In pursuit of an Easter Egg, some Overwatch fans may have been a little overzealous.
If you're one of many who has enjoyed the Halloween horde mode added to Overwatch recently, then there's also a good chance that you've also noticed the crows flying around the Junkenstein's Revenge level.
The reason that these crows stand out from the various Haloween themed additions this seasonal mode sports is that they are distinctly purple. They are so vibrantly purple, in fact, that they almost seem to glow. This is certainly unusual and, in a game with as proud of a history of harboring secrets as Overwatch has, anything unusual is typically determined to translate into something waiting to be discovered.
It wasn't long before the users on the Overwatch subreddit began to investigate how players could interact with these crows. Short on options, they soon resorted to shooting every crow they could find. It was then that they discovered these crows are much more resilient than you might think they would be and that they produce a distinguished squawk upon eating led (or arrow).
This discovery unleashed the proverbial hounds of hell. Within hours, Overwatch fans began attempting to kill every single crow in the mission in every order and method they could think of just in case one of the tactics yielded some new result. The investigation was spurred on by one player's implication that a particular crow murdering method would trigger some barely distinguishable audio message. Since nobody could corroborate this claim, the mystery's pursuers continued to argue amongst themselves while killing crows en masse.
In fact, so many digital crows were killed in order to solve this mystery, that Blizzard decided to break their infamous code of silence regarding in-game rumors and release the following statement to Polygon:
"This appears to be a false easter egg. The Overwatch team did not include any easter egg within Junkenstein’s Revenge involving the crows.”
Those poor, poor crows. At least now, Overwatch co-op players will have a reason to start focusing on the game's real enemies thus significantly reducing teammate frustration.