You heard read that right, puppies. Earlier today, Blizzard hosted the Overwatch Year of the Dog Puppy Rumble, featuring two teams of puppies dressed up as Overwatch heroes competing in game of Capture the Flag. The adorable event was hosted on the PlayOverwatch Twitch channel, and it had production value rivaled by the Overwatch League.
The capture the flag game took place in a specially constructed Lijang Tower map, complete with a red team and blue team flag set at each ends of the stage for the puppy teams to capture. The game had dogs dresses up as Tracer, McCree, Roadhog, Reaper, Symmetra, Sombra, Soldier: 76, Lucio, Mercy, Junkrat, and D.va. While the action was going down, MonteCristo and DoA of the Overwatch League casted as the intense plays went down, and the hosts, Mitch Leslie and Rachel Quirico, had pun-filled conversations about the game in between rounds. After an hour and a half of high-level play, there were no winners, and the game was declared a draw. One pup, though, had a stand out performance. Lulu, the Symmetra player, was named as the MVP for the match for her courageous plays against the other dogs.
The reason why the event was organized, however, was to raise awareness for dog adoptions around the United States. The dogs featured in the Puppy Rumble are all up for adoption, and were provided by Petfinder, Wags & Walks, Paws Atlanta, and Austin Pets Alive!. Although most dogs have already been adopted, there are still a few dogs left to adopt over on the Puppy Rumble website. During the event, over 30,000 viewers tuned in on Twitch to view the Puppy Rumble, and the Puppy Rumble adoption page had almost 60,000 page clicks, and over 3,000 people showed interest in adopting the puppies featured during the show.
The Puppy Rumble can be viewed in its entirety below.
Watch Year of the Dog Puppy Rumble | Overwatch from PlayOverwatch on www.twitch.tv