Overwatch 2 has finally arrived on Steam, to less than great user reviews. Of 118,000 user reviews (a number that dwarfs other recent releases), the majority are “overwhelmingly negative,” as fans take aim at how Blizzard has handled the FPS franchise since Overwatch 2’s launch on Battle.net and consoles almost a year ago. That has made it the worst user-reviewed game on Steam of all time just a few days after its launch, with only around 9% of reviews being positive.
Review-bombing is nothing new. That, however, isn’t the full picture. As pointed out on Twitter by Daniel Ahmad, a video game analyst specializing in the Asian market, over two-thirds of the game’s Steam reviews are written in Chinese, with the majority of those being negative. While many of the reviews from Chinese players sport similar complaints to those of negative reviews from the rest of the world–like Blizzard’s cancellation of Overwatch 2’s planned PvE Hero mode and the price of the game’s microtransactions–Ahmad said the reviews also reflect larger feelings of frustration that have long gone unanswered.
Here’s something that no English language media outlet has caught on to:
Overwatch 2 currently has 100k reviews on Steam since launching 3 days ago, of which 91% are negative.
However, nearly 2/3 of those reviews (63k) are written in S.Chinese, with 97% of them being… https://t.co/sbnSxRdraW— Daniel Ahmad (@ZhugeEX) August 13, 2023
Chinese players have been unable to play Overwatch 2 (or any Blizzard games aside from the NetEase co-developed Diablo Immortal) for nearly eight months following the end of Blizzard and NetEase’s 14-year distribution agreement back in January 2023. The breakup between Blizzard and NetEase was messy, with both companies issuing statements accusing the other as being the reason a new agreement or contract extension couldn’t be reached. Blizzard games are still largely inaccessible in China as a result, as Blizzard searches for a new distribution partner in the region for its games.
