Overwatch 2 reaches 25 million players, tripling Overwatch 1 daily peaks
Free goes a long way.
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Following a bumpy launch week that saw frequentserver troubleand bloated player queues, Blizzard has announced that over 25 million Overwatch 2 players have logged on in its first 10 days.
“Since launch, the game has been reaching nearly 3x the amount of players per day as the previous daily peak for the original Overwatch,” reads the announcement.
Normally a figure this big isn’t too surprising for the launch of a major free-to-play shooter, but the road to Overwatch 2 has been anything but normal. Despite being branded like a whole new game, Overwatch 2 is largely just an expansion of the original game. Blizzard spent years trying to explain what the ‘2’ in Overwatch 2 actually means, leading toconfusion and frustration.
The skepticism around the necessity of Overwatch 2 deepened in the weeks leading up to launch as Blizzard detailed changes that original Overwatch players were destined not to like, such as thelocking of new heroesbehind battle passes, the introduction of expensive cosmetic bundles, and the requirement for new accounts to unlock old heroesover the course of 100 matches.
All the bad news and the internet’s general distaste forActivisionhad many calling “dead game” before it even came out. Turns out, a lot of people are playing Overwatch 2, even blowing past the original game’s peaks. As we’ve seen with the relaunches of other formerly paid games likeRocket LeagueandFall Guys, free goes a long way.
I won’t speak for all 25 million of us, but my friends and I have had a blast with the core design changes that made us all nervous when we first heard about them—5v5 feels pretty darn good, and the same goes for the new maps, Push mode, and new heroes. Our reviewer Tyler Colp ismore criticalso far, calling Overwatch 2 a “messy sequel that tries to erase one of the best shooters in the last decade.”
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Morgan has been writing for PC Gamer since 2018, first as a freelancer and currently as a staff writer. He has also appeared on Polygon, Kotaku, Fanbyte, and PCGamesN. Before freelancing, he spent most of high school and all of college writing at small gaming sites that didn’t pay him. He’s very happy to have a real job now. Morgan is a beat writer following the latest and greatest shooters and the communities that play them. He also writes general news, reviews, features, the occasional guide, and bad jokes in Slack. Twist his arm, and he’ll even write about a boring strategy game. Please don’t, though.
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