The Overwatch development team has announced that the fan-favorite Summer Games seasonal event will be returning this year for a cool 21 days.  After being introduced last year to great praise from players, the Summer Games event will return this month with new changes and improvements based off of fan feedback.  You can hear an overview of the new changes from Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan himself in the developer update below:

The special “Lucioball” game mode introduced for last year’s event will be returning again in 2017, with some new updates.  There is now a new stadium to play Lucioball in, Sydney, which will be available alongside the returning Rio stadium from last year.  Adjustments have also been made to Lucio’s abilities, to reduce the number of “cheesy” strategies that were exploitable with the old abilities.  In the previous setup, Lucio could “boop” an opponent’s goalie out of the goal with his Soundwave attack, and then stand in the opponent’s goal and use his ultimate to rapidly draw the ball towards himself and score, which proved to be an excessively powerful strategy.

So, Lucio has had his “boop” ability entirely removed, and has had his ultimate reworked; now, instead of pulling the ball towards the player upon activation, Lucio’s ultimate turns him into “super Lucio”, giving him more speed and higher jumps for enhanced overall mobility.  This year’s Overwatch Summer Games will also introduce “Copa Lucioball”, which will be a ranked Lucioball playlist for players seeking a more competitive experience.  Copa Lucioball will offer special in-game rewards for players who perform well and end high in the rankings.

This year’s Summer Games will be introducing a large number of new cosmetics, including new skins, sprays, and emotes, and will also make cosmetics from last year’s event available again for those who previously missed out.  Cosmetics from the 2016 Summer Games will be available at a reduced cost compared to this year’s new cosmetics, as follows:

2017 Overwatch Summer Games items:
Legendary Skins – 3,000 credits
Epic Skins – 750 credits
Rare tier – 225 credits
Common tier – 75 credits

2016 Overwatch Summer Games items:
Legendary Skins – 1,000 credits
Epic Skins – 250 credits
Rare tier – 75 credits
Common tier – 25 credits

The Overwatch Summer Games 2017 will run from August 8th-29th, on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.