About how many players joined the original Overwatch open beta before release? The answer is 9.7 million players. Blizzard reported that more than 9.7 million people participated in the open beta held shortly before Overwatch launched in 2016.
The open beta ran from May 5 to May 9, 2016, and was available to registered users of the Battle.net client. Its popularity was so great that Blizzard extended the event by one extra day. The figure became an important sign of the game’s unusually strong pre-release interest.
Overwatch had already drawn attention through its character-focused trailers, colorful team-based design, and earlier closed-beta testing. The open beta let a much larger audience try its six-versus-six matches, objective-based maps, and roster of distinct heroes before buying the full game.
The number is sometimes confused with launch sales or later player counts. It refers specifically to participants in the pre-release open beta, not the number of copies sold or the total audience accumulated over Overwatch’s lifetime.