Overwatch smashes its Steam record, more than doubling its previous concurrent player peak with over 165,000 people jumping in as Blizzard's hero shooter enters a new era

Overwatch: The Reign of Talon — (Image credit: Blizzard)

It's a time of great upheaval in Overwatch 2. Now rebranded to simply be Overwatch, the hero shooter's undergoing a soft reset, starting with the latest season, which kicks off a six-part narrative arc and introduces a number of fresh members to the roster. As a relaunch of sorts, it's working, because the FPS just hit a new all-time peak for concurrent players on Steam.

Season 1 of Overwatch's Reign of Talon began yesterday, February 10, and there was an immediate surge in interest. 165,651 players at once were playing on Valve's platform, per SteamDB.

To put that in context, the highest number who logged in at once via Steam over the last year is a little over 60,000, according to the same chart, while its previous all-time peak was when the game came to Steam in August 2023 – at that point, it hit 75,608 players. That means it's now more than doubled its prior record, not a terrible way to kickstart celebrating ten years of Blizzard's first-person shooter series. This is without knowing how many are playing through Battlenet, either.

Overwatch Animated Short | “Reign of Talon” - YouTube

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The Reign of Talon is clearly working as a jumping on point, at least for now. As the title suggests, it involves Talon vying for power, under the leadership of newer character Vendetta, who's managed to broker alliances with other nefarious groups across the globe. The members of Overwatch are, as you'd expect, trying to stop them, and they have their work cut out for them this time.

It's setting the timbre for the game's storytelling from here on out, with storylines taking place over the span of several seasons to deepen the mythology and make it more worthwhile to follow. Five heroes came with this season: Domina, Emre, Mizuki, Jetpack Cat, and Anran.

The last one's getting a redesign following some complaints, demonstrating Blizzard's willingness to start off on the right foot here. So far, so good.

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