The Overwatch 2 beta is finally here and players can finally get a taste of how the hero shooter will play. With such a long lapse between announcement and release, and a two-year hiatus from updates to the original Overwatch, there has been an understandable drop in player count and viewership on Twitch. It has fallen behind competitors like Valorant. The question is, will the sequel bring that audience back?
If the first day of Overwatch 2 beta is everything, the answer is a resounding “yes”. Last night Overwatch was the most watched category on Twitch. It peaked at a staggering 510,000 concurrent viewers, the most it’s ever had. It probably looks like it’s going to climb even higher today. Can we believe the numbers?
To reach the eyes, Blizzard uses a twitch drop program to get players to watch. Invites to surveillance 2 Betas were limited on launch day, and if you weren’t selected then, the only guaranteed way to access the beta is by joining four hours of Twitch Streamers between 10:00am PT/1:00pm ET/6:00pm BST and watch Today at 6pm PT/9pm PT/2am BST. (For more information on how this works, see our Overwatch 2 Beta Sign-in Guide.) Of course, this means that the number of viewers on Twitch will increase tremendously as players try to participate in the beta, sign up to watch streams and earn an invite.
Additionally, some of the biggest streamers on Twitch are joining the drop action, including Pokimane and XQC (who was known to have been part of the Overwatch League). That means their already huge audience, used to more variety, will be tuned in to the Overwatch 2 beta.
Inflated hype has worked in the past
This, of course, will lead to completely inflated numbers for Overwatch 2’s launch, which is why you’ll see it fly up the most-watched leaderboards. If you just want access to the beta, all you have to do is join a stream, start it in the background and wait to get beta access. Blizzard is essentially cheating the system to push Overwatch 2 to the top of Twitch, regardless of whether people watch streams or not.
Blizzard didn’t invent this strategy. It was used by several of its competitors; perhaps most successful of Riot Games when it launched the Valorant beta, which garnered a staggering 1.7 million concurrent viewers (according to SulleyGnome). Players would watch streamers play Valorant and eventually gain access to the beta; almost exactly like that over watch is in operation.
It’s easy to think of Twitch Drops as some kind of trick, but it’s just a marketing tool and doesn’t indicate that a game will be a flash in the pan. While Valorant’s viewership isn’t as high as when it launched, it’s still the third most watched video game on Twitch, reaching a healthy 157,000 concurrent viewers Last month. Blizzard is aiming for the same success with Overwatch 2.
For the twitch drop strategy to work, Overwatch 2 still needs to be good. For the game to remain a superpower in the streaming space, it needs to keep streamers, and more importantly, everyday gamers.
While Blizzard is cheating the system here, audiences should keep their eyes on Overwatch 2 with so many eyes. Sure, it’s overblown hype, but that’s better than none. As an avid Overwatch gamer, it’s wonderful to see the game so alive again after all these years.