Featured Image Credit: Blizzard Entertainment
Topics: Overwatch 2, Steam, Blizzard Entertainment, Overwatch, PC
Topics: Overwatch 2, Steam, Blizzard Entertainment, Overwatch, PC
Overwatch 2 has just hit its highest player count since launch on Steam, beating the likes of Call of Duty and Battlefield 6.
Overwatch 2 came to Steam in 2023, and has had a bit of a troubled history on the platform due to various controversies.
It launched to negative reviews on the platform, and to this day still retains only around 35% positive reviews. Many of these reviews pertain to the game’s rather aggressive monetisation, controversial balance changes, and behind-the-scenes scandals at Blizzard Entertainment.
Despite Overwatch 2 having had a rather rough few years, Blizzard is doing a sort-of rebrand for the game.
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The title is being changed from Overwatch 2 back to simply Overwatch, and has re-launched its seasonal pipeline with the upcoming Season 1 update.
The sentiment, so far at least, seems to be pretty positive in relation to the updates Blizzard has planned for the game. I’m sure the new Jetpack Cat support hero probably helps too, as it worked for me.
As spotted by Dexerto, Overwatch 2’s overnight player count soared to an impressive 69,881 players on Steam, placing it in the top 20 games played on the platform.
This also put it ahead of games like Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty, which have seen a steady number of players dropping the game in recent months due to general community unhappiness at the state of those games.
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However, Overwatch 2 is still trailing behind other big shooter games that are popular on Steam at the moment.
Marvel Rivals has a 24-hour daily peak of 131,346 concurrent players, while Apex Legends has 163,130. Both of these titles have been pretty steady since they launched.
Moving further up the list, we also have ARC Raiders’ impressive 325,296 concurrent players, and Counter-Strike 2’s 1,626,627 player count.
Altogether, Overwatch 2 feels too big to fail at this point, and while its upcoming rebrand seems to be working in its favour, its player count may not reach the heights it may have once had during the game’s prime.
Do bear in mind that this is just Steam data though, and doesn’t account for Overwatch 2 players on Battle.net and consoles, which have been going strong since the game originally launched in 2016.