How does the Overwatch account merge affect stats and progress?

The Overwatch 2 development team at Blizzard recently announced that the game will feature cross-progression. This highly-requested feature allows players to merge all of their console accounts under one Battle.net account and retain in-game cosmetics, stats, settings presets, and rank across platforms. It’s a big step for the franchise, which didn’t have cross-play until last year.

Players can start merging their accounts on Aug. 16, with merges finalizing when Overwatch 2 goes live on Oct. 4. To play Overwatch 2 at all, users will need to have a Battle.net account, meaning that console players will be left out in the cold if they don’t complete the merge. While the update makes sense in terms of streamlining account access, what will it mean for stats, progress, cosmetics, and more?

Stats

Gameplay stats will be handled by input pools, according to Blizzard. There are two separate input pools: PC and console. When viewing your stats on any platform post-merge, you’ll be able to see both your PC and console stats as separate values.

If you have multiple console accounts that you merged into your Battle.net account, your console stats will be organized in a few different ways. Values like playtime or number of wins will be summed, so the console pool will show the sum total of these stats. For example, if you have 30 hours on Xbox and 50 hours on PlayStation, the tracker will show 80 hours total on console. Values that concern the highest numbers will display only the top number from all merged console accounts. These include hero accuracy, kill streaks, and other values.

Competitive ranks and hidden skill ranks will also be separated by PC and console input pools. If players merge multiple console accounts into one Battle.net account, the highest rank will be used in the console input pool.

For endorsement levels, your highest endorsement level across all of your merged accounts will apply in Overwatch 2. Any achievements you might have will be available in your final Battle.net account, though achievements that are console-specific (PlayStation trophies, for example) will remain on that console.

Cosmetics

Everything in Overwatch‘s Hero Gallery, including skins, emotes, sprays, voice lines, and more, will be merged into the overall Battle.net account. This means you’ll be able to access all of your cosmetics from Overwatch in Overwatch 2, hence the recent Anniversary Remix events that are helping players obtain past skins before the second game’s release. If there are duplicate cosmetics across your accounts, they’ll be merged into one in your Battle.net account: For example, you can’t have two of the same skin on one account, since items can only be unlocked once.

Settings

Like stats, settings are kept separate across platforms. PC settings and console settings will remain the same after an account merge, and both sets of settings will remain separate. Any custom game options you may have activated will be available in your Battle.net account, as will any links you’ve created for recent custom games and Workshop games up to the in-game limit.

Currency

Overwatch credits will be summed across accounts once the merge is complete, allowing you to draw from all of your credits on any platform. Overwatch League tokens will also be summed across accounts after the merge, though with an important caveat: Tokens purchased on Switch will not be merged and will stay on that platform only. Those who don’t merge their accounts won’t be able to access any OWL tokens from existing console accounts in Overwatch 2.