Overwatch 2 made history as the worst-reviewed game on Steam. Publisher Blizzard, which typically locks PC games to the Battle.net client, brought its team shooter to Steam on August 10, only to receive a ton of negative reviews. As of this writing, only 9% of the overall ratings (111,234) are positive, with many criticizing the game’s approach to locking heroes and cosmetics behind a battle pass and removing its long-hyped PvE mode. While Blizzard may have expected some backlash, considering Battle.net doesn’t have a review system in place, the reaction must have been eye-opening for them.
With the release of season six, “Invasion,” Overwatch 2 is out of Early Access, but it’s still far from its purpose. You see, the sequel announced PvE as an always-on game mode, letting players collect XP by completing story missions to level up their favorite heroes in RPG style. It was supposed to advance its overarching story, but back in May, Blizzard confirmed that it was no longer in development, but was releasing in incremental, small batches as a means of thriving the co-op experience. Not only does this render the sequel useless, but the gimmick of adding the battle pass and other live services in the first place left older fans less than happy.
Another thing worth noting is that nearly two-thirds of these comments were reported to be in Simplified Chinese.According to game analysts Daniel AhmedOverwatch 2 and World of Warcraft were the biggest PC games in China before regional server shutdowns due to disagreements between Blizzard and its Chinese publisher, NetEase. The 14-year partnership ended earlier this year with new terms in the licensing agreement, which eventually led to gamers in the country using VPNs to play those games. There haven’t been any announcements regarding the return of the servers yet, and Overwatch 2’s arrival on Steam is a way for them to voice these concerns, in addition to criticizing the aforementioned changes made to the game. Reliance on VPNs also forces them to suffer from slow logins and connection issues.
Achieving those numbers in just three days, Overwatch 2 has overtaken the Chinese card battle game Three Kingdoms as the worst-rated game on the platform. As of this writing, the former has garnered 101,826 negative reviews, tagged with an “overwhelmingly negative” label. Blizzard also plans to bring a select selection of other games to Steam, which is great for PC gamers, most of whom hate switching between different accounts and clients to play their favorite games. It’s unclear which games will make the leap, but I really hope the Diablo games are next.
Overwatch 2 is out now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X.
Svlook
