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Even as crowds are booing GOATS, Overwatch League viewers are holding strong

Watching Overwatch League means watching GOATS, but it doesn't seem to be scaring many viewers away

Overwatch Brigitte

While ‘dead game’ memes will never end – every title ends up with its Statlers and Waldorfs – Overwatch fans have had serious concerns over the rise of the GOATS meta and its effect on the competitive game. It’s to the point where live Overwatch League crowds are now booing GOATS compositions, but despite all that it doesn’t seen that viewership for the league is dropping to any significant degree.

While in week one viewers in season two were down compared to the first week of action in the inaugural season, that’s likely to be expected since it’s no longer the debut of an entire league. Average viewers in week two were actually a bit stronger this year than last, which suggests that watchers are sticking around despite the state of the meta.

The numbers from TwitchTracker were broken down by fans in the Competitive Overwatch subreddit recently, and averages for viewers, daily peaks, and weekly peaks were all up over last year’s week two. The one stat that’s down is the average of unique viewers, by about 100,000 – though at the same time, hours watched are up by over 300,000.

That all means that GOATS hasn’t killed interest in the competitive game, though it’s certainly possible that OWL would be bringing in more viewers if a more diverse meta was on show.

It’d certainly make existing viewers happier. Dexerto notes one particularly loud example, where the live crowd cheered the Houston Outlaws for pulling out the GOATS-breaking DPS, Tracer – only to drown the team in a sea of boos when it switched back moments later.

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Baptiste could be a GOATS-buster, though Blizzard’s never come down hard to discourage this particular meta. Whether the big changes across the roster have much effect remains to be seen.