Overwatch's Competitive mode will be back towards the end of June

Overwatch's Competitive mode isn't in the game at launch, but should make an appearance by the end of June, according to game director Jeff Kaplan.

A competitive mode for Overwatch was featured in the closed beta, but omitted from the open beta because of player feedback. Game director Jeff Kaplan has said that there are plans to implement it into the finished game, but not until “sometime towards the end of June.”

Kaplan said that Competitive mode will be the first big content update for Overwatch. “Competitive mode is the current focus of the Overwatch team, and it's the most important thing for us to add to the game right now,” he said in a live Facebook interview.

The mode has been changed since its last appearance. "Some of the things we wanted to change: one was the season length. We heard a lot of complaints from the community that they felt one-month seasons were too short,” he said.

“We thought there was a lot of cool about one-month seasons - in particular Hearthstone does it really well. But we realise our game is different from Hearthstone so we decided to go with seasons that are probably going to be more around three months. Even more specific than that: you'll probably have a two-and-a-half month actual season with maybe a couple of weeks off in between, just to build excitement and give a little bit of a reset.”

He added that the team is looking at the formats. He explained, "We like Sudden Death but we're re-evaluating how frequently it happens and saying, 'Can we have Sudden Death happen less frequently? And can we have Sudden Death resolve itself on the actual game-mode-type that you're playing? So if you're playing Assault, can we have resolution on Assault? If you're playing Escort, can we have a resolution on that?"

Overwatch is now available on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.