In its recent earnings report, Blizzard praised Diablo 4's rapid growth, making it the company's highest-grossing game of all time, despite poor community sentiment surrounding the latest patch.

The report itself praised this in four bullet points, even noting that net bookings for Diablo: Immortal are at their "highest level since January." Overwatch 2" is only one bullet point, perhaps as a punishment.

"While engagement and player investment in Overwatch 2 declined quarter-over-quarter, the Overwatch team is looking forward to the August 10 release of Overwatch 2: Invasion. This will be the largest seasonal update to date and will include new PvE story missions, new game modes, a new hero progression system, and additional heroes.

When thinking about the community's reaction to the patch, "engagement and investment in players" doesn't really come to mind; as PC Gamer's Tyler Colp pointed out last month, the $15 price tag did little but anger fans. He also wrote about the community's reaction to the news that these missions weren't even routine, seasonal additions. They didn't like that either.

If anything, the update will certainly bring players back to tinkering, but this half-hearted invasion of story missions will only remind them of "what could have been."

More beneficial for "Overwatch 2," however, would be that it will finally join Valve's Steam on August 10, the exact same date. There is no mention of Steam at all in the report, but one imagines that "we hope our competitors' entry into the platform will help," which probably won't work.

That's not entirely fair; Blizzard says of the move that it wants to "break down barriers and make it easier for all players to find and enjoy our games." And that is a wise move in light of the decline of the "Overwatch" series. If you don't already play other Blizzard games, why bother downloading another launcher when Steam has so many killer free-to-play options?

Given that the PvE missions are pricier, thinner, less frequent, and shorter than originally promised, I'm not sure they form part of some sort of grand revival of the franchise. Still, I really enjoyed "Overwatch" in 2016. It will be interesting to see what Blizzard has to say in its next earnings report.