Overwatch is dropping the “2” from its title and rebooting for a brand new period of story-driven gameplay, and already the refresh appears to be drawing gamers again. Overwatch hit a peak of virtually 70,000 concurrent gamers on Steam over the weekend, the very best the sequel has seen since its all time peak on launch day.
In line with Steam charts, Overwatch (which nonetheless retains the two on Steam in the intervening time) hit a peak of 69,881 concurrent gamers over the weekend–shockingly near its launch day excessive of 75,608, and better than it has been within the two and a half years since. The height in gamers even noticed Overwatch creep previous Name of Responsibility and Battlefield 6–though neither of them are notably dominant on Steam.
Overwatch has not had a fantastic historical past with Steam, the place its lifetime opinions are solely round 27% constructive, and concurrent gamers rapidly dropped off after peaking on launch day. It is a shock to many to see participant numbers selecting up on the platform, when the sport’s first rebooted season hasn’t even launched yet–though a limited-time trial for brand spanking new hero Anran is presently energetic.
It is but to be seen whether or not participant numbers on Steam will proceed to rise when the brand new content material is added, although it is value noting that Steam is barely a small a part of Overwatch’s participant depend on PC, with long-term gamers extra prone to entry the sport by the Battle.web launcher. Overwatch’s Steam opinions nonetheless paint a bleak image for the sport, with current opinions hitting a “combined” score of simply over 50% constructive, which continues to be a step up from its all-time “principally damaging” score.
Season 1 of the soft-rebooted Overwatch known as The Reign of Talon, which can drop on February 10. Alongside a brand new narrative-driven format, the brand new season will add 5 new playable heroes at once–a transfer Overwatch’s sport director has admitted will throw off the steadiness for some time.