Overwatch 2 debuted on Steam a little more than a few days ago, but it has already secured the title of the worst-rated game on Steam – ever. It had no trouble pulling in players on the platform, which was aided by the fact that the game is free-to-play from the get-go, but amidst mass review bombing and a slew of bad press, Overwatch 2 has set a record for becoming the lowest-rated game on the launcher.
It’s important to stress that this game has been a source of rampant debate for players, fans, and critics alike since it was released late last year. It was always seen as an ‘Overwatch 1.5’, and some questionable changes that were made to the promised formula sought to only alienate the player base. There are theories and some evidence as to why Overwatch 2 is performing so badly on Steam, though.
Overwatch Underperforming
Image Credit: Activision Blizzard
We recently covered the news that Overwatch 2 was being review-bombed on Steam, but we never anticipated it’d get quite this bad. Mostly, this dire situation for Activision Blizzard comes from the seemingly malicious monetisation of the game, with Blizzard putting paywalls in front of content that was once free. That’s the expected operating model of a free-to-play game, but it got up the noses of many players the world over.
One user on Twitter took a deep dive into the mass of overwhelmingly negative reviews of Overwatch 2 on Steam. At the time of writing, just 9% of the 110,180 reviews are positive, indicating a record-low performance on the platform.
This user – the Director of Research at Niko Partners, Daniel Ahmad – identified that out of all the Overwatch 2 reviews on Steam, more than two-thirds are written in Chinese. And, out of those two-thirds, 97% of the reviews are negative. They talk of the broken promises where PvE content is concerned, they criticise the game’s pricing model, and they identify the ‘downgrades’ made to the game.
However, Ahmad suggested that most of this massive wave of frustration has been let out because – finally – these players can get their voice across on an international platform. Since Blizzard shut down some of its operations in China, the millions of gamers there have been dealing with pent-up irritation – which they’re now just releasing on Steam en masse.
Will Overwatch Recover?
It’s likely that Overwatch’s ecosystem is dead in the water now. There are plenty of players still engaged on the platform, but that’s mostly because it’s free-to-play, and it’s the same reason why many people still play games like Call of Duty Warzone despite complaining endlessly about the offering.
If we look at some facts and figures, we can paint a dire picture for Overwatch 2:
All-Time High viewership on Twitch (634,000 peak) crashed to just 34,000 average in the last 7 days
On Steam, only a 75,000-player concurrent peak but already showing a decline after just two days
Esports viewership has crashed monumentally – an all-time peak of 437,000 viewers (2018) is long-forgotten, and in the last year, events have struggled to top 100,000 concurrent viewers
With all that information in mind, as well as the reports that players are mad at Blizzard for basically everything, it seems very tough to believe that Overwatch 2 will ever recover.
Make sure to stay connected to Esports.net for all the latest Overwatch 2 news.
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