No matter how you cut it, Overwatch 2 It was an overwhelming success. Yes, the launch sucks. Yes, no matter where you look, people are complaining about battle pass or monetization. Yes, there are even calls for loot boxes to be returned. But – despite this, and sentiment across all gaming social media platforms is negative – the game has managed to attract 35 million people since its release.
Official data from Blizzard’s investor conference call confirms that Overwatch 2 is even more popular than the original, with the oft-villain sequel attracting more players in its first 30 days of release compared to 2016’s Overwatch melee.
“Over 35 million people played the game in the first month, including many new to Overwatch,” Blizzard said in its report. “The expanded community is deeply engaged, with Overwatch 2 seeing more than double the average daily player count of its acclaimed predecessor in its first month.”
So, in a month’s time, Overwatch 2 attracts 35 million players – The original game only got 15 million conversions at the same time.
The difference, of course, is that the new game is free. There’s no expected cost to download the game right now; you can get it for free from the Xbox Store, PlayStation Store, Nintendo’s eShop, or on your PC. Blizzard is making up for the lack of shelf price with premium in-game cosmetics and a battle pass — which isolates new characters from players who don’t spend money.
But these new characters may be one of the reasons the game is so popular. People are really fascinated by Kiriko, and the upcoming Ramattra has piqued the curiosity of the player base. So Blizzard appears to be doing something about enticing players to buy premium content by keeping new heroes out of reach — much to the chagrin of the community.
So even though you might see people complaining about the multiplayer strategy when withdrawing money from their wallets, you can’t argue with Overwatch’s magnetism. The sequel has attracted more than twice as many people as the original game in the same amount of time — and Blizzard clearly has no plans to slow things down.
“Blizzard looks forward to delivering ambitious regular seasonal updates to Overwatch 2, introducing new characters, maps and modes, including the highly anticipated PvE mode planned for 2023,” the report continued.
Let’s just hope the publisher gets some player feedback in the game and moves the monetization dial a little bit, since the game is a bit longer.
