I think that we can safely narrow down the impetus for this whinging in Seasons 1 through 13.
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Are you looking at the same chart? The boost is still in effect.
Your objection basically amounts to āthe growth didnāt continueā, which doesnāt change the fact that the continuous players are much higher than they were before.
If the game required such a major change yes, Iād expect the growth to continue. It didnāt and only started growing again months later when the next major patch hit.
Lets be honest as well, the number itself was barely a change at all. Weāre talking an extra 6k players for a globally available game.
It wasnāt until the next major patch that there was another increase. All it shows is that major patches that shake up the game with lots of hype, streamer drops etc attract new players and not much else.
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Iād be careful saying that yet. I know we donāt have a metric ton of values except on Steam, but hereās the catch.
In recent years of Blizzard/Activision MAUs quarterly reports, practically every of them showcases a similar pattern :
Q4 > Q3 > Q1 (> = <) Q2
If you look at Steam numbers you provided and regard Q1 as March, Q2 as June, Q3 as September and Q4 as December.
In 2024 : (Q4 logically) > Q3 > Q2 > Q1
In 2023 : Q4 > Q3 + (missing data for Q2/Q1)
Blizzard usually excells during Q4 break and flops during Q2 summer break. Itās been like that in recent years from their reports and seems to be about the same on Steam. Someone could tally up averages instead of the monthly numbers (didnāt use my head, but u get the idea).
No increase in player count with no decrease either. The usual graph is "season start 
" to "season ends 
". Imagine pretty much every single launch of any advertised/hyped game, update, DLC, season, whatever. It always goes up and then down as time goes on.
That didnāt happen, hence āsustained increaseā. The sustained part is whatās most important. People stayed. And it went up even further in S10 with the expected decrease over time, but it didnāt go below the S9 increase.
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Then youāre being as unrealistic as corporate investors when they think growth is infinite.
The cold fact is that OW2 got a spike in concurrent players in Feb 2024 which has been steady ever since.
The actual numbers are currently anywhere from 8k to 10k, which is 150% increase in players from what it was before February.
Youāre including the following patch in that. It was a 6k increase.
Regardless 8-10k players really isnāt that much or particularly noteworthy for a free to play game. Iām not going to sit here and act like those numbers show a revitalised game or are remotely impressive.
A small increase on Steam. Using percentages to make it appear more impressive doesnāt change that weāre talking an increase of 6k players for a free Blizzard game. Who even cares 
How many Battle.net users did they lose? Youāre missing the vast majority of accounts who, as older players, were less likely to like such a change.
Who knows? Iām only talking about Steam players and assuming that the proportion of Steam to bnet users didnāt change enough to offset this relatively massive increase in Steam players.
Maybe it changed, idk, but every metric I have available roughly agrees with the Steam data (Twitch viewer numbers over the long term for example, though I didnāt check recently).
We clearly disagree on what qualifies as massive for a game like Overwatch. They brag about 100m accounts yet weāre here discussing an increase of 6k like itās anything noteworthy.
Oh, and another thing: I only replied to your post which was referencing Steam data. Soā¦ yeah. Just pointing out the numbers, yk?
Regarding āmassiveā: the whole concept was ārelatively massiveā. A sustained long-term increase of ~40% is massive in my book. Bringing up ā6kā, an absolute value, is beside the point.
No, Iām talking about the increase that has happened up to July. After that, a second spike occurred, but which has increased up to the present day, but I didnāt include thatā¦ Regardless, the S9 patch was the catalyst which started the entire trend.
Feel free to be as āunimpressedā as you want. Itās still an increase compared to what it was. You donāt get to dismiss it just because it doesnāt fit whatever arbitrary criteria you want. Itās still a 150% increase triggered by Season 9. You donāt get to downplay it just because itās not good enough.
Can we talk about how Overwatch 2 ruined everything?
this game is a grind fest and now I only play once a week at most 3 matches. I just wanna see whats new and when they came out with classic ow, its felt x10 better than what they have now. Lets cheer into the future for them to bring back the best design they had before this new OW2