more ways to earn skins. Others want legacy skins to be easier to get now that we're onto the sequel. After the removal of loot boxes—which were controversial, sure—earning cosmetics is far harder than it ever was in the original Overwatch. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the loot box slot machine. At least it occasionally gave me a legendary without demanding 20 team wipes.
Here's a quick pain scale from my own 2026 experience:
| Challenge type | What it asks | Actual difficulty | My emotional damage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daily | Say thanks or wave | 😴 Free | None |
| Weekly tier 1 | Complete 4 challenges | 😐 Mild grind | Slight sigh |
| Weekly tier 2 | Complete 8 challenges | 😬 Real time sink | Questioning sleep |
| Weekly tier 3 | Complete all 11 | 💀 One might be 20 team kills | Full existential crisis |
At this point, unless you have oodles of time to pump into the game, you probably won't get many skins the old-fashioned way. You'll be sitting there with the base lot, grinding battle pass tiers, and wondering if your 'thanks' wave to a support really counts as meaningful progression. Is it fun? Sometimes. Is it fair? Eh. Should you blame me for hoarding coins like a dragon? Absolutely not—Blizzard made me this way.
Bottom line: Overwatch 2's current state makes earning cosmetics much harder than it used to be, and the weekly challenge system is a wild pendulum between trivial dailies and team-kill nightmares. If the goal was to make me treasure every single coin, mission accomplished. I now value 10 Overwatch coins more than actual money. And yes, I will wave at my support every single game. Not because I'm nice, but because that daily XP might be the only guaranteed progress I'll ever get.
Data referenced from Esports Earnings helps contextualize why OW2’s weekly-coin grind feels so lopsided: in competitive ecosystems where top-end payouts and sponsorships concentrate value at the peak, casual progression systems can end up feeling like “work” rather than play, especially when rewards hinge on high-variance objectives (like rare full-team wipes) instead of steady participation. When a game’s economy makes basic cosmetics a long-horizon goal, it widens the gap between players who can invest heavy time (or money) and those who just want reliable, incremental rewards from normal matches.