Overwatch officially kicks off its Season 1 comeback

Overwatch it just saw its highest number of players in over a year before its big rebrand. Blizzard's heroic shooter has seen its fair share of ups and downs over the past few years, but it seems to have broken through some recent negatives with its latest pivot. Reports of recovery were apparently enough Overwatch to keep fans coming back to the game in droves.

Blizzard shocked the fan base when they announced this Overwatch 2 dropped the “2” from its name and would restore its access to seasonal content. Perhaps even more excitingly, the developers have also confirmed that the first new season will bring a whopping 10 new heroes to the game, five of which will be available on day one. The company is trying to resurrect the franchise to its former glory, and less than a week after the big announcement, the effort is already showing some impressive results.

Overwatch Season 1 Restart: Start Time and What's New

Discover the start times and new features that will relaunch Overwatch Season 1 this February.

Overwatch has its biggest weekend player count in over a year

On the morning of February 10, the same day as OverwatchThe game's official Twitter account shared upon its Season 1 debut that it had just completed its biggest weekend in terms of player count in over a year. This follows the news OverwatchThe number of players on Steam increased by 63% after the news of its rebranding. This was enough to put the hero shooter ahead of big competitors like Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7and Steam isn't even the game's most popular platform. Now, a similar trend seems to be happening on consoles and Battle.net, with player numbers growing on all platforms. Blizzard didn't offer any details on what those totals are, but breaking a year-plus record before many new updates come out is an impressive feat by any metric.

Who is that character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Who is that character?

Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.

Easy (7.5s) Medium (5.0s) Hard (2.5s) Permadeath (2.5s)

While Season 1 didn't begin in full until the weekend was over, Blizzard gave fans a chance to play as Anran early. This trial run likely played a role in bringing people back to the game, but it could also be that players who hadn't touched the title in a while wanted to reacquaint themselves with it before the new season started. Be that as it may, there are now five new ones Overwatch heroes that you can play more and more on the road throughout the year, so the recent increase in activity could continue. Only time will tell how big the revival will be, but fans seemed very excited about him before Season 1.

While this increase in player numbers is certainly welcome news for Blizzard, not everything has been going the way the developers would have liked recently. Following the announcement of the update and new season, the company was hit with a wave of backlash over Anran's character looking noticeably different from previous iterations. The feedback was so strong that Overwatch's Game Director announced the redesign even before Anran's Hero Trial ended. How this quick reaction will land among fans remains to be seen, just as it's uncertain how popular the new heroes will be, but the controversy stands as a small caveat to an otherwise big weekend for the game.

Character design quibble aside, OverwatchThe recent rise is a much-needed breath of fresh air for the game. Overwatch became the lowest-rated game of all time on the platform in 2023. Things have continued to falter since then, with the game holding a “Mostly Negative” rating on Steam at the time of writing, though recent reviews have been mixed. So far, the new heroes and seasonal structure seem to be a hit, or at least players seem to like the concept, so this could be a breakthrough for the shooter.