Hey you! Yes you! Do you want to pay for a game which gets forcibly taken away from you after only six years? Do you want to buy lootboxes in order to unlock cosmetics faster in the game you „own“?

Overwatch 1 was released in 2016 to critical acclaim and millions of sales globally. It has permanently changed the hero-shooter landscape which was in much need of a fresh new game and playstyle. After a few hard years plagued with infrequent updates, long overdue hero nerfs / reworks and broken promises, Overwatch 1 was finally taken offline on October 3, 2022.

Ever since I started playing Overwatch I was fascinated by the game and it’s proprietary engine, Tank. Not much is known about it, only that core components were reused from the cancelled Blizzard IP, Titan. It’s a shame that this game (engine) is not getting the recognition it deserves. From the entity-component architecture to the deterministic graph based scripting engine which handles (almost) everything which happens ingame, it is a truly refreshing take on networking and game programming rarely seen in games. So, considering this, building a game server from scratch can’t be that hard, riiiight?

Join me in this documentation of my gradual descent into madness while I (jokingly) roast Overwatch developers for code which they probably do not even remember that theyve written 10+ years ago :)