Blizzard’s newly rebranded Overwatch appears to be on the upswing, as it sees a dramatic increase in players across Steam and Twitch.
The transition from Overwatch to Overwatch 2 in 2022 might be one of the biggest fumbles in gaming history, but the sequel’s perception has turned around over the years since.
Blizzard launched Overwatch 2 as a replacement to the beloved original, with a new free-to-play model and big changes to its hero roster. Naturally, that didn’t go down well, with fans miffed that you could no longer play the original game.
Overwatch 2 has gone through many changes to claw back goodwill, including making heroes free to play, bringing back loot boxes, and adding a new Stadium mode. Overwatch 2 did get better over time, but it never enjoyed the zeitgeist popularity that the original achieved in 2016.
Earlier this month, ahead of Overwatch’s 10th anniversary in May, Blizzard announced it was dropping the ‘2’ from the name. It’s still the same game underneath but there’s also been a soft reboot, tied to the first season of the new ‘Reign Of Talon’ expansion, that introduces five new heroes and a promise that there’ll never be an Overwatch 3.
The cleaner name and expansion, which launched on February 10, appears to have paid off. According to SteamDB, Overwatch reached a new all-time concurrent player peak of 165,651 yesterday, which is over twice the amount Overwatch 2 achieved on Steam when it left early access in August 2023.
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During this 24-hour peak, Overwatch briefly became the seventh most-played on Steam, ahead of Apex Legends, Marvel Rivals, and er… Bongo Cat. This number has since dropped to just over 76,000 concurrent players, at time of writing, but it’s now just outside the top 10, at number 13.
The numbers are arguably more impressive on Twitch. At the time of writing, Overwatch has over 111,000 viewers on the streaming platform, which is higher than Counter-Strike (50.2K viewers) and only just behind League Of Legends (119K viewers).
It’s important to note that Overwatch is available on many other platforms beyond Steam, including PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and Battle.net, so if this trend is replicated on those as well, it could be a pretty drastic influx.
The big question is whether Blizzard can maintain this renewed interest, but a Switch 2 version is set to launch later this year, and there’s plans for three more seasons across the rest of 2026, all with new heroes and maps.
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