By way of rankings, Overwatch 2 couldn’t have launched at a worse time on Steam. The hero shooter’s on-line popularity was in the bathroom after Blizzard spent years speaking up all of the cool PvE and marketing campaign missions the sequel would have, solely to ship a fraction of them extraordinarily late and finally cancel the remaining. So when the free-to-play sport lastly got here to Steam in August 2023, it was summarily dunked on with tens of hundreds of detrimental evaluations. In 2025, Overwatch 2 rests at an “Overwhelmingly detrimental” Steam ranking with over 300,000 evaluations.
This is some excellent news: For the primary time since its Steam debut, its “Latest evaluations” ranking, which solely tracks evaluations within the final 30 days, is at “Blended.” That is due to an inflow of fine vibes after this week’s Season 15 replace, which introduced the most important shakeup to Overwatch 2 since 5v5 with hero perks.
“Overwatch 2 lastly launched,” wrote person delulu in a optimistic assessment.
“I give up final summer time however S15 is definitely actually enjoyable, and I respect the dangerous strategy they took,” wrote person Melina in a optimistic assessment at this time. “It is a actually good time to get in Overwatch proper now, so I extremely suggest giving it a attempt!”
“If that is desperation, I am all for it!!!!!! Let’s go competitors,” wrote person Skriblyb in a optimistic assessment, presumably citing the rise of Marvel Rivals as motivation for Blizzard taking greater swings with Overwatch.
Person Devorp supplied a much less gracious learn of Blizzard’s new rivalry in a detrimental assessment: “Devs ignore this sport with no updates or balances they usually solely do one thing when Rivals is taking all of their customers.”
That is not totally correct: Blizzard says it was cooking up its huge perks replace, which added 168 new upgrades to its 40+ hero roster in a single day, lengthy earlier than Marvel Rivals arrived with a bang in December. One other gargantuan replace arriving subsequent season, Stadium, has been in growth for over a 12 months. That does not imply Blizzard is not feeling the stress of one other widespread hero shooter on the block, but it surely’s extra seemingly {that a} steadily declining curiosity in Overwatch drove these bigger adjustments within the first place. Rivals is undeniably an accelerant.
I observed a lot of Overwatch’s newest optimistic evaluations come from Steam accounts with solely a handful of hours performed, suggesting some are Battle.internet gamers who booted the sport on Steam so they may go away a optimistic assessment—the inverse of what occurred when Overwatch 2 launched on Steam and garnered over 50,000 detrimental evaluations in 24 hours.
It is too early to name this a comeback—and it is up for debate if Overwatch 2 even wants a comeback because it’s by no means stopped being widespread—but when a dunked-upon sport can get again on the nice aspect of its fickle Steam group, it is a usually nice signal for its well being. Cyberpunk 2077 pulled it off after being extensively criticized for launch bugs.
