Overwatch 2’s First Steam User Numbers Are In, And They’re Pretty Solid Despite Review Bombing

Forbes Innovation Games Overwatch 2’s First Steam User Numbers Are In, And They’re Pretty Solid Despite Review Bombing Kris Holt Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I write about video games, with a focus on Overwatch 2. Following Aug 11, 2023, 04:09pm EDT | Press play to listen to this article! Got it! Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin Overwatch 2: Invasion launches with a PvE mission on King’s Row that’s free for everyone to play.

Blizzard Entertainment Overwatch 2 has been live on Steam for just over 24 hours, and we’re starting to get a sense of how many people are playing it there. The game has an all-time peak concurrent player count of 75,361 on Steam at the time of writing, and 37,688 were playing it at around 3PM ET on Friday afternoon. Not quite Baldur’s Gate 3 numbers, but pretty respectable all the same.

MORE FROM FORBES Overwatch 2 Is Live On Steam, Here’s How To Connect Your Battlenet Account And Get Started By Kris Holt Looking in from the outside, it’s impossible to tell how many people are new players, and how many others have switched from Battle. net. Some Overwatch 2 console players might be playing on PC for the first time too after the switch.

Others (like me) might be hopping in on Steam Deck . Overwatch 2 has hit those numbers despite getting review bombed on Steam. The platform deems the sentiment around the game to be “overwhelmingly negative” after more than 52,000 reviews.

Only 10% or so of the reviews by Friday afternoon were positive. Many of the negative reviews concerned Overwatch 2 ’s monetization and the original game’s content drought between 2020 and 2022. Others criticized the downgraded PvE experience compared with what Blizzard had previously announced.

MORE FOR YOU New Pixel 8 Pro Leak Reveals Google’s Smart Decision Apple iPhone 15 Pro New Leaks Suggest Surprise Big Upgrade Coming Leak Reveals BlackRock s Game Changing Bitcoin Plan That Could Cause Price Chaos For Ethereum XRP And Crypto A sizeable number of those reviews were undoubtedly left in bad faith, though the decision to stop adding heroes to Overwatch while the sequel was in development was clearly a bad call. After getting a chance to play them, I do think the PvE Story Missions are worth $15 (really $5, since that bundle covers the cost of a premium Battle Pass ). The call to pivot away from the original, more ambitious PvE plan was the right one too .

Many criticisms of those aspects of the game are completely valid, though. I have plenty of issues with the monetization too . In any case, it’ll be interesting to see how the Overwatch 2 Steam player count rises and falls in the coming weeks and months.

That should help us get a better understanding of the game’s ongoing popularity. For more news and updates on Overwatch 2 and other games, follow my Forbes blog ! You’ll get a weekly round-up email that includes everything I publish. You’d be doing me a solid, too — it’s a great way to support me and my work at no cost.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn . Check out some of my other work here . Kris Holt Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.