What happens to your old loot boxes and credits in Overwatch 2? Answered

Original Overwatch was famous for its loot box system, with many players feeling content to collect and hoard them after completing their collections. With the next step for the game coming with the release of Overwatch 2 in October, it has been confirmed that a different set of reward systems will be replacing them. But you might be wondering what happens to your unopened loot boxes now that they won’t be relevant anymore. Similarly, what happens to credits you collected from those loot boxes or from disenchanting duplicate cosmetics, now that different forms of currency will be coming to Blizzard’s team FPS shooter?

Related: Does Overwatch 2 have loot boxes?

What happens to loot boxes?

With the game transitioning from a pay-to-play to a free-to-play model with the sequel, Overwatch 2 will be moving away from the maligned loot box model, and over to the currently much more common Battle pass reward track system. Players who have kept unopened loot boxes have been worrying that their loot will be lost upon transition from OW to OW2. However, it has been confirmed during the Reddit AMA that the players’ loot boxes will simply be automatically opened and transferred over to the new game.

“We are not transitioning loot boxes into Overwatch 2, and ahead of launch, any unopened loot boxes will be automatically opened with your account receiving all the contents directly.”

Many players have followed up wondering what that means for seasonal or event loot boxes. Remember that those loot boxes required the relevant event to be active and contained a minimum of one seasonal or event item when opened. However, it has been confirmed that those loot boxes will follow the same principle as the regular ones, opening and distributing their loot normally when the game transitions to Overwatch 2.

What happens to credits and other currency?

Besides loot boxes, Overwatch had three more types of currency that have been a source of speculation among the playerbase: credits, OWL tokens, and competitive points. With the change in the economic structure of OW2, and the announcement of a new, paid currency, there was a concern that all collected currency from the original game will be lost.

The devs addressed the issue during the same Reddit AMA, promising that the existing currencies will carry over to OW2, but that it is still too early to tell how would they function in relation to the new systems. 

“We’ll share a more detailed explanation on all of these topics before Overwatch 2 goes live in October. To give you a quick answer now though, those existing currencies (credits, OWL tokens, and competitive points) will come with you into Overwatch 2.
[…] clarified below as well that OW1 credits come with you to OW2, but our new virtual currency will be the main currency, and there will be things in OW2 that will not be purchasable with those OW1 credits.”

There is still time until October to learn how they plan to consolidate all of these currencies and what purpose and acquisition method will apply to each. They may run into an issue of currency oversaturation, but for now, it seems that there won’t be any overlap between the currencies that we know of so far. We will continue to follow the development and update you accordingly.