Marvel Rivals Launch Sees 40 Percent Decline In Overwatch 2 Players

Marvel Rivals has been an unequivocal success. The hero shooter launched with a staggeringly high player count, only to beat it a few weeks later when the game’s first season dropped. It’s also managed to retain those players better than every live-service title released in the last few years. The game has enough potential content for another 875 years, too, so don’t expect it to slow down any time soon.

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Rivals’ success has, though, unfortunately, caused a knock-on effect on what is arguably its biggest competitor, Overwatch 2, with the Blizzard-developed hero shooter seeing an almost 40 percent drop in players since Rivals launched.

Overwatch 2 Has Lost Almost 40 Percent Of Its Players In Under Two Months

Using data from SteamDB, we found that in the three months leading up to Marvel Rivals’ launch (September 5 to December 5), Overwatch 2 was enjoying an average player count of 33,738. In the seven or so weeks since Rivals was released, Overwatch 2’s average player count has fallen to 20,565—a 39 percent drop.

For parity, the average player count for Overwatch 2 for each of the three months we looked at was 34,813 (September 5 to October 4), 34,107 (October 5 to November 4), and 32,268 (November 5 to December 4), so it was clearly stable until Marvel Rivals launched.

While correlation does not always imply causation, the timing of the two instances at least indicates Marvel Rivals’ launch had a significant impact on Overwatch 2’s player count. Whether it caused the full 39 percent decrease, we’ll never know, but there is a clear link.

Overwatch 2 has always faced an uphill struggle since it launched in October 2022.

The game was revealed as a sequel to Overwatch, a title many considered as not needing a sequel, then completely changed its structure, switching to 5v5. Delays and complaints about the game’s early battle passes meant it got off on further bad footing, and it never really recovered from there. Last November, the developers even attempted to bring back the classic look and modes of the original Overwatch, but that mode didn’t move the dial.

With numbers continuing to decline, it will be interesting to see where Activision Blizzard goes from here.

Released

October 4, 2022

OpenCritic Rating

Strong