Overwatch’s Crazy Popularity And Most Lusted-After ‘Ships Revealed By Tumblr

Overwatch is a big deal, with over 30 million players registered and a billion dollars generated for publisher Activision Blizzard, but the game is an extra big deal on Tumblr. Any brave soul who's ventured onto the infamous blogging platform recently knows Overwatch absolutely dominates Tumblr, with a seemingly-endless supply of art, fan faction, and other nerdery produced daily.

Well, the staff of Tumblr have revealed some specifics about the Overwatch juggernaut. For the 358-day period beginning May 16, 2016 and ending May 23, 2017, the #Overwatch tag was used over 150 million times on Tumblr, making it the second-most trending tag of the year. It even beat out generic tags like #GIF and #Art. The second most popular game-related tag was #Pokemon, all the way down at number 20. Overwatch has been the top video game on Tumblr for 29 weeks straight at this point.

Now, let's get to what you're really here for -- which Overwatch ships are most popular on Tumblr? For the hopelessly out-of-touch folks who don't spend their days thinking about cartoon characters doing it, that stands for relationships. Tumblr loves mashing fictional characters into awkward pairs, and they're particularly crazy about coming up with strange Overwatch couplings. Here's the top 10 pairings, ranked by what percentage of the overall shipping-related posts they appear in:

1) McHanzo - McCree x Hanzo | 35.03%

2) Reaper:76 - Reaper x Soldier:76 | 17.03%

3) Pharmercy - Pharah x Mercy | 12.69%

4) Widowtracer - Widowmaker x Tracer | 9.08%

5) Roadrat - Roadhog x Junkrat | 8.82%

6) Genyatta - Genji x Zenyatta | 6.76%

7) Gency - Genji x Mercy | 5.84%

8) Meihem - Mei x Junkrat | 2.48%

9) Mercykill - Mercy x Reaper | 1.17%

10) Mercy76 - Mercy x Soldier:76 | 1.10%

Well, some of those are fairly predictable. Even those of us who aren't interested in video game characters bumping polygonal uglies have probably stumbled across the occasional piece of McHanzo or Widowtracer art. But Mei and Junkrat? No Tumblr, bad Tumblr. Go think about what you've done. On second thought, don't.

You can check out WWG's Overwatch coverage here, and our extensive back catalog of stories, right here.

[via Tumblr Staff]