A host on the esports podcast ‘The Four Horsemen’ has said Overwatch 2’s player base is comparable in size to Riot Games’ Valorant.
In the wake of reporting that the Overwatch League’s demise might be coming soon, many gaming and esports industry professionals have given their opinions on the competition’s viability. Many have talked about how the Overwatch League may have inflated the esports market, or how the game itself wasn’t ready for a large-scale league based on its player base and popularity.
Blizzard has said in its most recent financial filings that player interest and engagement in Overwatch 2 has “declined sequentially” in the second quarter of the year.
In a The Four Horsemen podcast episode about the potential fall of OWL, however, one of the hosts claimed that the current Overwatch 2 player base isn’t as small as some might think.
Overwatch and Valorant reported to have similar player numbers
Christopher ‘MonteCristo’ Mykles, a former multi-esports caster turned podcaster, said on the show that his sources have told him that Overwatch and Valorant have similar numbers when it comes to their players.
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“I actually think that the Overwatch player base is pretty healthy at the moment… The player numbers from what I understand, I can’t say much without revealing sources, are pretty comparable to Valorant’s player base,” MonteCristo said.
Riot Games and Activision Blizzard, along with many developers and publishers of live service titles, aren’t too open about their active player base numbers. Some have showcased them in the past, to hype up their game while it’s popular, but ultimately keep their numbers under wraps as time moves on.
If the player base is as healthy as MonteCristo claims, then maybe Overwatch 2 can live on as an esport if the OWL does shutter in 2024. The player base can continue to compete with third-party event operators or run their own grassroots tournaments.
Only time will tell how the game and esport will live on in a post-OWL world.
