Despite The Ongoing Negativity, Overwatch 2 Exceeds Forecasts & Achieves Over 50M Active Players

Despite the ongoing negativity surrounding Microsoft and Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch 2, the first-person shooter has exceeded forecasts and achieved over 50 million active players.

According to the LinkedIn profile of Sam Saliba, former Vice President and Head of Global Marketing for Overwatch 2, the game has exceeded forecasts and reached over 50 million active players. He also mentioned that he helped exceed KPIs by 130% by leading the integrated launch of Overwatch 2, which resulted in the Hero shooter being the top trending title on Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and Google Search. Additionally, he stated that the game achieved $225 million in revenue during his time at Activision Blizzard.

The aforementioned statistics are rather contradictory to the views shared regarding Overwatch 2 over social media. It’s likely that they represent a vocal minority of players who are dissatisfied with the game. It’s also worth mentioning that the Hero shooter got review bombed on Valve’s digital distribution platform, Steam, with “overwhelmingly negative” user reviews. The game’s arrival on Valve’s platform was expected to give it a boost in active players after Blizzard acknowledged that player engagement had decreased, and that has indeed happened.

As of writing, only around 16% of the user reviews for Overwatch 2 on Steam are positive, despite the game hitting a peak player count of 24,658 in the last 24 hours. In their reviews, many users have been critical of acquiring heroes through the Battle Pass, while others have expressed their disappointment with the cancellation of the PvE mode that was announced back in 2019. Additionally, certain users have expressed dissatisfaction with the matchmaking system, as it appears to fall short of being welcoming to newcomers.

Overwatch 2 is a 2022 first-person shooter game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Serving as both a sequel and successor to the 2016 hero shooter Overwatch, the game strives to provide a communal arena for player-versus-player (PvP) modes. A noteworthy change in PvP modes from the previous game involved the reduction of team sizes from six to five members. Notable characters also underwent major changes. The game is free to play title is available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. Its early access commenced on October 4, complete with full cross-platform play integration.