One year of Overwatch, 11 legendary skins available for a limited time, 3 weeks birthday party and still the day only has 24 hours. Even if you spent half of the 24 hours playing, you wouldn't be able to earn all the new skins in the limited time.

With the celebrations of the one year old birthday of their hit shooter Overwatch, Blizzard has seemingly reached a limit. In the limited celebration time of 3 weeks, there are a total of 11 new legendary skins for the popular heroes. Players get these from loot boxes, which you either get while playing for leveling, or can be bought for real money. The price varies from 1.99 € for 2 boxes to the “cheaper” 50 box package for 39.99 €.

The probability of getting a legendary skin in a box is also known, on average you have to open 13.5 boxes for a legendary skin.

However, this does not guarantee that you will get one of the new skins during the current event. You still have an approx. 50% chance to get one of the normal, always available, legendary skins. Accordingly, the chances of collecting all 11 in the 3 weeks are much lower.

Overwatch Anniversary - 267 hours needed in 3 weeks

Paul Tassi from Forbes magazine did the math and came up with the following numbers:

Without investing money, you need about 1 hour of normal play to get 1 lootbox.

You should get one of the new legendary skins in about every 27 boxes, so 267 boxes / hours are required for all 11 new skins. Duplicates are not even taken into account.

In the end, players would have to spend a good 12 hours a day in Overwatch for the entire 3 weeks of the event

Duplicates give gold for which you can specifically buy skins, but with 3000 gold these are not exactly a sticky stick.

The bottom line is: take annual vacation and camp for 3 weeks in front of the screen or you just have to go to the shop to buy hundreds of loot boxes.

There is no question that Blizzard wants to and has to make money with their game. The constant development of new champions, battlefields, cosmetic items like these skins, all of this costs time and money. Nonetheless, the whole thing is escalating to such an extent that the overwhelming majority of gamers will soon become unsustainable. For comparison at the Summer Games event last year, there were 3 legendary skins, as well as a whole range of epic skins that come out of the boxes significantly more often.

It is to be hoped that Blizzard will not turn the screw endlessly, but will make the skins available over a longer period of time, or add them directly to the standard loot from the boxes.

The Overwatch birthday event is May 23rd. until June 12, 2017.