Pornhub Insights recently reported a large increase in searches for “Overwatch” when the game entered public beta on May 4th. At the time of our Watching Over Overwatch story, we recorded a peak search increase of 817% on May 5. Much of the increase was driven by news coverage of the overly-sexualized content found in earlier beta versions.
Our statisticians continued to monitor Overwatch searches throughout the month, and found a second increased occurred when the final game officially launched on May 24th. As the following chart illustrates, the post-beta searches peaked 1102% on May 9th before slowly tapering off, then jumped again 947% above average on May 25th.
Please note that the index value representing average Overwatch searches has been re-calculated for this chart to include the new search volumes in the month of May. Based on the earlier average, searches on May 9 would have increased as much as 5143%.
