Blizzard Entertainment's first step towards Steam has met with huge criticism, as Overwatch 2 has already become the worst-reviewed title on Valve's platform.
The game has managed to gain around 70,000 reviews, with only 10% of them being positive ones. Overwatch 2 has dethroned " War of the Three Kingdoms" to obtain the infamous title of the "worst-rated game" of all time on Steam. The game has been experiencing a wave of "review bombing" with players criticising Blizzard's approach toward the sequel and complaining about the lack of in-game content.
They released Overwatch 2 as a free to play business model, which leans more heavily into microtransactions, overpriced skins and predatory behaviour. To make matters worse, they shut down the first game, making it unplayable for people who purchased it, meaning the playerbase has to move over to this free to play business model to keep playing the game.
-Steam User BraySC
Apart from this, gamers have complained about the decision to largely scrap the highly anticipated PvE Hero mode, which was believed to be the sole reason behind the sequel's existence. To overshadow this, Blizzard did announce three different PvE missions, but that too with a $15 price tag which many users believe isn't worth the time and money.
While some reviews have provided constructive criticism, many of them are targeting topics not related to Overwatch 2, such as the Activision-Blizzard acquisition by Microsoft and the reports of sexual harassment within the company. While such factors hold their importance, they shouldn't be listed as negative points in the review of a specific game. Valve's moderation will likely remove them.
Blizzard had initially hoped to open up a new userbase to Overwatch 2 by launching on Steam, but unfortunately, the initiative has backfired for now. The company's decision to launch Overwatch 2 as its first title puts up a whole argument, but we won't go into details for now. We expect that with the launch of Overwatch 2: Invasion, things could improve since it is the title's biggest update and is set to feature new in-game content.
If you are interested in learning about the update, you can view our roundup here. By the way, if you purchase an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 40 graphics card at select retailers, you can receive the Invasion bundle for free.
* This article was originally published here