Concurrent player numbers, over Sombra's virus update

General Discussion
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Date Concurrent average players (Steam)
September 2024 35,406.00
August 2024 34,632.40
July 2024 29,393.60
June 2024 28,194.70
May 2024 28,625.90
April 2024 29,712.80
March 2024 26,580.30
February 2024 24,677.10
January 2024 20,152.50
December 2023 20,742.70
November 2023 20,736.40
October 2023 19,301.40

data here: https://steamcharts.com/app/2357570#All

Now this is a hell of an increase in player numbers.
So what happened for this period of increase? Well Oct 2023 was when Sombra got Virus.

So, I think we can bury the “Sombra was driving away players” comments once and for all, since obviously, getting a 1.7x increase in concurrent average player numbers is not, you know, them being driven away.

This is, one of the MOST extreme increase period of average players overwatch has ever seen.

And before people who can’t read go off…

  1. this is NOT alts driving it, since it is concurrent players.
  2. This is Steam reporting, not Blizzard.

I just thought it was interesting. One of the period where people complained about the game the most, was ALSO when it saw a massive increase in player numbers (on windows)

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To this day, i dont really take the general trend of the steam numbers as representative of the actual player growth bc of alot of factors

  1. If you are a pre-existing player on Bnet, making the transition to make it work on Steam takes alot more effort than just booting up Bnet, so there is a huge amount of Bnet players who just havent bothered to open up steam
  2. There could be a bigger drop in Bnet players than Steam player growth, as usual Blizz is not transparent with their playercounts, just saying vague things like “100 million accounts created”
  3. Growth on Steam can be attributed by collabs, such as the MHA, Transformers and Le Sserafilm, but we dont know if the player retention is that great for these brand new players bc the game is noob friendly
  4. Most people have already heard of Overwatch before, so its more than likely they will just download it off the Overwatch page going through Bnet before clicking on steam

I appreciate your post, but to this day i roll my eyes when people say “steam number big=player count growing”

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But you can’t check it

But you can’t check it

So this is why player numbers was growing gradually month by month…?

What exactly this should tell/show us?

You’re welcome to provide your own numbers I guess…

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Okay, give Sombra two charges of virus so we can double our player count.

:muscle::face_with_monocle:

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did you read what i said or did you just post this for the sake of posting? I say this because we dont know the true player count, it could very well be growing and im wrong, but my point was going off purely by steam numbers as the holy grail that player count was definitely growing was my gripe with this argument

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And I’m generally ok with that, but, while I didn’t put it in, the number in steamcharts were pretty flat before this. There was this WEIRD lump sure before it.

you have a long flat period, and then a sudden sustained increase. That is what I found interesting.

Maybe it would have been clearer if I have the long lead in where the numbers were flat first.

But I get it, some of it will be people moving from Bnet to steam. Totally a thing. But this is particular period is really unusual for the numbers there.

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Now compare that player growth to the release schedule of Kiriko skins.

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I’m basically just putting to bed the idea that overwatch was dying because of Sombra.

Obviously it is not the case.

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Let’s compare the overwatch population to the inflation rate of the Venezuelan economy

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So, Sombra getting virus effected the inflation rate of the Venezuelan economy!

Those Blizzard devs are obviously monsters!!!

How could they do that to Venezuela?

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Here ya go:

  • https://i.imgur.com/5WvpleV.png
  • https://i.imgur.com/BLFqIFK.png
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I did, did you tho?

You’re always welcome to provide your own numbers based on official sources. Until then all talks about how numbers can be ‘wrong’ are irrelevant because we can’t work with something that we can’t count or even see
Things can always change, yeah, what a surprise. But what do we have right now aside from your assumptions?

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Give them a break, they are actually right in that pointing out things which can bias the results, is actually a good thing.

And they are not, you know… wrong with what they are saying.

I’m not ever going to be upset if someone wants to ask, or provide extra context around data I post.

It’s ok. There is nothing to defend here.

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They’re wrong with their conclusions. As long as we can’t get more sufficient data Steam numbers can be used as the most actual and most relevant intel until some other source will be able to reliably supplement or disproof those results
“But it’s only just Steam numbers!”
Yeah. We know that. You know that. I know that. They know that. Everybody knows that if they’ve read the initial post. What is here to contribute?

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Well, when I was posting this, I DID have the “some people will be moving from battlenet to steam over this period” in the back of my mind. I was happy someone refered to it.

But I also think the signal over this period was so high, we could pretty safely put to bed the “sombra was driving out the players” thing which the forums were so quick to say.

I thought it was interesting, but I’m always up for a someone pointing out biases in stats.

I think their comment was worth while, and I also think they did understand that there wasn’t exactly better data out there.

So, you know, even though I was the poster, I wasn’t unhappy to see their comment.

Do think we can put the “Sombra was unhealthy” to bed though. Or at least start a conversation of why when Sombra was strong, we had such a large increase in players.

I KINDA expect the disruption to snipers / ball was part of it.

The REAL test however, is seeing how the data goes from here. If steam numbers then drop over the next 6 months, we would have pretty strong evidence that Strong virus Sombra was actually pretty positive for the game.

I mean, I could be wrong, and the player numbers could skyrocket from here, and I’ll accept that data too.

But this is more a “scene setting” post, for later conversations I guess.

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It also means Sombra mains will have to suffer from dulling their character down to SoldierCree substitute for 6 month just to proof that ignorant whiners were just ignorant whiners all along ._.

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I mean, that is what it means to be a Sombra player. It’s not like we have not been here before…

Again, and again, and again.

I do kinda expect Blizzard to buff her back up soon.

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That’d be a distaster because it won’t fix her dull and clumsy gameplay and will only cement it as it is. Current Sombra is just a slab of designer incompetence. It’s not just she’s ‘weak’, she’s disfunctional and uncomfortable to play

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Yeah, I mean, the buffs may be to things like translocation cooldown, and move speed, and I don’t know how she would feel once she has that?

Likely still clunky, but you know? We will see. Regardless, in 6-12 months she will be reworked again, as is customary for Sombra.

I kinda take the long view on these things.

Does it suck now? yeah, of course it does. But will it suck long term? who knows.

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This won’t really fix it either. When I’m calling current Sombra ‘clumsy’, I mean it. It’s not for exagerration purposes
I’ll just quote myself from another thread

Add to this:
Sombra can’t contest in stealth
Sombra always goes stealth after TP, and sometimes when you only need TP you have to wait for TWO animations to play before you can shoot or just contest the objective

This crap can’t be fixed with mere ‘buffs’. It’s basically a new concept of a character trying to work by the rules that were made for the old character. This has to be recalculated and actually reworked, like, for reals reworked.

P.S. And there are still more little nuances and inconveniences that will come up as soon as you’ll start the game as Sombra