After ‘Marvel Rivals,’ ‘Overwatch’ Heads For Record Player Counts On Steam

Good artists copy, great artists steal. This may partly explain the massive success of Marvel Rivals, which is largely an Overwatch clone in many ways, but elevates the game with its roster of Marvel heroes and villains and somewhat noticeably supplants the role of Overwatch in space.

Marvel Rivals currently sees 400,000 players per night on Steam alone, as well as being one of the best games on PlayStation and Xbox. We don’t have as much data for Overwatch, but there are definitely ways to evaluate trendlines, and they’re not great.

The main data is its Steam numbers. Yes, yes, it’s true that the vast majority of players are on the Blizzard launcher, and yet there’s no reason to think that the game would only move in this direction on one platform, as that would likely indicate a wider trend across the world. all the places where it exists.

As it stands, Overwatch is currently heading towards what would be its lowest player count ever, and in its last 30 days, that is. December, the launch month of Marvel Rivals, hit a near-record high, falling short by just a few thousand. But an added factor is also that Overwatch just released a new character just over a month ago, at the end of November, so you can imagine the numbers would be higher.

There wasn’t a complete drop or anything when Marvel Rivals launched on December 6, but what was already a downward trend at that time continued with no signs of an uptick. In about a week, it could hit that record low. Meanwhile, another metric we can track is the most played Xbox games, where Marvel Rivals is currently #8, the only new game that isn’t a sports title, Call of Duty or a staple like Fortnite, Roblox or Minecraft. Overwatch, meanwhile, is 19th behind Forza Horizon 5 and Ark: Survival Ascended. On PS5, Marvel Rivals is in the top 10 and #10 in particular, with all other games being established franchises. We don’t have any data beyond the top 10, so of course Overwatch isn’t there.

This isn’t to say that Marvel Rivals murdered Overwatch or anything like that, but Rivals, coupled with another game right next to it in the Steam charts, Path of Exile 2, poses some serious competition for the two most important franchises in Blizzard, Overwatch and Diablo 4. Overwatch is of course very old at this point and its relaunch “Overwatch 2” has been met with mixed results at best. Marvel Rivals is about to launch its first real season by adding four new characters (Fantastic Four), while Overwatch releases a new character in any other season. It is clear that NetEase is not letting up on the gas.

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