Hi,

I've been away from my desk so haven't had a chance to catch up on the forums. This is a long thread and there are many other long threads like this so I apologize in advance because I have not read every single response here.

We really appreciate the feedback, guys. We're taking it all in and it's interesting to hear the various viewpoints on this topic.

I know many of you have watched the developer update as well. Not much has really changed in our opinion of things that wasn't expressed in that update. The unfortunate part about how this event rolled out is that it was leaked early. Our plan was to have this just go live, simultaneous in all regions and on all platforms. We thought that would have been pretty cool, you know? How many people were expecting a Summer Games event two days ago? Probably no one?

The event has a ton of *ABSOLUTELY FREE* content available to all players for *FREE*. The idea is play the game and get free, cool, rare stuff for the next 3 weeks. Yes, you can buy loot boxes but you also earn them for free... just by playing. There is a ton of content here that literally no one knew existed until it went live. 

Sometimes we want to give everything to everybody. For example, a few weeks ago we gave everyone a new hero -- Ana. Ana came with skins, emotes, sprays, highlight intros etc. that could all be purchased with credits. We also want to add new maps to the game and new stuff like the Lucioball brawl that's available to everyone equally. 

But sometimes we want things to feel rare and special.

We wanted to try something new with this event. As we mentioned in the Developer Update, we're learning and experimenting with this event. And if the event is received well (my impression so far is that it is being received well once you remove the debate over the items not being available for credits), we will run it again next year. Our Summer Games are on a yearly schedule -- not a 4 year schedule. Our plan would be to have the items available again when the event recurs. Perhaps we add new content to it as well? We're not sure yet... we're seeing what works and what doesn't.

We'd like to give the event more time and see how people feel as it wraps up. Maybe people will be feeling differently at the end of the vent. Maybe not. If we need to make things less rare -- if everyone is entitled to that Genji Epic Skin -- we'll have to reconsider our design philosophy in the future.

But I think letting the event play out for a few weeks is the right decision here. 

I understand that I am not posting exactly what some of you want to hear right now. But I also hope you can appreciate giving the event some time to play out before fully passing judgement as well.

Thanks,

jeffrey