Overwatch just shattered its Steam PC player count record with its new Season 1 update release — it's the most-watched game on Twitch right now, too

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 had on Valve's PC gaming platform Steam.

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.

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 — over double the previous record of 75,608 it set when the game got its release on the platform in Spring 2023.

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.

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, 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.

It's also worth noting that Overwatch's new Season 1 update is bringing in some extremely strong stream viewership as well. Right now, roughly 165K people are watching Overwatch on Twitch, per the Twitch directory; that's enough to make it the most-watched game on the platform currently, a full 40K viewers above the second place League of Legends.

Clearly, the steps that Blizzard is taking to make Overwatch better — the story having a stronger and more consistent presence, a speedier cadence of live-service content delivery, and a host of quality-of-life improvements — are resonating with players, and inspiring them to either come back to give the game another chance or give it a fair shake for the first time.

That's been reflected in the game's recent user reviews on Steam, which were "Mostly Negative" like the total reviews were until Blizzard announced its big overhaul last week. Soon after, it got enough blue thumbs up to rise it up to "Mixed." Blizzard is taking Overwatch in the right direction, and players are letting it know.

Ultimately, I do have my doubts that we'll see Overwatch maintain these kinds of numbers for long, and I expect some fans will gradually fall off of the game after they've experienced everything new in Season 1. But with Blizzard promising richer, denser seasonal updates moving forward, Overwatch has strong potential to attract and hold onto a much healthier community of players than it's had in the past few years.

As they say, only time will tell. But what's been made abundantly clear is that Blizzard is committing to Overwatch's future, and is eager to shed the era of Overwatch 2 and its controversies like the canceled PvE mode for brighter times.

Are you excited about Overwatch and its future? Will you come back to the game to check out everything new in Season 1, or give it a try if you've never played before? Let me know how you're feeling in the comments.

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