Why Are My Overwatch 2 Characters Locked?

Overwatch 2 has been out for over a week now, and during that time, Blizzard has made more than a fair share of changes. One of the most recent changes, though, had an unintended result, and players have reported logging in to find half of their character roster locked––and unplayable.

If you're one of the unlucky players logging in to find part of your roster (or more) locked, then you're probably curious about what Blizzard is doing. Fortunately, the resulting lock-out of the characters isn't a change to how the game works. Instead, it's an unexpected result of a change meant to lock Bastion and Torbjörn out of certain game modes.

The change was made because Torbjörn has an ability that doesn't appear to trigger its cooldown, and Blizzard has had multiple reports of Bastion being able to cast his ultimate infinitely. The locking of characters seems random, and many players have reported logging into the game just fine since the most recent update was released to find up to 12 of their characters completely locked out.

The bug appears to happen randomly, with some players reporting no locked-out characters while others are now unable to play characters they have come to know and love playing as. Blizzard says the issue is tied to how it tracks player progression across Overwatch 2's servers.

But this isn't even the first time users have experienced this glitch since Overwatch 2 was released. Previously, players had reported a similar issue, though it is now more widespread following the changes that Blizzard made.

It is worth noting that you will not see Torbjörn and Bastion appearing in some game modes. As such, their absence from the roster is not a bug––it's a temporary fix for those characters' issues. They'll most likely be added back to those modes once their issues have been resolved.

Players can still log on to level up the Battle Pass, even with the ongoing issues. Kiriko appears to be one of the characters affected by this bug, but if you still have the newest member of the Overwatch 2 roster unlocked, you can come to grips with Kiriko's abilities to learn more about how to play her. Additionally, Overwatch 2's Watchpoint Pack can give you a little bit of a headstart collecting skins and other items for your favorite characters.

It's unclear when Blizzard will resolve this issue. For now, though, players should try to make the most of the unlocked characters available to them and be sure to report any issues to Blizzard to help iron out any other kinks that pop up.