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Overwatch 2 hits its lowest player count on Steam following release of Marvel Rivals

Thick Thighs Save Lives

NeoGAF's Physical Games Advocate Extraordinaire

Overwatch 2 is struggling under the weight of Marvel Rivals’ early success as the new hero shooter on the block is drawing players away in droves.

Just nine months on from the game’s reveal, Marvel Rivals has become a force to be reckoned with. Dubbed the “Overwatch killer” before players even got their hands on the game, it immediately became clear Blizzard had some new competition in the genre.
Now that NetEase’s free-to-play title is out in the wild, those early predictions are coming true. Players are flocking to Marvel Rivals right out of the gate as, despite Blizzard’s former president calling it a mere “copy” of Overwatch, the fresh take is being received well in the opening stage.

So much so, Overwatch 2 is struggling to maintain a foothold. Reaching over 10 million players in just 72 hours on the market, Marvel Rivals is a smash hit. Meanwhile, Overwatch 2 is suffering from its quietest stretch yet, falling to the lowest concurrent player count on Steam that it’s ever seen.
Amid the hype surrounding Marvel Rivals, Overwatch 2 has dropped to its lowest point ever, at least since its arrival on Steam. Reaching as low as 16,919 concurrent players on the platform, according to SteamDB, the game set a new record for its smallest active player count to date.

Of course, it’s worth bearing in mind Steam is just one place to play the game, many still engage on BattleNet, and consoles need to be considered too. However, when compared to the breakout success of Marvel Rivals, it paints a clear picture of where the two games currently stand.

In the meantime, Marvel Rivals has been a smash hit out of the gate, setting an all-time peak concurrent player count of 480,990 players on Steam. This trounces Overwatch 2’s all-time best of 75,608 concurrent players.
 

Interfectum

Member
Straight Face Trying Not To Laugh GIF
 

Jormatar

Member
I mean let's not pretend most of these players will to back to playing OW once the honeymoon phase is over.

It's pretty clear how OW is the more refined and just better game. All that Marvel Rivals have over OW is the Marvel IP factor which kids and manchilds just love.
 
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KINGMOKU

Member
I mean let's not pretend most of these players will to back to playing OW once the honeymoon phase is over.

It's pretty clear how OW is the more refined and just better game. All that Marvel Rivals have over OW is the Marvel IP factor which kids and manchilds just love.
I stopped playing overwatch a few weeks after OW2. Now I will play Rivals out of spite. Anything to kill OW, bury it, piss on the grave, dig it back up, reanimate it, then kill it again, just for fun, is my cup of tea.

This honeymoon phase will never end for me.
 

Sp3eD

0G M3mbeR
11 am PST today season 14 of OW starts with the new hero. People will be back.

Edit however I do hope this pushes blizzard to have way more to their seasons. Doing the same winter wonderland stuff every year is pretty boring.
 
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I mean let's not pretend most of these players will to back to playing OW once the honeymoon phase is over.

It's pretty clear how OW is the more refined and just better game. All that Marvel Rivals have over OW is the Marvel IP factor which kids and manchilds just love.

I don't know I've played other OW clones and Rivals is the best one by far and it looks great. They do need to fix some issues but this game is a real threat and I hope Blizzard isn't being as naive as you are about the games potential to really hurt OW.
 

LRKD

Member
The claim that I've seen around the net that lots of pc players stayed on battlenet seems weird too me. Did they really? everyone i know immediately uninstalled it on battlenet, and a lot of us even uninstalled battlenet. And immediately installed it on steam at the time.
 
Well, one of the reasons is it's new and Marvel..whether it holds remains to be seen.

Another reason is Overwatch 2 has struggled of late are balance issues. 5v5 has its fair share of flaws and there's a pretty large part of the community who want 6v6 back, which Marvel Rivals has.
 
Overwatch used to be great and I respect them for spawning so many proper fanarts from people but Marvel Rivals got even better character designs and I like it's third person style more so we could see our characters and their skins. I won't be staying with either for long though as these type of gameplay aren't really my thing.
 

DrMano

Member
I stopped playing overwatch a few weeks after OW2. Now I will play Rivals out of spite. Anything to kill OW, bury it, piss on the grave, dig it back up, reanimate it, then kill it again, just for fun, is my cup of tea.

This honeymoon phase will never end for me.
Are you OK :O
 
What's with the hate people have for OW in here? What am i missing?

Is this another "yas another live game may be dying let's celebrate" moment?
I can only speak for myself, and I wouldn't say "hate," but I did become very frustrated with Overwatch. I played a whole lot of it the first few years, but then they just slowly stripped out a lot of what I liked about it--specifically, taking the characters I liked playing and making them in worse (in ways that honestly felt like an active choice by the devs, whatever their actual intent). They also just shifted the gameplay toward something I like less. I like playing tanks and healers, and it's like they just said, "We'd like to have less of that, please."

