Yesterday, Overwatch released a brand new patch update to players in celebration of the Chinese New Year. The Year of the Rooster update comes stock full of goodies for gamers, including Legendary skins and a new mode of play. This game mode, revealed as capture the flag in a recent gamer leak, has been titled Capture the Rooster, a holiday themed take on the favorite FPS shooter mode and childhood playground game from years gone by. While it seems like a no-brainer that the mode has been added to the popular shooter title, it is actually a lucky break that we got this mode at all. Why, you ask? It was revealed by Director Jeff Kaplan that the mode almost didn’t make it into the Overwatch roster simply because it was nearly too difficult to create!

“Over the years, when we were iterating and testing various versions of capture the flag, we actually gave up on the mode for awhile,” Kaplan explained in the Developer Update video, seen below. He then went on to explain that “we felt like what we didn’t want to do was add a bunch of rules that no longer made Overwatch heroes feel like Overwatch heroes.”

If this sounds confusing to you, take this into consideration: Tracer has the ability to “blink” to different locations. Imagine putting her in a Capture the Flag tournament, where she can just zip right past the competition without them being able to catch her. To bypass this problem, developers would have to alter Tracer’s abilities significantly to make the game “fair” between all the playable characters. And if they altered one character, then they’d have to alter all of the characters in some way. See the problem now?

This has been Blizzard’s worry for years, wondering exactly how they might accomplish this feat and add the gaming mode to their beloved title. Jeff Kaplan spoke to Polygon in November of 2015, voicing this exact concern to them and fearing that the mode would never really make it to the anticipated title’s roster. More recently, assistant director Aaron Keller also voiced his worry and reinforced the belief that the mode wouldn’t succeed, stating that, “modes like that become difficult for us to design.”

Luckily, the developers managed to overcome these concerns, embracing suggestions from fans and deciding to go a different route when designing their version of the gameplay. It seems that the direction the game creators decided to go in solving these perceived issues was to change the game play itself, rather than what makes each character so special and unique. The result is a fully functional version of the classic game mode, geared specifically for the fans and keeping true to the Overwatch feel we all love so much.

When people think of capture the flag they think of those great movement abilities. Instead of trying to overly balance and overly tune Overwatch around this concept out of fairness, why don’t we embrace what our heroes do? ~ Jeff Kaplan, Overwatch Director

So there you have it! Thanks to Blizzard and the fans who support them so proudly, we now have the fitfully eluded Capture the Flag we’ve been keeping our fingers crossed for. If you are an Overwatch player, make sure you check out the game mode the next time you sign in. If you haven’t taken advantage of the Year of the Rooster event yet, be sure to sign on soon, and check out the awesome Legendary Skins included in the deal. You definitely won’t be sorry!

What do you think of the added capture the flag mode to Overwatch’s game modes? Have you had a chance to try out the new event for yourself? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, and game on!