Overwatch officially kicks off its comeback for Season 1

Monitoring has just seen its highest number of players in over a year ahead of its big brand. Blizzard's hero shooter has gone through its fair share of ups and downs over the past few years, but it seems to be breaking through some of the recent negativity with its latest pivot. News of the update was apparently enough for Monitoring fans to run back to the game in droves.

Blizzard rocked the fanbase when it was announced Overwatch 2 dropped the “2” from its name and would revert its approach to seasonal content. Perhaps more excitingly, developers also confirmed that the first new season would bring a whopping 10 new heroes to the game, five of which are available on day one. The company is going all out to revive the franchise to its former glory, and less than a week after the big announcement, that effort is already showing some impressive results.

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Overwatch has its largest number of weekend players in over a year

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

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)

Although Season 1 didn't fully launch until after the weekend, Blizzard gave fans the chance to play as Anran early. That trial run likely played a role in getting people back into the game, but it could also be that players who hadn't touched the title in a while wanted to familiarize themselves with it before the new season started. Anyway, there are now five new ones Monitoring heroes to play as and more on the way throughout the year, so the recent uptick in activity could continue. Only time will tell how big the revival will be, but fans seemed very excited about it ahead of 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 lately. After announcing the update and new season, the company was hit with a wave of backlash over Anran's character design which looked noticeably different from previous iterations. The feedback was so strong that Monitoring's Game Director announced a redesign before Anran's heroic ordeal was even over. It remains to be seen how this quick reaction will land with fans, 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 disputes aside, Monitorings recent rise comes as a much-needed breath of fresh air for the game. Monitoring became the platform's lowest-rated game of all time in 2023. Since then, things have remained shaky, with the game sitting on a “Mostly Negative” Steam rating at the time of writing, though recent reviews have been mixed. For now, the new heroes and season structure seem to be a hit, or at least players seem to like the concept, so it could be a turning point for the shooter.