Overwatch 2’s Declining Participant Numbers Are ‘Nothing Regarding,’ Blizzard Says

In its most up-to-date Q2 2023 earnings launch, Activision Blizzard reported that Overwatch 2 “engagement and participant funding” had declined over the previous quarter. In response to Overwatch 2 government producer Jared Neuss, the falling participant numbers are “nothing regarding” and ought to be handled as “a standard ebb and circulation of gamers.”

Overwatch 2: Invasion is predicted to spice up participant numbers

Overwatch 2: Invasion is the sport’s sixth season and launched yesterday, August 10. Amongst the brand new content material is a brand new hero Illari, a brand new Flashpoint recreation mode, the premium Invasion story missions, and a brand new battle go. Throughout the identical earnings launch, the writer defined the way it was anticipating the most important seasonal replace but to spice up the decrease participant numbers. Nonetheless, Neuss downplayed that this massive season was some form of do-or-die second for the shooter in an interview with IGN and extra of the crew determining the best way to tempo its seasonal choices.

There’s this attention-grabbing factor about how we stacked a bunch of content material on Overwatch 2 Invasion. We did that as a result of we had been experimenting with totally different seasonal buildings, and one of many issues we actually wished to strive was, what if we simply put all this large stuff, these superior additions, and totally different expressions of the sport collectively?

That basically isn’t like a, ‘oh there’s a lot using on this’ form of a factor for us. For us it’s actually about, what does an excellent season appear like? We’ve tried a bunch of stuff, proper? We tried a really thematic strategy with Season 5. We’ve tried various things in Season 2 and three.

It’s much less about, ‘is there all these things using on Overwatch 2: Invasion?’ and extra about, ‘what do we expect is the proper rhythm and cadence, and the way can we create these large moments for gamers?’

He additionally went on to say the crew isn’t involved by what he considers to be the conventional fluctuation in participant numbers for a free-to-play recreation.

The declining stuff is mainly, we’re a free-to-play recreation and it is extremely simple to each come to the sport and test it out, and to go away to take a look at different stuff,” Neuss mentioned. “We see a standard ebb and circulation of gamers. There’s nothing regarding to me or the crew about any of that.

Sadly for Blizzard, participant response to the sport has not gotten considerably higher with Season 6. Overwatch 2 launched on Steam on August 10 and shortly garnered an “Overwhelmingly Destructive” score from gamers. The most typical criticism is the dearth of the promised PvE mode, which was downscaled to make approach for the smaller story missions. The price of the story missions and restricted methods gamers can unlock heroes are two different sizeable complaints being leveled on the sequel.