The other issue I have with OW is that the typical OW player is just truly miserable to interact with. I know I'm not the only person who eventually gave up on the game (at least partially) because the player base is so awful, although I don't know how common that sentiment is in this thread.
 
I can only speak for myself, and I wouldn't say "hate," but I did become very frustrated with Overwatch. I played a whole lot of it the first few years, but then they just slowly stripped out a lot of what I liked about it--specifically, taking the characters I liked playing and making them in worse (in ways that honestly felt like an active choice by the devs, whatever their actual intent). They also just shifted the gameplay toward something I like less. I like playing tanks and healers, and it's like they just said, "We'd like to have less of that, please."

The other issue I have with OW is that the typical OW player is just truly miserable to interact with. I know I'm not the only person who eventually gave up on the game (at least partially) because the player base is so awful, although I don't know how common that sentiment is in this thread.
Out of curiosity, how is it different from most games?

I played a few hours of it and i couldn't have much of an opinion.
 
Out of curiosity, how is it different from most games?

I played a few hours of it and i couldn't have much of an opinion.
Well, OW is my most-played competitive PvP by a mile, so it's not like I'm an expert to compare it to other games. But there was (is?) a real problem with people throwing (deliberately running out so the other team can kill them, over and over) because they didn't get to pick the hero they wanted, or they felt like their teammates let them down, etc. Things like spamming the chat about how our team's sniper sucks because the other team's sniper killed them. Or just jumping off the edge of the map over and over, teamkilling, deliberately playing wrong, all because they didn't get their way on something. And just general ass-holery because the team was losing, which of course was always everyone else's fault. I had an Xbox friend who played ranked and got placed into the next-to-highest tier, and he said once it was worse there, because it was full of players who were convinced they belonged in the highest tier and thought the whole rest of the player base (or the game rankings themselves, etc.) was to blame for this terrible injustice.

The last straw for me was when I was playing as a healer and I was healing the tank when there was a player standing behind me who needed healing. And when I didn't heal them right away, they just spammed the chat over and over about how bad I was, etc. Not really the worst thing ever, of course, but it was the one that finally made me give up.
 

nikos

Member
Most Overwatch players play via Battle.net. Not a single person on my friends list over the years has switched to the Steam version.

A bunch of new games just released, not just Marvel Rivals. I haven't played much Overwatch lately because of so many new releases. Uninstalled Marvel Rivals the day it released.

A new season and hero also released today.

Overwatch isn't going anywhere.
 
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Mayar

Member
Meanwhile, in the Blizzard office
This Is Fine GIF


Overwatch, of course, won't disappear anywhere, it's too big for that. But it will most likely lose some of the market.
 

Mortisfacio

Member
I think Rivals is just doing well because Marvel. It's a super mainstream genre and people will take whatever slop is put out there for it. Overwatch was already failing as it is compared to OW1. It's way down from peak popularity.

The bigger hit IMO for Blizzard is PoE2. D4 finally became a good game, but PoE2 is just better. PoE2 launched to EA as a good game while D4 took a year to get there. Blizzard already lost players that will never return.
 

kubricks

Member
As a tank player I kinda stopped playing OW after they moved to OW2 5v5, finally enjoy the game again a few weeks ago as they re-introduce OW classic that is 6v6. My Zarya and Winston off-tank was killing it and I was having fun winning or losing.

Then they remove it just around the time Marvel comes out. I have no choice but to move over.

WTF Blizzard? WHY???
The timing, dare I say, is impeccable....
 
As a tank player I kinda stopped playing OW after they moved to OW2 5v5, finally enjoy the game again a few weeks ago as they re-introduce OW classic that is 6v6. My Zarya and Winston off-tank was killing it and I was having fun winning or losing.

Then they remove it just around the time Marvel comes out. I have no choice but to move over.

WTF Blizzard? WHY???
The timing, dare I say, is impeccable....

I really didn't think it would make much of a difference to remove 1 tank. It was a huge blow to my playstyle though and Rein became useless. I stopped playing it and OW was my go to in-between games.
 
Why would you buy skins for a first person game where you can't even see them? Always thought that was idiotic.
It's a shame because there are a lot of really good ones that are wasted on that view mode. Back when I liked Overwatch, Mercy's Winged Victory was my go-to. They changed her so much though that you never got to see her in the end cards play of the games unless the other team going against you was monumentally stupid. She went from being too OP, to a boring lightbulb.
 
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