

They had previously tried a stealth character with Genji, having had given him an ability to invisibly move behind enemies, stun them, and then kill their foes with another skill, but found this only useful to deal with opponents that were separated from their team members, making the stealth aspect not fun to play. Goodman noted that they found in gameplay testing that hacking-only skills were not "super great" and started to consider building the character around stealth, incorporating the hacking aspect as part of the character's abilities. She started off as a hero character with a hacking ability as to keep opponents debuffed, according to lead character designer Geoff Goodman. The concept of Sombra had been one of the original characters in Overwatch 's cast, but as they developed the game, they found her skill kit did not fit in with the other heroes they had at that time. 4.2 A Moment in Crime, LumériCo, and Volskaya Industries websites.

Though Blizzard considered the alternate reality game to have drawn interest in Sombra, they found the prolonged campaign taxed players' attention, and subsequently have limited new character promotions to only a few weeks ahead of their formal announcements. However, she had been designed and tested internally well before the game's launch, and Blizzard had established an alternate reality game that began within Overwatch 's open beta in 2016 that teased her character. Sombra was the second new character to be added to Overwatch after launch, and was introduced formally during the November 2016 BlizzCon event. In game, Sombra has stealth-based abilities to move around the battlefield, and is able to hack any opposing character to briefly prevent them from using their special abilities.

In the game's narrative, she is an exceptional black bag operation hacker from Mexico that had joined Talon, a criminal organization aligned against Overwatch. Sombra is a fictional character in the Overwatch universe, a 2016 video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment.
