Players are itching to get back into Overwatch, as evidenced by a lengthy queue that many of them can’t get out of. Overwatch’s new Season 1 update just launched, acting as a soft reboot that drops the “2” from the title and adds five new heroes. It certainly has fans excited, with the shooter reaching an all-time high for concurrent players on Steam, but many of them can’t even get past the title screen.
Firing up Overwatch will put you in line to enter the game, with players reporting that upon reaching the front of the queue, they’re given an error message and kicked all the way back.
According to developer Blizzard, Overwatch just had its “biggest weekend in over a year,” a claim backed up by recent Steam data. The game reached a concurrent player count of nearly 70,000 over the weekend, but with the Season 1 update, Overwatch has already broken its own record and reached an all-time peak with over 124,000 concurrent players (and counting) as of this writing.
Overwatch players are being bounced back in the queue after reaching the end.
On Twitch, there are currently over 199,000 viewers watching Overwatch streams, with many streamers having gotten through the door. At this moment, Overwatch has the highest live viewer count on Twitch, slipping past League of Legends.
Along with the additional of five new heroes, which will certainly have ramifications on the game’s balance, Overwatch Season 1 also retools the game’s UI and menus and begins a new narrative that will run for a year.
Overwatch players already had a sneak peek at new damage hero Anran and her abilities, and after campaigning from both fans and Anran’s own voice actor concerning the character’s derivative appearance, the character will receive a redesign from Blizzard.