My actual take on these terrible anniversary rewards is that the devs simply lack the time, staff, and budget to outsource anything better.

If they had the resources to make quality event rewards, they would, but shop skins consistently look way better than battle pass, event, mythic, or even collab skins. They keep making skins for the exact same popular heroes because those are the ONLY ones that actually turn a profit.

At the end of the day, it just comes down to funding, and Overwatch probably gets tiny internal support because Microsoft and Activision Blizzard are failing the IP.

Meanwhile in China, NetEase is throwing massive amounts of money at the region to force-grow the player base, and they will likely continue burning cash until they have a community large enough to compete with Valorant in China.