Dankeepsie

Overwatch has always been the better game. It is built on a superior engine that is specifically made for FPS, it is more responsive, far more balanced, sound design is still one of the best in the FPS market and the maps are more thought-out than the generic and immemorable maps you get on Rivals.

So why did Rivals take the helm for 8 months? Because it was the brand new shiny thing based on a much-loved Marvel franchise. Less than a year on, however, the hype has well and truly died, and NetEase are trying to keep Rivals relevant simply by dishing out content quickly. It is quantity over quality. It is fast food over gourmet experience. There is no balance or uniqueness to Rivals' heroes, and how could it be when you're releasing a new Hero every month and breaking an already unbalanced game even further?

While the current Blizzard team isn't the same revered developer of the nineties and noughties, it still employs some of the most talented developers in the industry. I am not going to defend ABK and Microsoft's predatory monetisation here, which make me sick, but from a gameplay mechanics and design philosophy, the team responsible for Overwatch are still some of the best in their genre. On the other hand, we have NetEase, a company best known, prior to Rivals, for developing incredibly low quality cash grab mobile games which died quickly.

Last but not least, we shouldn't forget; Overwatch is nearly a decade old. I don't know many games which would have survived this long, and I very much wonder if Rivals would even exist 3 years from now on, let alone 10 years.

PS: Battle.net to Steam ratio for Overwatch is 68/32. This puts Overwatch PC player numbers comfortably above Rivals. This is based on samples taken from EU/NA/Asia servers at random times, based on 600+ samples. This would put 30-day average PC numbers for Overwatch at 92,282 against Rivals' 65,879.