People should be allowed to have fun when they play games. Especially pros, they probably get so bored playing at the highest level since it’s all they do every single day for hours on end. They can play what they want in their off time.
Minor oberservation, but Apex viewership is rivaling OWL (and regular Overwatch) all time highs, and that’s not even including the upcoming tournaments.
Well I mean its not like them streaming OW would be good for OWL…
LOL pretty bad advertising if u actually make money from people watching owl.
I guess these guys on this forum begging us to watch owl so these tweens can make a living isnt even shared by the players themselves.
But it makes sense, I’m super sick of OW too, why wouldnt these guys be?
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What’s the problem? Do you feel offended ?
You’re damn right I am, this is going right on my blog!
This is true for all games so take note:
Twitch viewers does not equal active players.
Halloween night my gaming buddies and I were playing P.T. (actual dead game) but did not stream. Meaning the twitch players playing PT was short five players and if we had two viewers each that comes up to a extra ten viewers for P.T.
People useing Twitch views to see how a game is performing are silly. Not everyone streams and people are allowed to try different games.
people can try new games you know, not everyone wants to play the same old thing
How topical.
This is like freaking out that you saw an NFL pro playing a pick up game of basketball with some friends a few days before the NFL playoffs.
OW is their job. Gaming is their hobby. Just because they’re not playing OW right up until the moment of OWL just to play more OW doesn’t mean OW is dying or that they’ve given up on OW or whatever else it is you’re trying to infer from such a post.
Also, Battle Royal games are the current ‘big trend’ just like it was MOBAs before that. It happens. Eventually no one will care about BR games and you’ll have one or two big ones left (like LoL and DOTA for MOBAs) and people will move on to the next big genre craze. It’s just how things work.
Finally, Twitch views doesn’t always equate to the health of a game. Warframe rarely breaks 1k viewers unless they’re pumping a loot event, yet it’s consistently hovering around #5 or #6 most played game on Steam.
XQC streaming at primetime and getting more viewers on playing Minecraft than the whole OW section… 
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It may not equal active players, but it does mean exposure and accessibility. Even though Apex Legends has 25 million players within the first week, which is monumental.
When it comes to the big name releases today, the Twitch viewership means a massive amount of exposure to a product. With big name releases like, for example, DOOM and Red Dead Redemption 2, the trend is that the you’ll see about 50k-80k viewing a new release and having their opinions voiced on whether this should be a must-buy game or a dud, hence why Fallout 76 tapered off so fast.
Ongoing games like Dota, League of Legends, Fortnite, Overwatch, Hearthstone and CSGO are held by different metrics entirely, although these metrics that they adhere to are critical. Basically, for a newer game to keep being successful, it needs to abide by these requirements:
- A constantly in-touch developer that listens to the feedback of the playerbase and fixes problems in the game the players point out
- A satisfying experience that players will want to come back to, and maybe make a few purchases here and there.
- A healthy relationship between players and developers.
Overwatch has fallen from grace, hard, because they make ranking up in Competitive a nightmare when your rank depends on if five other players want to win as much as you do. Further behaviors that have cemented the fall from grace is Overwatch’s insistence on running on Blizzard time to fix beyond broken characters like Brigitte, the developer’s absolute distrust that the community can police themselves (a huge reason why CounterStrike has remained a staple in eSports for two decades), snobbish elitism that is actively encouraged to look down on players of lower rank (when some of these personalities were more than likely carried hard) and more of a commitment to their eSports franchise than fixing the current woes the game has.
For a competitive eSports theme to thrive and flourish, it needs to be organic and something the game wants, not something that is forced into the game. Overwatch was made with the intent of bringing in those with a competitive mindset, but has lately slacked off significantly since the powers that be are more interested in churning out cosmetics rather than improving the woes of the game and the various bugs that may plague the game. This lazy mindset has turned away former streamers like TimtheTatMan, MOONMOON, Summit1G, XQC, and Seagull. Youtubers Rag Tagg, Cliff Terios, and Unit Lost have also voice their displeasure about the current state of the game. Those viewers will be influenced by their favorite streamers/personalities, and leave the game in droves, further hurting the game.
Finally, the community’s absolute, stark refusal to accept the reality that throwers and smurf accounts are making the game a chore to play, with such insanity as YOU BELONG AT YOUR RANK being thrown out the window if, say, a Diamond level Widow is fragging Bronze players left and right. You need to accept the truth that your insistence to prove you can beat up players lower in skill than you makes the game look worse in comparison, not better.
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Maybe it is because the OWL players would like to play another game? It’s not like they’ve played thousands of hours of Overwatch.
Apex is also new, so lots of people want to watch it. Overwatch is almost 3 years old now.
What is people’s points with these posts? Are you like…trying to justify yourself not playing the game? Trying to get the people who still enjoy this game to not enjoy this game?
Apex is new. Overwatch is not. Viewership spikes for every new game.
You make alot of fair points. But you can not say the success of a game is cemented based on a number of people watching at a certain time. I do understand exposure for example Lawbreakers(the Overwatch killer of it’s time) had some decent exposure leading up to release alot of people were watching it on Twitch, YouTube, everywhere…
We may not like what Acti/Blizz is doing but the Overwatch team are doing their best. The let us know early this year nothing new is coming in the events because they are more focused on balance this year.
it’s true, even without apex several owl players refused to play optimal comp (goats) because that’s all they play in scrims. Dafran kept saying that he’s not gonna play any of the heroes in goats except zarya and will play other heroes. And he had fun. Apex capitalized on the boring, no skill heroes ruining this game and now OW will truly see what happens when you cater to casuals and moba players instead of what kept OW on its legs, FPS players. SHOOTER heroes.
Twitch record is 639k live viewers by Fortnite…apex hit 630k in one week…but it’s all hype guys 
Not surprising in the least.
OW to the OWL pros is their job. They may still have interest in it, but when your passion becomes your occupation, you’re sure to lose some of that fire.
Most pros probably won’t play OW during their “leisure time”, outside of matches and practice, and AL is the hot new thing right now, so they flock to it.
Perfectly normal.
Comparing the games does make sense… They’re competitors at the end of the day. Also, why is it that around three or so streamers have to be the complete basis of Overwatch’s viewership? That’s an issue.
Also, you don’t know if it will ‘die down’ considering it’s picked up more momentum than any other recently released game to date. For all you know it could be at the top of the mountain for a very long time, especially with Anthem just around the corner there’s no telling how badly Overwatch’s state could be deflated.
Why is everyone saying that Apex Legends is what is going to kill Overwatch, the games have very few similarities. It is as threatening as any other new f2p can be.