In an effort to rekindle the interest in Overwatch 2, Blizzard released the game on Steam to make it more accessible and maybe grow the player base a bit. It turns out, they couldn’t have possibly imagined how much worse this made everything. Overwatch 2 launched on Steam and went straight to the top 10 worst-reviewed games on the platform within a day, not something the game deserves, objectively speaking.
Blizzard usually releases its titles on its platform on PC. Still, since the player numbers kept dropping, the company rightfully dropped the barrier of entry by making it available on a more recognized store on PC, Steam. Does this mean that all of the games on Battle.net are coming to Steam? Possibly. But after seeing the community’s response to Overwatch 2, it wouldn’t be surprising if those plans got canned.
Overwatch 2 launched on Steam with the start of season 6, Invasion. This brought much more content to the game, including new story missions, a new game mode, a new support hero, and many balance changes. But that wasn’t enough to garner acceptance from the player base on Steam.
Overwatch 2 Gets Slapped With Negative Reviews
Overwatch 2 has gotten overwhelmingly negative reviews from over 55 thousand gamers and currently sits at a painful 2/10. What is to blame here isn’t the quality of Overwatch 2 itself. That should be obvious to anyone who has played the game since the original Overwatch. The hate is mainly due to the predatory business practices accompanying the Steam release.
The original launched as a full-price game, and then Blizzard decided to reboot the game into a new free-to-play model while rewarding players who had initially paid. Promises were made that Overwatch 2 would receive story content that those who paid could access for free. But that went out the window when Blizzard canceled the highly anticipated story mode and launched a few story missions as compensation. That was bad enough, but making it even worse, it costs “only” $15. Not something long-term fans will appreciate after supporting the game for so long.
It isn’t unprecedented for games to gain back favor of their player base. Cyberpunk 2077 and No Man’s Sky were able to recover from terrible launches. For Overwatch 2 to make it back to the good graces of its players, Blizzard will have to commit to a massive overhaul that alleviates all of the concerns above.
Regardless of what the reviews say, if you want to give the game a shot, you will find much more content to engage in with the story missions and the new game mode. Overwatch 2 is available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series.
