Overwatch surpasses 30 million registered players

Three months, almost to the day, after announcing that Overwatch had sailed past the 25 million player mark, Blizzard took to Twitter to announce that its monster-hit online FPS now has more than 30 million players across all platforms. 

See more

Yes, it's a not the most specific measure: There's no way to know how that number breaks down by platform, what the retention is like, how many of them are free-play weekenders, and that sort of thing. But five million new players over a three-month span represents a remarkable rate of continued growth, especially given that the January milestone came just a few months after the 20 million user mark was reportedly hit in October 2016—which actually happened only about four months after the ten million record was broken in June.   

A big part of Overwatch's success, as we noted the last time around, has to be attributed to Blizzard's relentless support, which it has not at all eased up on. There's a lot going on in the big Overwatch Uprising event that went live earlier this month, and more recently the studio said that at least three new maps are "likely" going to be released this year.

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.