An Overwatch player discovers a years-old specially marked Wrecking Ball loot box in their backlog as Blizzard prepares to sunset this feature.

When Overwatch first launched, the idea of the loot box was still a borderline fresh concept for rewarding players with additional items, either by playing games or buying bundles at the in-game store. In the years since, loot boxes in video games have fallen out of favor as the randomness of the hidden items has been seen as too close to gambling for some game franchises and companies.

For this reason, Overwatch 2 will be moving away from the loot box scheme for rewarding players and will use a Battle Pass system that will allow players to see what rewards they’re either playing for or buying into. Over the years, some of the more seasoned Overwatch players have stopped opening loot boxes altogether as they’ve unlocked everything, and it’ll mostly be duplicate rewards that will automatically become coins at this point. An Overwatch player shared an image of what they discovered while doing some loot box spring cleaning.

A fan posted a picture on Reddit of how deep their backlog is, showing off a loot box with the Wrecking Ball hero icon emblazoned on the sides. This hero-specific loot box was given out as part of Amazon’s Twitch Prime Rewards shortly after the hero launched in 2018. This loot box seems like a one-off as all other loot box design variants seem to stick to events within the game like Summer Games and the Overwatch Anniversary or special Golden Loot Boxes from the in-game store. The sentiment of still having this loot box after all this time is commendable. But with loot boxes disappearing in a few months, this fan may want to go ahead and open it and see what is inside.

Comments in the Reddit thread are a plethora of players admitting their hoarding habits, one claiming they have over 1,100 loot boxes. With the inevitability of Overwatch 2 ditching loot boxes and unceremoniously opening the remaining loot boxes, some fans are setting aside time to open them up personally. The action of opening loot boxes in the game became mundane after all these years but with time running out on loot boxes, these fans sound willing to go through the fanfare and confetti hundreds of times to reveal what rewards have been sitting in the boxes.

There were some that took issue with the way that Blizzard will go about retiring loot boxes when Overwatch transitions to Overwatch 2 and what the remaining coins will be used for. There’s a feeling of unease or distrust in automatically opening and depositing the items into a player’s account, even with assurances that progression and rewards will transfer to Overwatch 2. Loot boxes were an interesting way to dole out additional cosmetics, but its time has passed and Overwatch 2 will use a somewhat more transparent reward system.

Overwatch 2 enters Early Access on October 4 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.