Por ejemplo, this article at Kotaku:
Overwatch’s PTR just got a bunch of new custom game options, and people are using them in responsible, measured ways to— just kidding. They’re turning the game into a dang Bugs Bunny cartoon.
The new custom game options allow players to boost movement speed, remove cooldowns, change team sizes, ban heroes, and alter all sorts of other values. That’s already resulted in a handful of cool ideas. Also, a whole lot of chaos.
And, boy oh boy, are they ever not kidding. Predator mode, Zombie mode, a Pro Genji Simulator, Juggernaut mode, various Counter-Strike themed maps, Lucio Racing, and on, and on, and on.
All this, and the new custom options have only been live on the PTR for a couple days. I imagine things will only spiral further out of control once the server browser hits live servers.This should be a lesson to every game developer out there. The larger population of gamers includes a large number of creative, and often technically-savvy, people, who apparently cannot wait to add content, and thus value, to your game. Give them the option to create custom games, or maps, or mods, and the free content will flow; give them an easy way to showcase their creations for other players, and you can extend the lifespan of your game by years, all at zero cost to you. Even the mod tools don't cost anything, since they're probably the same ones you used to make the game's official content in the first place.
The other option, of course, is to lock down your game, insisting on rigid control over every aspect of the experience, and nerfing the shit out of any creative fun way the players find to play your game that isn't the core experience you'd intended. Basically, the approach taken by Diablo III, whose players spent years begging for the ability to mod the game... before losing interest and leaving because Blizzard refused to even discuss the possibility.
The kicker here? Overwatch and Diablo III are both Blizzard games. As is StarCraft II, a game with best-in-class modding capabilities and an Arcade showcase that makes finding them super-simple. SC2's Arcade is available with free editions of the game, too, meaning that you can play all the SC2 mods you want without spending a cent... including basically-complete versions of Diablo and Diablo II. Yes, you read that right... you can play fan-crafted HD "remakes" of D1 and D2 in the SC2 Arcade, but not as D3 mods.
D3, of course, is basically moribund, with Blizzard planning only one new class (as paid DLC) and no other new content that we know of, and players openly wondering whether Blizzard is getting ready to abandon the game entirely, while Overwatch is inspiring a flood of creative player-created content, even before the custom game functionality goes live. The two situations, both in games from the same publisher, couldn't be more different; it's actually hard to believe that both games were made by the same company. I don't think it's a coincidence that the vibrant, thriving game is the one whose dev team appreciates and encourages the creativity of its players, while the team that's taken the opposite approach from the very beginning is the one that's struggling to sustain player engagement.
Learn the lesson, devs. Unleash the creativity of your players; give them toys to play with, and an unstructured place to play, and you can reap the rewards of other people's creativity and passion for years. The alternative is for you to maintain the flow of content by yourselves... which, while certainly possible, it a lot harder and more expensive to do.