Players invested 8.34B hours into Blizzard titles in 2024, says studio

Blizzard this week released its End-Of-Year Review report, in which it revealed details about how players engaged with its titles in 2024. To that end, it revealed several stats about player accomplishments in its various games, including World of Warcraft, Diablo and Overwatch. According to the studio, players invested around 8.34 billion hours of time in its games total — or about 952,000 years.

Some of the stats are a bit silly, such as the one revealing that Overwatch 2 players spent over 203 years on the game’s new clash maps, or that Diablo IV saw 480 million player deaths. The studio also reveals more sober stats, such as the aforementioned playtime, as well as the $12.3 million it donated to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation out of the proceeds from its sale of the “Pink Mercy” skin in Overwatch 2.

Given that it’s been a tricky year for live-service titles, Blizzard maintaining consistent interest in its own live-service games is notable. 2024 has seen the announcements of the closure of titles such as Concord, XDefiant, Foamstars and Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. But Blizzard’s titles appear to maintain consistent enough player attention to post such high stats.

Blizzard president Johanna Faries said in a statement, “2024 was also a big year for Blizzard releases, including World of Warcraft’s multi-expansion story arc, the Worldsoul Saga, with the launch of The War Within, followed by a truly amazing anniversary celebration that spanned the entire Warcraft universe including WoW Modern and Classic, Hearthstone, and Warcraft Rumble… Earlier this year, we were overjoyed to bring Blizzard games back to mainland China in partnership with NetEase. We love being able to serve our players in China once more and to successfully welcome so many back to both World of Warcraft and Hearthstone in the region.”