This is speculation because we don’t have blizzard server numbers as well, but based upon steam numbers the game went from 75 608k to 34 707k in 3 months. How many players are being bled from the Battle net servers? Most people that have other games can just add overwatch to the steam library and launch it from there. It’s kinda sad really, compared to what it used to be. You can look it up on steam db or any other steam player count site.
2 Likes
What do you mean by 75608k players to 34707k players? Are they active players per month? Downloads per month? Could you give a little more information?
That bump and decline is pretty normal for a hero release. People that don’t normally play, play to try it out, then leave once they get bored.
Oh nvm. But still, its been hovering over 30-40 k for a while. I would wager to say that its pretty stable.
1 Like
It’s on steamdb.info if you want full graphics but the active player count went from 75k to 38k in three months.
They will have to find a way to make cross-play balanced to ensure longevity. F2P model already helped out a bit but there needs to be incentives for the freeloaders to stick around. The only other way to stay alive is mod support or expensive but incredible marketing.
Bro i want this game to die because of what they turned Overwatch into but lets be real here if games like Paladins can survive on less than 10k averaging 5k this game isn’t going anywhere. They can use collabs to get the simps to spend all the money and log in lol we seen that already, new mercy mythic brings em all scurrying back like rat.
4 Likes
There’s no established correlation between Steam player counts and player counts on battle.net or console.
1 Like
My fav game namely Party Animals had 100k at launch and stabilized at an average of 5k-10k CCUs now but I still constantly get matched pretty instantly. I guess that game is dying too?
Btw Party Animals doesn’t have a PS5 version but this “dying game” has one.
1 Like
I agree, however this is all the info we have. And we don’t even know how many of these are bots, smurfs or just extra accounts. It’s even taken a dip even with mauga coming out and twitch views are dying off as well. There are basically four top streamers and their viewer count keeps getting lower.
Considered there’re people come to this forum to complaint like every minute, I think it far from being dead.
The sight of a game being dead is when no one care anymore.
2 Likes
It says nothing tbh.
1 Like
A player base is cool, phantasy star 2 and Gundam Battle Operation also have “workable” player counts. It’s dying because this is a Big IP for ACT/BLIZZ + MICROSOFT, there’s a number of cash they want to make for operating this product. But as the game industry has seen if the game doesn’t cater to that player base they aren’t going to make money. OW has a unique history as being a 60 buck game converting to f2p. So the player base and how it was conditioned is very different. The game changing so much while not holding onto players causes too much friction and could actually kill the game.
Launch numbers for any game are best taken with a grain of salt.
Especially in OW2’s case where the average review time was well under 1 hour, in a lot of cases less than 15 minutes.
The next month’s stabilized population counts of 17k are a better starting point as anyone who was sticking around would be represented here, and from that point population counts are steadily rising.
Another place to check on official numbers is Xbox’s “Most Played Games” chart which skyrocketed OW1’s 26th position to number 3 at OW2’s launch, but dipped to 14th over the course of a few months. On average, it’s stabilized at around 11th-13th which mirrored OW1’s late 2017-late 2018 period when checked with the WayBackMachine.
So no it’s not dying quicker than we thought, because it’s not dying period. And the data backs this up.
1 Like
this game has died weekly since late 2016 according to this forum
On Steamcharts it shows that it’s been slightly trending up other than the spike at launch. -10000 average in september following the spike in August, then +1400 in both October and November.
Most people that have other games can just add overwatch to the steam library and launch it from there
… and? Most people don’t, they’re just used to using Bnet because that’s where it’s already installed. I use steam but I still haven’t bothered because there’s no reason. Maybe one day when I have to reset my hard drive and don’t feel like reinstalling Bnet, but until then why bother.
If you’re looking for a (potentially anecdotal) reason, I got a noticeable bump in performance just by using Steam as a launcher.
I had both launchers installed at the time and saw roughly a 60fps increase by just using Steam. I can’t say for certain if it was map related or whatnot, but getting ~300fps instead of the usual ~240fps I was used to solidified my switch.
It’s not dying. I know you wish it was to satisfy your own agenda, but here’s the inside scoop honeybear-OW2 is here to stay and it’s stable. And holy crap the new Reaper skin in the BP is sexy as hell.
So yeah. I know you really want this game to die even though millions upon millions of players enjoy this game, but newsflash-it ain’t gonna happen. Jog on kid.
1 Like
Going by steam numbers was your first mistake
Game isn’t dying
2 Likes
If 75k people isn’t enough to judge a trend, there would be no medicine approved anywhere. It’s a huge sample group, and it shows a decline. Dead? No. But dying.
Not at all. All it takes is analyzing what you’re looking at. What you’re looking at is a playerbase on steam that went from 0 players to now 30,000+ consistently. That’s not a dying game, that’s an increase of players that wasn’t there before.
1 Like
That being said, does it show an increase or migration? Because both could be true.
You can also use Xbox “Most Played Games” chart as a reference point as well to show a stabilized (and possibly slowly increasing) population.