Overwatch is seeing a resurgence of players, with spikes seen on platforms like Steam ahead of the game’s first expansion-like release, “The Reign of Talon”.
According to SteamDB, the game saw a player-count comeback on 8 February, with 69,881 concurrent players logging into the game. In comparison, Overwatch’s all-time concurrent player counts sit at 75,608, a number achieved when it launched on the platform in August 2023, making the recent figures some of the highest the game has ever received on Steam since launch.
While these figures aren’t particularly groundbreaking – Overwatch currently sits at the 18th spot on Steam’s Most Played list at the time of writing – it should be noted that Steam isn’t the only platform where the game is available. Battle.net serves as the title’s primary storefront, meaning the true PC Overwatch player count is bound to be much higher.
The spike in players no doubt stems from the game’s recent rebrand, dropping the number 2 from its name and introducing a massive expansion-like release titled “The Reign of Talon”, which not only introduces five new heroes at once, Domina (tank), Emre (damage), Mizuki (support), Anran (damage) and Jetpack Cat (support), but also another five throughout the year.
To say Overwatch has had a tough time of it would be an understatement, as when the game launched as Overwatch 2 in 2023, it led to a host of controversies, such as overriding the original Overwatch game, which many felt was superior, alongside its free-to-play model supported by a dreaded Battle Pass system, and notable, the change of team sizes from six to five.
Over the years, the game has been tweaked to improve player perception, such as reintroducing 6v6 battles and ironing out issues with monetisation. With a whole bunch of players returning to the once-popular title in anticipation of its new expansion, which launches sometime today, let’s see if Overwatch can keep this momentum going, or if this is just a passing hype.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
Si Jia
