The Overwatch open beta is live for a selection of early access players, but anyone already engrossed in the content may notice that one feature is currently absent. The Competitive Play mode has been taken offline by the developers, but with good reason as explained by Game Director Jeff Kaplan.
It seems that Blizzard are planning somewhat of an overhaul for the mode before the full release, as Kaplan stated on the official forums:
We worked extremely hard to get Competitive Play in the game for Closed Beta. We’ve been reading feedback from the community and taking it all to heart. As a result, we’ve temporarily disabled Competitive Play for Open Beta so that we can rework the system and make it better. Our plan is to bring back a newly re-designed version of Competitive Play sometime after Overwatch launches.
There hasn’t been much time in which to really test this feature, in truth, as it was only available for first trials last month. And, while there’s more than enough playable content in the beta to keep testers busy until the conclusion on May 9, it is still unusual to see a key feature getting such a large rehash at this stage.
The Overwatch open beta will be open to all players today, with the testing due to run over the weekend until May 9.
