Overwatch Season 1 Debut Sees Blizzard's Relaunched Hero Shooter Double Its Steam Player Record

We already knew that Overwatch fans were returning successful their thousands with the advent of its caller sanction and "story-driven era," but Overwatch hasn't conscionable matched its archetypal Steam release-day fervor, it has smashed it, much than doubling the platform's concurrent highest acceptable backmost successful 2023.

You'll retrieve that Blizzard's sequel unluckily stumbled retired of the gate, and portion it saw a monolithic surge of players astatine the start, those numbers dropped successful the pursuing year. As clip went on, idiosyncratic reviews complained astir a fig of issues specified arsenic monetization and controversies astir the cancellation of the game's long-awaited PvE Hero mode.

Now, however, with the motorboat of yesterday's (February 10) archetypal year-long storyline, The Reign of Talon, Overwatch — the crippled formerly known arsenic Overwatch 2 — smashed its archetypal concurrent Steam highest of 75,608. And portion we'd already seen a spike successful players implicit the weekend, Sunday's highest of 69,135 simultaneous gamers has been astir tripled, with SteamDB signaling 165,651 concurrent Steam players overnight, marking an fantabulous commencement for the rebooted leader shooter.

The Reign of Talon focuses connected the antagonistic faction Talon arsenic it takes implicit astir the world, portion Overwatch continues to combat back. In-game events, leader trailers, animated comics, abbreviated stories, and representation updates volition archer a communicative crossed six seasons rolled retired passim the full year, opening with the motorboat of 5 caller heroes arsenic the caller play kicked disconnected yesterday.

IMAGE CREDIT: STEAMDB

New heroes see Domina (tank), Emre (damage), Mizuki (support), Anran (damage) — who immoderate of america met implicit the play — and Jetpack Cat (support). More heroes volition articulation successful the future, with a caller leader added successful each of Season 2-6 to come. A caller communicative arc is planned to statesman with different Season 1 successful 2027.

We're besides getting a Hello Kitty-themed in-game lawsuit from February 10-23, a caller Meta Event called Conquest, wherever players take to align with either Overwatch oregon Talon implicit 5 weeks to vie for rewards including lootboxes, skins, and titles. There's besides a large UI and UX overhaul with a caller leader lobby and a committedness of faster navigation connected the way.

Vikki Blake is simply a newsman for IGN, arsenic good arsenic a critic, columnist, and advisor with 15+ years acquisition moving with immoderate of the world's biggest gaming sites and publications. She's besides a Guardian, Spartan, Silent Hillian, Legend, and perpetually High Chaos. Find her astatine BlueSky.