Overwatch’s in-game competitive season four will end on May 29 at 8pm EDT (5pm PDT), Overwatch principal designer Scott Mercer announced on the game’s forum today.
The news comes one week after Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan said that the competitive play card in Overwatch will update later in the month with a timer counting down to the exact date. Season five will start around June 1, Kaplan added.
“We decided to have a shorter amount of ‘offseason’ time without competitive play as compared to previous seasons,” Mercer said in today’s announcement.
In season four, Blizzard updated the way skill ranking works, forcing players to complete seven matches a week to stave off rank decay. Additionally, respawn adjustments were added to Assault, Escort, and combination maps to make it harder for defenders to stall a point that they will likely lose. Blizzard waited until just before the competitive season began to share its season adjustments, so we probably won’t know much about the changes until close to season five.
Overwatch fans speculate that Blizzard will release a new hero or a new event to coincide with the game’s one year anniversary on May 24. Datamined files point to new items being added to the game, but nothing has been confirmed by Blizzard. Players shouldn’t worry about heroes being added during the competitive season, as Blizzard will likely bar any new hero from competitive play for a week or so—as they did with Orisa. Of course, that’ll only happen if the rumors are true.
