After ‘Marvel Rivals,’ ‘Overwatch’ Is Headed To An All-Time Playercount Low On Steam

Good artists copy, great artists steal. That may in part explain the massive success of Marvel Rivals, very much an Overwatch clone in many ways, but elevating the game with its roster of Marvel heroes and villains and supplanting Overwatch’s role in the space somewhat noticeably.

Marvel Rivals is currently putting up 400,000 players a night on Steam alone in addition to being a top game on PlayStation and Xbox. We do not have as much data for Overwatch, but there are certainly ways to gauge trendlines, and they’re not great.

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

As it stands, Overwatch is currently moving toward what would be its lowest playercount yet, and in its last 30 days, ie. December, the launch month of Marvel Rivals, it put up an almost record-low peak, missing by just a few thousand. But an additional factor too is that Overwatch just released a new character barely over a month ago in late November, so you might imagine numbers would be higher.

There is not a complete drop off or anything when Marvel Rivals launched on December 6, but what was already a downward trend at that time has continued with no sign of it pulling up. In another week or so, it may hit that record low point. 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 an eternal fixture 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 specifically, with all other games being established franchises. We don’t have any data past the top 10, so of course Overwatch isn’t there.

This is not to say that Marvel Rivals has murdered Overwatch or something, but Rivals, paired with another game right next to it on the Steam charts, Path of Exile 2, are posing serious competition for Blizzard’s most prominent two franchises, Overwatch plus Diablo 4. Overwatch is of course very old at this point and its “Overwatch 2” relaunch was met with…mixed results at best. Marvel Rivals is about to launch its first real season adding a fully new four characters (The Fantastic Four), while Overwatch is releasing one new character any other season. It’s clear NetEase is not letting up on the gas.

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