It seems that someone at Blizzard got a little excited and somehow kicked off the game’s Anniversary event a little early, since players have figured out how to access the new content with a few days left before the event’s launch.
It all started when a Taiwanese Overwatch fan posted a bunch of in-game screenshots of the new skins to the Taiwanese Overwatch fan club on Facebook. The images are extremely convincing, and though it’s possible they are just very good fakes, the quality of the images lead one to believe these are the actual skins we’ll be getting for the event.
An Overwatch fan posted the images to Reddit Saturday morning. The new skins include a “shield maiden” Brigitte skin, Tuxedo Doomfist and Symmetra, Sherlock McCree, Pirate Junkrat and Mecha Bastion.
Many Overwatch fans have figured out how to access the Anniversary event early and have documented their findings via YouTube videos. In addition to the skin images, we’ve gotten a look at the new dance emotes for Doomfist, Moira and Brigitte.
We also got a peek at the new Deathmatch map, Petra, in a few walk-through videos thanks to the leak, but Blizzard also made an official announcement during Saturday night’s Overwatch League matches.
The official video from Blizzard provides a closer look at Petra, which is a hidden city carved into the mountains of the Middle East. Snaking passages encircle a large, open cavern where players fight over control of an extra-large health pack. Petra also features a few vertical jump pads, which should add an interesting new mobility element to the matches.
“A group of archaeologists have begun an excavation and preservation project among the ruins of Petra, a new Deathmatch map that puts all heroes on their own, facing off against one another until one hero scores enough eliminations to win the match,” Blizzard wrote.
Indiana Jones fans may recognize Petra from the third movie in the franchise, which features the actual archaeological city located in southern Jordan. The city is believed to have been settled in 9,000 B.C. and established as the capital of the Nbataean Kingdom in the fourth century B.C.
Overwatch’s new competitive Deathmatch mode will be unlocked during the upcoming Anniversary event and will feature both Petra and the tried and true Deathmatch map, Chateau Guillard.
Fans can look forward to all of this new content, as well as returning content from previous seasonal events, in Overwatch’s Second Anniversary event. The birthday celebration will kick off on May 22 and continue through June 11 on PlayStation, Xbox One and PC.