[Update]: The double XP event is now live!

Overwatch recently celebrated its very first birthday with an Anniversary Update, bringing in a whole bunch of new skins and dance emotes for every hero. What should have been a fun little celebration quickly turned sour, however, as people realized that all of the skins were legendary, and all of the equally expensive dance emotes locked to this specific event. Combine this with duplicate cosmetics giving minuscule amount of credits and the loot boxes being over-bloated with useless player icons and sprays, and you've got a very contentious update on your hands.

Blizzard has already said they are aware of the problem and the community response, but it unfortunately doesn't appear they will actually do anything about it, at least not for this event. On the positive side, there will be a double XP weekend running from June 8-12, so if you're getting close to 3000 credits and only need a little bit of a push, now's your chance.

This bonus will apply to all sources of in-game experience besides the first win of the day bonus which will remain at 1500. In other words, group up with a friend and do your very best in each match as all of these sources will be giving double XP: time spent in a match, completing a match, completing consecutive matches, winning a match, backfilling a match in progress, and earning medals. If you really want to push yourself to the limit and grab as much XP as humanly possible, consider playing a healer as you'll get a guaranteed gold medal and actually ensure your Quick Play team remains alive despite their best efforts to throw themselves into the enemy's guns.

The free weekend will start on June 8th at 17:00 PDT (or June 9th at 0:00 UTC) and end on June 12 at 23:59 PDT (or June 13 at 18:59 UTC). And naturally, the event will run across both PC and console versions of Overwatch. Good luck with those loot boxes!