Dear moderators of /r/Overwatch,



We’d like to start by thanking you for your hard work on creating one of the most popular subreddits not only in gaming, but in the entirety of Reddit. We know from our work in other competitive titles that moderating is a mostly thankless task performed by judicious volunteers who attempt to balance the desires of diverse communities under the umbrella of a single game. Your efforts have, no doubt, helped to grow and sustain interest in the fledgling game of Overwatch, but we feel that changes must be made to generate deeper discussion and passionate involvement for years to come. We make these requests out of our mutually shared desire to expose Overwatch fans to the highest quality content and conversation possible within the Reddit community.



Many of us began our time in the Overwatch community on your subreddit, laughing at gifs of ridiculous plays and becoming excited at the possibility of Terry Crews voicing Doomfist. However, these type of posts quickly grew tiresome and meaningless as similar, repetitive content devoured the front page by users seeking to acquire easy upvotes. By our calculations, made over the past few months, on average 22 out of 25 posts on the /r/Overwatch front page will be gifs, memes, jokes, or easter egg suggestions. We believe that this stifles in-depth discussion about the game itself, the competitive scene, and high-effort content that takes longer than 15 seconds to read or watch.



Some might argue that people interested in more specific subjects should visit /r/CompetitiveOverwatch, /r/OverwatchUniversity, /r/Overwatched, or various other subreddits. We agree that these subs should be maintained as purely dedicated to their given topics, but these should serve as a deeper dive on a diverse field of content that should be found on /r/Overwatch. Intentional or not, /r/Overwatch functions as the primary face of the title for the vast majority of Reddit users and we believe it should shift from a monoculture to a community that reflects the wealth of content that currently gets ignored.



By no means do we request that you eradicate the current style of content on /r/Overwatch, merely to winnow it down by implementing moderating tactics that make it more difficult for low-effort content to succeed unless it is truly remarkable. In other competitive titles, Reddit moderators have implemented rules where gifs and images must be made as self-posts, which assists greatly in reducing the volume of these types of media on the front page. We think that this tactic, combined with more stringent rules on post titles to avoid the fad de jour on submissions, such as “[x hero] fucking dies,” can hopefully open up /r/Overwatch to a new breadth of content.



We love Overwatch and we want to show new players and community members the many facets of the title we adore. We want to celebrate the humor of botched plays, watch in awe at the skill of the professional players, read the articles that help us climb the ladder, and discuss the nuances of hero ability interactions. As members of the competitive community, we look forward to assisting you in making /r/Overwatch more representative of people’s diverse interests in the game and to create a compelling home for players to find fresh content and ideas in the years ahead.

Sincerely,

The competitive Overwatch community