Overwatch's popular Uprising event shut down earlier than scheduled today, but Blizzard has since brought the co-op Brawl and its exclusive Loot Boxes back for another 24 hours. While Uprising was officially scheduled to end on May 1, apparently Blizzard had no intent to end the event so suddenly and so early in the day. To make amends, Blizzard has since released an apology, extended the event, and provided a firm final deadline.

The Uprising event, which includes the co-op Uprising Brawl, the accompanying all-hero Arcade mode, and the exclusive Uprising Loot Boxes filled with unique skins, will go offline at 5:00pm PT May 2. Here's the text of Blizzard's letter,  posted on the official Overwatch forums:

"Earlier this evening, our Overwatch Uprising event ended earlier than intended. This was a mistake, and we've already re-enabled Uprising Loot Boxes as well as the ability to unlock Overwatch Uprising-themed cosmetics with credits on all platforms.

We're also currently working to re-enable the King's Row Uprising brawl. Unfortunately, the process of re-enabling the brawl will take a few hours to complete as well as a small update. If you are online at the time that the update is deployed, you will need to log out and log back in before you play the King's Row Uprising brawl again.

Apologies for the inconvenience, and thanks so much for your patience! Overwatch Uprising will formally conclude in all regions on all platforms on May 2 at 5pm PDT."

Take note that the Uprising Brawl is confirmed to have been made live in the hours since Blizzard originally posted this message. It's also noteworthy that Blizzard had previously scheduled server maintenance for May 2, so the servers will be going down between 7:00am and 9:00am with a possibility of being extended. Hopefully Overwatch Uprising fans can rearrange their schedules to get in one last Loot Box spree or a final Uprising Legendary run.

Blizzard's early closure of the Uprising event mirrored several of Overwatch's early event endings, which may explain why so much of the Overwatch community just assumed this was the proper event end. Both the Summer Games and the Halloween Terror event from 2016 ended suddenly and without warning, leaving many players with a stash of unspent coins and much-wanted skins left unpurchased. Winter Wonderland and the Year of the Rooster were less punishing, but considering Blizzard's remained mum on the issue so far no expectations have been set.

Perhaps this is a sign from Blizzard that the studio will do better in the future. If the devs can give a specific end time for the King's Row Uprising event, then shouldn't they be able to do similar with future events? Though at this point, whether Blizzard intends to provide firm schedules for events in the future or not, players will now expect it. Perhaps if they expected it earlier, tumultuous event endings like today would become the exception rather than the norm.

Overwatch is available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One,  and PC. The King's Row Uprising event will officially end on May 2 at 5:00pm PT.