Blizzard Entertainment’s free-to-play hero shooter is also starting to realize that people don’t have unlimited time and money, so if there are too many seals, not everyone is getting as many or enough fish as they used to.

TheGamer, citing SteamDB data, reported that the average monthly Steam user for Overwatch 2 has dropped significantly over the past two months. In September, the average was 35,000, followed by 34,000 in October and 32,000 in November. On December 5, NetEase released Marvel Rivals, another free-to-play hero shooter. By this time, the audience for Blizzard’s game had shrunk significantly.

In December, Overwatch 2’s monthly average players dropped 21.7% to just 25,248! In the last thirty days, which we can now even call January, there was a further drop of 21.8%, as Blizzard’s game had an average of only 19,745 players! In two months, Overwatch 2 has dropped almost 40%, which should set off alarm bells at Microsoft, because this is no longer a one-time event, but a steady decline that will surely continue in February…

Although the average number of players tends to drop over time, Overwatch 2 has never seen a drop of more than 20% in two consecutive months. In July, Overwatch 2 was up 4.4%, in August it was up 17.6%, and in September it was up 2.3%! While it can’t be said that the release of Marvel Rivals is to blame, if Blizzard’s game was down that much in December and January, it can’t be a coincidence. There is a difference: Overwatch 2 is 5v5, Marvel Rivals is 6v6 (the first Overwatch was 6v6).

When Marvel Rivals launched its first season in mid-January, it had 644,269 concurrent players, putting it in 14th place on Steam’s highest concurrent player count leaderboard, ahead of Apex Legends, Path of Exile 2, Helldivers 2, and Grand Theft Auto V. It averaged 301,733 players in December and 308,258 in January, more than 15 times Overwatch 2’s average…

Source: VGC, TheGamer, SteamDB