Overwatch 2 heads to Steam

In a surprise, yet disappointing announcement, Rockstar Games is releasing the original Red Dead Redemption for the PS4(Opens in a new window) and Nintendo Switch(Opens in a new window) on Aug. 17.

Blizzard Entertainment is gearing up to release the sixth season of Overwatch 2 into the marketplace. If you’re eager to dive into the season, then anything marketing-wise might catch your attention. Well, it looks like one piece of marketing material managed to get out to the public before its actual scheduled release. The best part about this is that the actual president of Blizzard Entertainment was reportedly the individual responsible for the leak. Now fans are getting a quick peek into some of the upcoming season six skins.

Millennials who know how to properly pronounce Matt Groening’s last name have their best motivation yet to play Fortnite: The cast of animated series Futurama, including Bender, Fry, and Leela, are now part of Epic Games’ uber-crossover battle royale. The characters’ addition to Fortnite arrives alongside Hulu’s revival of Futurama after a decade of downtime.

According to the Singapore rating board, mini-games are coming back to the series with Mortal Kombat 1, and we even have a description of one of the modes.

It’s the battle of the free FPS games, as Valve’s Team Fortress 2 has briefly overtaken Blizzard’s Overwatch 2 in terms of concurrent Twitch viewers. With multiple reasons for the spike in viewers that overtook OW2, and the Blizzard shooter’s impending Steam release, it looks like it could be in for some friendly competition with Team Fortress 2 going forward.

Severed Lands is an upcoming MMORPG that promises to immerse players in a world divided by contrasting societies, meant to shape the world through community involvement. The game is set on a continent split between two distinct societies: Siparia and The Pitts, and plans to feature solo and group PvE content while predominantly catering to a hardcore PvP crowd.

In what looks like a first, Blizzard will offer some of its games on Valve's Steam store.

Things are arguably better for Blizzard than they have been for a while given the successful launch of Diablo IV, but what about another game that recently launched, Overwatch 2? Things aren’t so rosy there. Blizzard recently canned the game’s paid PvE component, and according to the latest Activision Blizzard earnings report, despite going free-to-play and delivering a fairly steady cadence of new content, Overwatch 2 is already starting to bleed players.

Blizzard games will be coming to Steam, starting with Overwatch 2 on 10th August, giving PC gamers an option outside of Battle.net for where they buy and play their Blizzard games.

Blizzard is bringing a selection of its PC games over to Steam, starting with Overwatch 2. The free-to-play team-based shooter is headed to Valve's gaming client on August 10, in what appears to be a change in Blizzard's strategy due to its impending acquisition by Microsoft and the low player engagement the game has garnered in recent times. The Windows PC version of Overwatch 2 and other games from the publisher is largely restricted to its Battle.net launcher — a hot topic for most PC gamers, who prefer having all their games on one platform and hate having to juggle between them. The Steam version will also include the niceties of unlockable achievements and cross-platform multiplayer.

Overwatch 2 will be available for all players on Steam, becoming the first of hopefully many Blizzard titles to join the online gaming platform. 

For a while now, Blizzard fans on PC have had to begrudgingly put up with Battle.net, the developer's very own launcher that it uses to boot up pretty much every game released by Activision Blizzard. It's a pain in the neck for any PC player to have to constantly download launchers for different games, but Battle.net is a particularly annoying example of a developer forcing its fans to put up with a subpar launcher when Steam is already installed on 90 percent of computers at this point.