Readers added context they thought people might want to know:
Overwatch 2 was actually released in October of 2022 as a sequel and replacement to the 2016 game by Activision Blizzard.
I don’t really have a horse in this race, but I just looked over at steamcharts dot com and it shows Overwatch having gained 5.5K average player count since January. Peak players are in the 30-40K but the average count for the past 30 days is just around 25K.
Trending wise, it’s sideways. Daily peaks aren’t able to sustain over 40K. That level has been broken a couple of times before falling back down to around 35K, which was the peak for January.
This despite everything Blizzard is doing to entice more players.
I suspect we’ll see a surge higher during Season 10, but I doubt it’ll sustain once interest in the battle pass locked heroes wanes. And that will be telling.
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That’s because of new players coming in to try the game, it being F2P, then leave almost immediately after realizing that the game wasn’t for them, or they realized how toxic the community is in-game, well that and the horrid matchmaker on top of it all, placing these new players into matches they can’t win because of the smurfs, cheaters and so on.
Spikes are always higher when a new season comes out, and it won’t be any different for s10.
However, if they can’t retain players even after making changes to monetization, the battle pass changes and more for s10, i firmly believe that more people are gonna get laid off. Managers in particular as they’ve had multiple seasons and plenty of chances to get the game on its feet and turn a solid profit for the investors/shareholders, after the PVE scandal.
When they base their decisions on feedback from selfish content creators/streamers and pro players which is the minority of players, they literally fail at their tasks, as they ignore the majority which is their biggest source of income.
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You know that since January Activision-Blizzard is owned by Microsoft right? So your “experience” is pretty much irrelevant
I think it has to do with the merger. Didn’t the report record numbers of players for OW2?
I don’t know if this is supposed to be an insult, but you’re right. I don’t defend blizzard because there’s not many reasons to defend blizzard. Overwatch 2 plays nicely, and I like the art direction of the game (so that’s two big reasons to defend it), but over all I run into too many reasons to attack it. Mostly because of its leadership.
Yeah, I know. I was taking a jab at the people who say “Its a new game!” and then change teams to say “Its the same game!” depending on how they have to defend OW2.
we need to see “how” the battle pass changes. Blizzard marketing has had very specific monetization eras: Expansion packs & DLC (wow, Starcraft 2, Dialbo 3), Lootboxing (OW1, Herarthstone, HotS) and now currency monetization combined with Battle Passes and purchases limited time (hearthstone with gems, the entire Diablo franchise, OW2). And this will always attract different types of audiences as monetization changes in some way, depending on the eras of the gaming generation we live in.
However, I wouldn’t call it a “failure” just yet. however, it should be noted that without monetization on heroes and PVE they will have to manage the disorder within the gallery in a very different way, which mainly sells recolors as seasonal novelties and then hopes to boom business with collabs (sserafim, cowboy bebop). But how long can this type of flow last? It depends above all on what value the PV will now have as a “collectible item” compared to the purchasing power of standard items, something that OW2 unfortunately did worse.
Maybe if these loser premade / stacks didn’t scare off everyone. Bunch of no lifes.
Trying to convince people that enjoyed Overwatch 1 to return is a lost cause. I think they’re better off playing it safe by keeping this improvement going until announcing a new Overwatch project under Microsoft control. Try to bring in that new blood from Generation Alpha.
Player counts are doing OK, but still slowly declining. The problem is that people aren’t buying in on MTX as much as they would like. People were avoiding battle passes because they were predatory by locking heroes behind them. Skins are all meh because you can’t even see your own skin unless you emote or get bodied. Weapon skins are ???
I’m not really sure what they plan to do from a MTX standpoint. If they were smart, they’d start selling colour schemes and ability MTX and stop banning people automatically based on report volume.
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Despite the leaver penalties in QP and the S9 rework I’m now seeing way more backfill games than in the previous two seasons. This Venture test weekend has been even worse than the past month of S9.
More like that hyperaggressive monetization didnt work well, so now they will sustitute heroes on battlepass for weapons skins
From my past experience with Blizzard, they only start giving away stuff for free when things are doing really poorly.
Suddenly we’re getting premium currency in the battlepass and all heroes are now free?
Player count probably isn’t looking spectacular.
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I’m sure in your pursuit of accurate data, you’d probably be delighted to learn that the Venture trial brought the Steam player count up to a new peak (in recent times) of 46k.
If it’s a consistent 46K, that’s different, but also, the peak from Steamcharts is like 75k, which happened when the game first launched, and the very next month fell to an average of 33k.
People are excited to try something new. Then most of them leave disappointed. It’s why the numbers drop so precipitously RIGHT after launch.
It’s also not a new thing with the modern gaming industry though. People log-in to try something they see and then either they like it and stay or they dislike it and leave.
I’m more interested in the numbers for new player acquisition since there’s supposedly millions of OW accounts now, but since Blizz doesn’t release numbers, it’s never accurate.
It’s a consistent 30-40k. The 46k peak is the highest it’s been in months. Contrary to what the OP and numerous others have suggested in this thread, there is no consistent decline.
To be fair, the game is still making up for that massive drop off from the start though. They haven’t reacquired 40k players it lost. They’re close, but they’re still missing a few thousand.
And who’s to say that a chunk of those accounts also aren’t just alts? I know tons of people with alts, so it skews numbers.
I do also want to say that, despite how negative I can usually be about this game, I’m by no means saying it’s dying.
I’m saying they still have a very long road ahead of them to be where they want the game to be.
It never had those players in the first place. Most people were either logging on to inflate the count or just to leave a review lol. But that’s besides the point, I’m only disputing the idea that the player count is dropping. It’s not, it’s actually slowly growing. At least on Steam.
Uh, I mean unless there are a lot of people playing on their mains and their alts at the same time I don’t see how that could be possible.
You can’t really argue it never had that player count at first though. By that logic, there shouldn’t be 200k negative reviews if people just logged in to leave a review. Numbers would be much higher on Steamcharts if that were the case, and again, people logging in and not actually playing the game skews data. You’ve got to think about playtimes, if they did anything more than look at the shop, etc.
What’s to say it isn’t people moving over from Battle.net since steam is the superior client? I know at least 50 people from my server made that move since they hate Battle.net.
There’s a lot of “what ifs” with any data from Steamcharts since it doesn’t track how long people were even on for and if they even actually touched a gamemode. Could have been a misclick and it launched the game for all we know.
Fair point. I wasn’t thinking peak; I was thinking average.
Well no, because they wouldn’t have logged in all at the same time.
But it’s irrelevant to the point I’m making anyway. The Steam player count is not dropping.