‘Stadium is Overwatch 2’s most-played mode’: Blizzard confirms Stadium’s success with 7.8 million hours played across 2.3 million matches in the launch week alone

I’ve been playing a lot of Overwatch 2’s Stadium mode since it launched a couple of weeks ago. But I do like to diversify, so I also decided to check out the hero bans in ranked. Or at least I tried to. It took me a whole seven minutes to find a match—outrageous, I know. It turns out I hadn’t been blacklisted, everyone was just playing Stadium.

“Stadium is Overwatch 2’s most-played mode currently, eclipsing Quick Play and Competitive,” a press release says. “There were 2.3 million matches played across 7.8 million hours of Stadium during launch week. More than twice as much as the previous most popular game mode’s launch week, when Overwatch Classic was added to Overwatch 2.”

Those numbers attest to just how desperately Overwatch needed something new. The best part about Stadium is that it’s almost a complete redesign. The maps and objectives have been made smaller, heroes have new powers, and there are new features like bounties and boosts. It may have the same heroes as regular old Overwatch 2, but the fights and strategies are quite different.

I’ve seen one strat where you simply go after builds for the first couple of rounds, sacrificing the win, but getting more cash to spend on items to complete your build and crush your enemies after round two. Alternatively, you can go heavy on the offensive and try to make the gap between the two teams so wide that the losers get mercied after the third round. I’ve seen both work, and I have no doubt that new metas and fun ideas will emerge as the seasons commence.

But regardless of what method you choose, you’ll likely earn a substantial amount of money. In fact, players have apparently earned 900 billion Stadium cash, with a total of 206 million items chosen. Most of that being me building into my ridiculous Soldier 76 Helix Rocket build—it works so well, and it’s absolutely glorious.

Although I must admit that the massive number of players, time spent, and cash earned is somehow not the most surprising thing. Finding out who the most successful hero in Stadium is.

You may think that the best hero pick in Stadium would be a hitscan like Soldier 76 or Cassidy, or perhaps one of the strong tanks like Orisa or Junker Queen. Nope, it’s none of the usual suspects. Somehow, the hero with the best win rate is Lucio, who also happens to be the least picked hero in the entire mode.

So, what have we learned from all of this? The gamers love Stadium, Overwatch players have too much time on their hands (myself included), and Lucio players are like a rose among many thorns—their scarcity makes them all the more beautiful, that is, when they’re healing you and not just stuck on speed boost.