It seems the Overwatch beta will not include Competitive Play.
The game’s director, Jeff Kaplan, made the announcement on the Blizzard forums. “We worked extremely hard to get Competitive Play in the game for Closed Beta,” he stated. “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.”
He then states that Competitive Play will not be available until sometime after the game launches. “Our plan is to bring back a newly re-designed version of Competitive Play sometime after Overwatch launches.”
The Overwatch beta will take place from May 5th through 9th. The open beta will include all 21 heroes and four modes which will each come with three maps. They are:
- Assault: Hanamura, Temple of Anubis, Volskaya Industries
- Escort: Dorado, Route 66, Watchpoint: Gibraltar
- Assault/Escort Hybrid: Hollywood, King’s Row, Numbani
- Control: Ilios, Lijiang Tower, Nepal
Overwatch will release on May 24th. The game will launch on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. You can check out a new trailer for the upcoming title here.