Last week, Overwatch launched a new game mode, called Stadium, as part of its 16th season. After a week playing the mode ahead of launch, I called it “the first thing that has felt truly new in the game since it came out.”
Well, it seems like players are enjoying the new taste. In a Director’s Take blog post, Blizzard announced today that, in the first week after launch, about half of all the play hours in Overwatch were spent in Stadium. “While we often see a big spike in play time shortly after a sparkly new event launches, play time in Stadium has been a bit stickier.”
That’s good news for a game that has been facing stiffer competition since December, largely in the form of Marvel Rivals, which was a smash hit of a hero shooter right out of the gate. Earlier this year, Overwatch introduced a new perks system that provided more progression within each match, which at the time felt like a major change. While that shifted up gameplay for the game’s core quick play and competitive modes, it wasn’t nearly as radical a departure for Overwatch 2 as Stadium.
Blizzard said the first week of launch led to 2.3 million Stadium matches (which translates to 7.8 million hours), more than doubling Overwatch Classic’s popularity.
When I spoke with Game Director Aaron Keller in group interviews ahead of the Stadium launch, he said the Overwatch team was investing heavily in Stadium, including the mode having its own separate resources and a fresh influx of new heroes and maps every season. Already, we’ve seen a couple of hotfix patches to address overpowered builds and heroes.
We’ll get the first big taste of that commitment to Stadium when Freja joins the chaos in the midseason patch. But that’s only the start.
Blizzard
After some time in Stadium, I noted that some team strategies had different viability than in mainline Overwatch. In particular, rush compositions felt a bit overtuned thanks largely to a combination of available heroes (especially tanks) and more compressed maps. I hoped that future hero additions would prioritize different macro strategies, “enabling more ranged compositions with heroes like Sigma and Zenyatta or dive compositions with Winston.”
As it turns out, Sigma and Zenyatta are joining the mode in season 17, along with Junkrat. That’s a big boost to ranged damage. Then in season 18, Stadium will add Winston, Sojourn and Brigitte, which should complement the mode’s existing heroes like Genji and Ana for more powerful dive setups.
Sure, it’s still just matchmaking, so most people are just picking whatever hero they feel like playing, probably without much thought to overall team synergy, but I like that the devs are giving us the ability to pursue those types of strategies, even if it’s rare for it to come together. And the new heroes are coming alongside new maps and modes, unranked crossplay, and an eventual draft mode over the next several seasons.
Overall, it’s a bunch of good news for a mode that seems to be a hit. I’ve been playing the mode semi-frequently since launch (not wanting to neglect the standard modes so I can play Freja, who feels like the most fun new hero since Kiriko) — the mode varies from thrilling to rage-inducing, but it’s certainly never boring. The updates announced today are a strong signal that Overwatch is poised to keep the momentum going.
