Overwatch to celebrate Chinese New Year with Year of the Rooster event

Blizzard has announced that the next themed event for hit online shooter Overwatch will celebrate the coming Chinese New Year from 24 January, with new skins and items marking the start of the Year of the Rooster.

The announcement was made in tweets from regional Twitter accounts for the FPS. The game's primary Western account posted a video announcement showing off a new skin for Defence character Mei.

The announcement video was accompanied with the message: "Good luck and great fortune await!" but few other details were officially announced.

Overwatch's South Korean account posted a similar video, but one showing off a new skin for D. Va, a character from Korea.

A Blizzard spokesperson told Polygon that the event would be "similar in scope" to previous themed events, which have celebrated the Olympic Games, Halloween and the festive season. These events included new skins, emotes, voice lines and other items.

Past events have also been accompanied by new game modes, including Mei's Snowball Offensive, which was introduced for the Winter Wonderland event. That event ran from 13 December to 3 January.

The Summer Games event in August introduced Lucioball, a Rocket League-style ball game focusing on support character Lucio. In October, the Halloween Terror event introduced Junkenstein's Revenge, a wave-based horde mode in which players are limited to playing as one of four characters: McCree, Soldier: 76, Hanzo and Ana.

The Chinese New Year falls on Saturday 28 January.

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