Despite a rocky launch and a variety of bugs, the recent release of Overwatch 2 appears to have been successful in drawing players old and new back into its futuristic world. Similar to when the first game came out, it seems like the entire world is talking about it on social media. If you’ve seen the chatter, you might be wondering just what the game’s player count is.
Overwatch 2 developer Blizzard Entertainment has always remained tight-lipped about the exact number of players in its games. Even so, it occasionally releases a number to check in with fans. During the life of the first Overwatch, former game director Jeff Kaplan mentioned a rough estimate of the player base size during the 2019 BlizzCon opening ceremony.
So, how many players does Overwatch 2 have?
Overwatch 2 player count
According to the most recent information from Activision Blizzard, which comes from an Activision Q3 earnings report, Overwatch 2 had over 35 million players during its first month. The game also reportedly doubled the average daily player count of Overwatch during the former’s first month.
Blizzard usually keeps its exact player statistics behind lock and key, but we can reasonably assume that 35 million is very close to the current number of active players, as the game has only been out for slightly over a month as of this writing.
Prior to this report, Blizzard tweeted on Oct. 14 that over 25 million people have played Overwatch 2. This information was corroborated by a press release sent out at the same time. The game had only been out for 10 days when the tweet was published, making this a staggering number for such a short period of time.
Overwatch 2 still has a ways to go before beating the original Overwatch‘s player count. During the 2019 BlizzCon opening ceremony, Jeff Kaplan said of the Overwatch 2 release, “Nothing’s getting left behind. No one’s getting left behind. We worked so hard to build this community of over 50 million players at this point, the last thing we would ever do is do anything to split what an amazing community you guys are.” It’s unclear exactly what statistic he is referencing; he could mean 50 million copies sold rather than 50 million active players.
Overwatch 2 certainly started off with a bang, but it remains to be seen whether fans old and new will stick around for future seasons or whether the game’s popularity will fade out over time. The dev team appears to have plenty of content prepared for the future, according to the roadmap released earlier this year.
But for now, it’s unclear how many players will stay to see that new content.
