Six years after the first title, audiences are getting more and more restless waiting for the release of Overwatch 2. The first beta for the upcoming beta was released on April 26 and is running through May 17. On its first day live, it managed to break the Overwatch viewership record on Twitch with over 469,000 viewers in under two hours, with 1.5 million concurrent viewers streaming in to see what the sequel has in store. While these are some impressive highs, the beta’s lows are almost more incredible.
Only a week after the beta launched, the highly-anticipated Blizzard sequel lost 99 percent of its Twitch audience. Earlier this week, that 1.5 million viewer mark had fallen to 15,000, and it looks like a rebound isn’t likely. Many tuning in were likely hoping to grab a beta key, but either way, seeing such a huge plummet can’t bode well.
The beta began seeing a huge influx of hackers using aimbots and other cheats to completely ruin other players’ fun only days after it dropped. While Activision Blizzard has been seeking out ways to put a stop to cheaters for years, it’s unclear how they plan to address this issue when Overwatch 2 drops in its entirely next year.
Yesterday, Blizzard made some changes to the beta, including massive tweaks for Roadhog, Soldier: 76, and Zenyatta. They also added bug fixes and balance changes in response to plenty of loud player feedback. There’s a major need for the sequel to adapt due to big changes to Overwatch 2 heroes and its new 5v5 team structure.
In March, Blizzard posted a community update regarding Overwatch 2 on the game’s official website.
“Overwatch is evolving. In our first step towards increased communication and a consistent cadence of updates for our community, we are incredibly excited to share information about our plans for the upcoming months,” the post reads. “We are changing our release strategy by decoupling Overwatch 2’s PvP and PvE experiences from one another to get new PvP content into your hands sooner, while we continue to work on PvE.”
Overwatch 2 is currently in development. Blizzard has stated that the game will finally be released sometime in 2023.
