Overwatch Officially Kicks Off Its Season 1 Comeback

Overwatch has just seen its highest player count in over a year ahead of its big rebrand. Blizzard’s hero shooter has been through its fair share of ups and downs over the past few years, but it seems to be breaking through some of the recent negativity with its latest pivot. News of the refresh was apparently enough for Overwatch fans to run back to the game in droves.

Blizzard shook the fanbase when it announced Overwatch 2 was dropping the “2” from its name and would reset its approach to seasonal content. Perhaps more excitingly, devs also confirmed the first new season would bring a whopping 10 new heroes to the game, with five being available on day one. The company is going all in to resurrect the franchise to its former glory, and less than a week after the big announcement, that effort is already showing some impressive results.

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Overwatch Has Its Biggest Weekend Player Count in Over a Year

On the morning of February 10, the same day as Overwatch‘s Season 1 debut, the game’s official Twitter account shared that it had just wrapped up its biggest weekend in terms of player count in over a year. This follows news that Overwatch‘s Steam player count surged by 63% after news of its rebrand broke. That was enough to push the hero shooter ahead of big competitors like Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7, and Steam is not even the game’s most popular platform. Now it seems a similar trend is occurring across consoles and Battle.net, with player counts rising across all platforms. Blizzard didn’t offer any specifics about what these totals are, but breaking a year-plus-long record before many of the new updates come out is an impressive feat by any metric.

Who’s That Character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Who’s That Character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Easy (7.5s)Medium (5.0s)Hard (2.5s)Permadeath (2.5s)

While Season 1 didn’t start in full until the weekend was over, Blizzard did give fans the chance to play as Anran early. That trial run likely played a role in bringing people back to the game, but it could also be that players who hadn’t touched the title in a while wanted to reacquaint themselves with it before the start of the new season. Whatever the case, there are now five new Overwatch heroes to play as and more on the way throughout the year, so the recent bump in activity could continue. Only time will tell how big the revival gets, but fans seemed plenty excited about it leading up to Season 1.

While this surge in player count is certainly welcome news for Blizzard, not everything has gone the way devs would’ve liked lately. After announcing the refresh and new season, the company was hit with a wave of backlash over Anran’s character design looking noticeably different from earlier iterations. The feedback grew so strong that Overwatch‘s Game Director announced a redesign before Anran’s Hero Trial was even over. It remains to be seen how this quick reaction will land among fans, just as it’s uncertain how popular the new heroes will be, but the controversy does stand as a small caveat to an otherwise big weekend for the game.

Contention over character designs aside, Overwatch‘s recent uptick comes as a much-needed breath of fresh air for the game. Overwatch became the platform’s lowest-rated game of all time in 2023. Since then, things have still wavered, with the game sitting at a “Mostly Negative” Steam rating at the time of writing, although recent reviews are mixed. For now, the new heroes and seasonal structure seem like a hit, or at least it seems players like the concept, so it could be a turning point for the shooter.