Blizzard will take your cold hard cash for Overwatch 2 skins—even if the hero is on ice

An Overwatch 2 hero has some new colorful gear at their disposal, but players have no way of using it right now.

Two new skins are now available for purchase in the Overwatch 2 in-game store, one being the Legendary-rarity Art Deco skin for Symmetra and the Epic-rarity Retro Star skin for Mei. These can be purchased for 1,900 and 1,000 Overwatch Coins respectively and do not come with any other items like sprays or voice lines.

Interestingly, however, Mei is still not available to be played in Overwatch 2 since an exploit resulted in Blizzard removing the hero from the game at the end of October to fix these bugs. She does not appear on the roster of damage heroes where she normally appears and thus cannot be selected in any mode—including the practice range.

It is likely that Blizzard intended to have Mei rejoin the cast earlier this week to coincide with the launch of this new skin, though the devs opted to not delay the release of this skin alongside the delay of yesterday’s patch. This means that players who purchase the skin now will have no way to use it in-game until Mei returns to the lineup, which is expected to happen alongside the release of the patch tomorrow.

These new additions to the shop join an increasing amount of shop-exclusive skins that cannot be obtained in any other way outside of direct purchase. Since the game’s release in early access last month, fans have been very vocal about the high prices of cosmetics in general, though Blizzard has yet to address these concerns.

Art Deco Symmetra and Retro Star Mei are expected to remain in the shop for the remainder of the week before the next shop refresh, which is expected to take place next Monday, Nov. 21. From then on, they will likely rotate in and out of the shop on a random basis and will not be purchasable directly unless they’re in the shop itself.