On August 10, Blizzard Entertainment released their team-based tactical shooter Overwatch 2 on the Steam store. Simultaneously, the sixth season started, introducing a new support hero named Illari, a new game mode, and paid Invasion Bundles with cooperative PvE missions that expand the shooter's lore. All these factors led to a rapid growth in popularity for the Overwatch 2 category on Twitch.
Overwatch 2 Release on Steam
Previously, Blizzard released its games on its own store, but recently it has started using third-party platforms. On the day of the game's release on Steam, the platform recorded over 75.3K players simultaneously. However, it can't be said that everything went smoothly. Shooter fans conducted review bombing and deliberately lowered the game's ranking in the store, resulting in Overwatch 2 becoming one of the lowest-rated games on Steam. Fans had different reasons for such behavior. Some were dissatisfied with the state of affairs in the OWL (professional league on the brink of closure), others complained about the content of Invasion Bundles and the high price for PvE missions. There is also a version that most of the negative reviews about Overwatch 2 on Steam were written by disgruntled Chinese gamers who criticized Blizzard for leaving the country. Despite the drama with the ratings on Steam, the game's popularity on Twitch has sharply increased.
Overwatch 2 Viewership Statistics On Twitch
Overwatch 2 Viewership Dynamics on Twitch
During the week leading up to the release of Overwatch 2 on Steam (and before the start of the sixth season), the game averaged around 400K Hours Watched (with a maximum of 488K). The Peak Viewers number did not exceed 76.1K. However, after August 10, the situation changed significantly: the day after the release, the Overwatch 2 category on Twitch accumulated 1.65 million HW, and its Peak Viewers number reached 120.2K. It is also worth mentioning the average daily number of channels. While on August 10 it was 1.8K, the following day (after the release on Steam and the start of the sixth season), this number increased to 2.5K.
The drops campaign at the start of the sixth season also played a significant role in this surge of popularity — viewers had the opportunity to earn cosmetic items by watching Overwatch 2 streams from partner streamers. This campaign will run until August 24.
The most-watched channel for Overwatch 2 on Twitch, both before and after the game's release on Steam, was mL7support. Between August 10 and 13, his streams accumulated 385K HW. Interestingly, the most popular channel overall was Fextralife, even though he did not stream Overwatch 2 immediately before the start of the season. However, after the game's launch, he managed to gather nearly 81K Peak Viewers.
Most popular Overwatch 2 streamers
The start of the sixth season in Overwatch 2, the game's release on Steam, and the drops campaigns have helped many channels increase their viewership in the discipline. For example, this greatly improved the performance of Emongg, Flats, Supertf, Toniki, EvaLangwin, and other streamers. In some cases, their Hours Watched and Peak Viewers numbers increased by 5-10 times.
The "Golden Age" of Overwatch 2 on Twitch occurred in October 2022 when the game was released at the beginning of the month. The Peak viewership in the category during that period reached 634K, and the maximum number of channels reached 13.2K.
