According to the most recent Overwatch 2 leak, gamers who don't have access to all of the heroes will be prevented from joining the competitive queue. Days earlier, it was reported that all future heroes would be restricted to seasonal combat passes rather than being openly accessible to anyone. Overwatch 2's Watchpoint Pack's description received a hastily retracted update last week that unintentionally gave away a lot of information. It hinted that Kiriko was related to the Season 1 battle pass in addition to confirming her as the game's upcoming Support hero. 

All future heroes will be "accessible on the free track" of any given battle pass, according to Overwatch Commercial Lead Jon Spector, who broke his silence to confirm this leaked information. However, this free approach necessitates some work for people who don't want to pay actual money to instantaneously unlock the hero. To access heroes at Tier 20 of a season's battle pass, it can take gamers up to 15 hours, according to the most recent leaks. Even worse, it's said that until all heroes are unlocked, competitive play will be disabled. 

On September 10, a leader who wished to remain unnamed stated, "Competitive is locked for the first two weeks of each season." To put it more precisely, you must have all the heroes unlocked in order to play it." 

Take the assertions with a grain of salt for the time being because this information isn't quite foolproof at this point. Players may need to put in some extra effort before they can climb the Overwatch 2 competitive ladder. You will reportedly only have Quick Play and Arcade modes to choose from unless you pay the rumored $10 USD upfront to get the Premium Battle Pass. According to rumors, Competitive will only have matches with 10 players who have access to all of the game's heroes. 

This might not present too much of a challenge for Season 1. However, if this approach is kept in place going ahead, players who decide to join in a year or two from now may face a difficult obstacle. In a year, gamers might have to put in dozens of hours of Quick Play before competitive queues start up since they have many characters to unlock. With Overwatch 2's release date of October 4 rapidly approaching, we'll have to wait and see exactly how things turn out in the upcoming weeks.