I’s fair to say that Overwatch 2 has had a tricky start as a game. After canceling the much anticipated PVE content, and the shutdown of the OWL, players could be forgiven for expecting the game to have taken a bit of a hit. Now, with the new esports format not really impressing and Marvel Rivals dragging more players away from the game, the Overwatch 2 player count is looking a bit rougher.
While promised content that long-time fans were excited to see has had to be cut, Blizzard has become living up to other commitments recently. They’ve begun to deliver reworks of older Heroes. Their approach to the patches you’ll see in
OW news also seems to be doing a better job of keeping the game engaging. They’re even experimenting again with 6-v-6 (although in a bit of a chaotic and frustrating way).
It looks like the OW 2 player count might be in trouble. How many people are still playing OW 2 though?
OW 2 Player Count in 2024
Overwatch 2 had a pretty weird 2024, and it ended on a bit of a low point. They went from embracing the much-requested 6-v-6 format with a trial and return to Classic Overwatch, to real lows within the space of about a week. As Classic proved more frustrating than fun, and the 6-v-6 test seemed deliberately set up to argue for 5-v-5. However, the biggest challenge is definitely Marvel Rivals. A game with an absurd resemblance to Overwatch, but with the key difference that a lot of players are still having fun playing.
How much of a knock has it had on the OW 2 Player count? There’s been a decline, at least in the information we can look at. The only public form of OW 2 player count tracker is the Steam player numbers. While not the total, it’s representative of the percentage change over time. Even if the game has more players outside of Steam, each platform will follow the same ups and downs.
On Steam, in January 2025 Overwatch has a 24 peak at around 30,000 players. Down quite a bit from its high of 75,000. It has essentially been on the downward slide since November.
OW 2 Player Count in 2023
The Overwatch 2 player count has been a source of speculation for players for quite a while. It’s always difficult to get exact information for games like this since developers don’t tend to release exact figures. In late 2023, we did get some decent information about the player count at that time though.
Speaking in a new interview, Jared Neuss has detailed quite a bit more about the OW 2 player count. While the game at one point held records for most negative reviews,it seems the player numbers have held out. Speaking specifically of Steam, the executive producer of Overwatch 2 said “Not only are people jumping in for the first time on Steam, but people are coming back and making Steam their primary platform”. It seems there’s still a decent number of players sticking around on Steam, even after the game got so many poor reviews.
Talking more generally about the overall audience between OW 1 and the OW 2 player count, Neuss said “The game is doing really well. The audience has grown significantly… We have a really healthy mix of people who’ve been playing Overwatch for a long time and brand new players”. They’ve identified this as a success in their goals for going free to play.
Although, at this point that last update on the player count is pretty old.
What Does the Player Count Look Like?
Source: Blizzard
General positive sentiments in interviews are something, but what do we actually know about the player base of OW 2? It is difficult to quantify in some terms. Blizzard doesn’t reveal exact numbers. We can see player numbers on platforms like Steam, but it doesn’t tell the full story when most legacy OW players are more used to using Blizzard’s own launcher. Between that and consoles, the Steam player numbers aren’t entirely representative of the game.
In terms of the publicly available Steam data, the game’s player numbers peaked in the month of its release on this platform. It achieved 75,361 peak players in August. It lost a considerable number of players in September, falling to a low with a peak of 33,000. However, in winter it did rise again. It’s at a lower number these days, but not as rough as its Twitch viewership would make it look.
If the Steam numbers are indicative of the player base elsewhere, the title is clearly slowly down, if gradually. It faced some early problems and hasn’t ever really found its footing. Big changes come still but they don’t feel as fleshed out.