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It’s a big day for Overwatch, Blizzard’s ten-year old free-to-play PvP hero shooter that was once one of the most popular FPS titles in the world. In fact, it’s the biggest day it’s had in years, and the biggest day it’s ever <\/em>had on Valve’s PC gaming platform Steam.<\/p>\n Today saw the release of Overwatch’s new Season 1 update and its Reign of Talon revamp that dropped the “2” from the title, added five new hero characters, began a new live-service structure with year-long story arcs and faster hero releases, and implemented a suite of additions, tweaks, and improvements to the shooter’s systems. The patch notes are a mile long; it’s the biggest update Overwatch has had in ages.<\/p>\n As a result, the game is absolutely blowing up right now, and is flying far higher than it ever has on Steam in particular (we don’t have public console metrics, sadly). At the time of writing, it’s managed a peak concurrent player count of 165,651 on the Steam charts according to SteamDB \u2014 over double the previous record of 75,608 it set when the game got its release on the platform in Spring 2023.<\/p>\n Notably, that makes it the fourth most-played game on Steam right now, under Counter-Strike 2, DOTA 2, and ARC Raiders, and just above the surging Helldivers 2 that’s in the thick of its new Cyberstan update. Its direct competitor Marvel Rivals is in 11th place in comparison, with 83,316 in-game at the moment.<\/p>\n Those are some huge results for the launch of Reign of Talon, especially since a huge chunk of Overwatch’s PC player base uses Battle.net. They were also somewhat expected<\/em>, admittedly, with how Overwatch was surging past Call of Duty and Battlefield on Steam before the update even released, but they’re no less impressive.<\/p>\n
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