You can now earn in-game skins by watching Overwatch League

From today, with the beginning of Overwatch League stage two, viewers will earn League Tokens—the in-game currency used to purchase Overwatch League team skins—by watching OWL matches. To start earning tokens, viewers must link their Battle.net account with their account on Twitch.tv, MLG.com, or overwatchleague.com.

"Each time a map concludes during a live broadcast, eligible viewers will earn a League Token," reads the announcement. "Also, a percentage of lucky fans viewing the live broadcast when a match ends will be awarded 100 League Tokens, enough for a home-team skin of their choice!"

Each Overwatch League match consists of four maps, with an additional fifth tiebreaker map if the teams are tied 2-2. At three matches per day, four days a week, that amounts to a total of between 48 and 60 tokens per week if one were to watch every single match. 

According to a Twitch representative, the odds of winning the bonus 100 tokens depend on the total number of eligible entries received—that is, the number of viewers watching who have properly linked their Battle.net account. The number of skins (100 token bonuses) awarded per match is determined by the formula 2*SQRT(N), where "N" equals the number of eligible participants. 

Overwatch League has been averaging around 100,000 viewers at any given moment. If every one of those viewers had a properly linked account, 632 skins would be awarded at the end of the match.

In addition to giving tokens away, viewers can now unlock loot by Cheering with Bits on Twitch. Based upon both personal and global cheering milestones, viewers can unlock in-game Overwatch League skins (the first of which is Tracer's OWL away skin), Twitch emotes, and team emotes. Every 100 bits cheered unlocks a random Twitch emote (one for each Overwatch hero), while cheering 150 or more Bits using a team's Cheermote unlocks that team's Twitch emote.

There's also mention of an upcoming VIP pass for Overwatch League, that will unlock "even more in-game items, behind-the-scenes video content on Twitch, and tons of other perks which we’ll reveal soon."

Bo Moore

As the former head of PC Gamer's hardware coverage, Bo was in charge of helping readers better understand and use PC hardware. He also headed up the buying guides, picking the best peripherals and components to spend your hard-earned money on. He can usually be found playing Overwatch, Apex Legends, or more likely, with his cats. He is now IGN's resident tech editor and PC hardware expert.