I have over 200 videos on Watch Dogs 2, one of the games that built this channel, so the massive resurgence it is having in 2026, its biggest moment in nearly a decade, has me grinning before I have even opened the graph. If you have been here a while you already know why the grin is there, and if you have not, the story is how big the comeback actually is, why it is happening, why the game genuinely holds up, and what people are saying about it right now.
How big the comeback actually is
The numbers are genuinely mad for a game from 2016, because Watch Dogs 2 just peaked at around 16,220 concurrent players on Steam in July 2026, its highest count in roughly ten years, since it launched, and that came after a jump of over 1,100 percent in a single week. A near-decade-old Ubisoft open-world game does not quietly wake up like that on its own, which is why the spike is worth unpacking rather than treating as a rounding error on a summer weekend.
The sale, and the hole GTA 6 left in the calendar
Two things are driving the spike, and they feed into each other, which is the part a player graph cannot show you on its own. The first is the sale, because Watch Dogs 2 went on a massive Steam Summer Sale discount, 95 percent off, dropping it to around £2.49, and at that price it stops being a purchase and becomes an impulse, since you would spend more on a coffee. When a genuinely good open-world game costs less than a sandwich, a lot of people take the punt, and the word spreads fast enough that a ten-year-old city suddenly looks busy again.
The second driver is the GTA 6 wait, which is the interesting one, because with GTA 6 due in November 2026 there is a GTA-shaped hole in everyone’s schedule, and people are hunting for something to scratch that itch. Watch Dogs 2, with its sunny, chaotic, drive-anywhere San Francisco sandbox, is one of the closest and cheapest things to that GTA feeling you can buy right now, and the community has openly connected the dots, since folks want a modern open-world playground while they wait and this one is two quid. If you are in that camp, I put together a proper list of options in what to play before GTA 6, and Watch Dogs 2 belongs near the top of it.
Why the city still holds people once the sale ends
A cheap sale and good timing get people in the door, and they do not keep 16,000 people playing, which is why the real story is that the game holds up, and it is worth saying exactly why Watch Dogs 2 is special. It is a third-person, open-world hacking sandbox set in a gorgeous recreation of the San Francisco Bay Area, and you play as Marcus Holloway, a young hacker who joins the hacktivist crew DedSec, with the whole city sitting there as a toy. You can hack cars to send them lurching into traffic, control cranes and cherry pickers, fly a quadcopter drone to scout, drive a little RC jumper into a vent, and pull the personal data of everyone you walk past. The systems bounce off each other and chaos just emerges, which is exactly why it was so good to make videos in, and why I am still glad the city woke up.
The masterstroke was the tone, because the first Watch Dogs was grim, grey and humourless, a brooding revenge story, and Watch Dogs 2 threw all of that out and went the other way, colourful, funny, hopeful, soaked in hacker and internet culture, with a crew you actually like hanging around with. It is a game with a sense of joy, which is rarer than the genre likes to admit, and once you add seamless co-op so you can cause that chaos with a mate, you have one of the most purely fun open-world sandboxes Ubisoft has ever made. A lot of people, myself very much included, think it is peak Ubisoft open-world design, and I am not saying that because a discount told me to rediscover a city I never left.
Why I love it, and why it was huge here
I am not going to be coy about the attachment, because Watch Dogs 2 is one of my favourite games to have ever put on the channel, and the numbers back that up, since I have over 200 videos on it. My Watch Dogs 2 Free Roam series was a proper phenomenon here, some of the most-watched content I have ever made, because the game is a perfect chaos engine for exactly the kind of open-world mayhem I love, and every session the systems would collide into something I never planned, which is content gold. If you want to see what I mean, I finally got it: Watch Dogs 2 Free Roam is a good place to start, and the whole run lives on the Watch Dogs 2 hub. Seeing this game get its flowers again, a decade later, genuinely makes me happy, which is a soppy sentence I am leaving in because it is true.
Best in the series, and the wish for more of it
The conversation around this resurgence is telling, because the overwhelming consensus is that Watch Dogs 2 is the best game in the series, warmer and more fun than the miserable first game, and widely considered a clear step above Watch Dogs Legion, which chased a play-as-anyone gimmick and lost some of the soul in the process. I dug into Legion’s own situation in is Watch Dogs Legion worth it in 2026 and the talk of a Watch Dogs revival, if you want the state of the wider franchise rather than another lap of San Francisco. Underneath the nostalgia there is a quiet plea that people want more of this, more colourful, joyful, systems-rich open worlds with actual personality, the kind Ubisoft used to make before everything became a bloated icon-farm. A ten-year-old game outperforming its launch is the market sending a very clear message about what it actually wants, and I have been on that side of the message since the free-roam videos, not since the graph.
What I would still do at two quid
If you have never played Watch Dogs 2, this is the moment, because at around £2.49 it is one of the best-value games you can buy full stop, it has aged remarkably well, and it is the perfect sunny, chaotic sandbox to lose yourself in while the GTA 6 countdown ticks down. Play it solo or drag a friend into co-op, and just cause problems in the nicest-looking San Francisco in gaming, which is the invitation I would have written even if the player count had stayed asleep. For the wider open-world picture I keep an honest list in the best open-world games to play solo, though for two quid Watch Dogs 2 answers the question on its own. I certainly enjoyed it, about two hundred times over, and the spike can catch up whenever it likes, because I was not waiting on the graph to enjoy the city.
FAQ
Why is Watch Dogs 2 popular again in 2026?
Watch Dogs 2 is popular again because a Steam Summer Sale took it 95 percent off, down to about £2.49, which is basically an impulse buy, and because GTA 6 is due in November 2026, so a lot of players want a modern, chaotic, third-person open-world sandbox to fill the wait. San Francisco fits that bill, and the result was its highest player count in nearly a decade, which is the bit I have been grinning about since the graph moved.
How big is the Watch Dogs 2 player spike?
Watch Dogs 2 hit a peak of around 16,220 concurrent players on Steam in July 2026, its highest in roughly ten years since the 2016 launch, after a jump of over 1,100 percent in a single week. For a game this old that is a genuinely remarkable second wind, and I am treating the number as the headline rather than a rounding error I can shrug past.
Is Watch Dogs 2 worth it in 2026?
Yes, absolutely, especially on sale, because it is a breezy, colourful, endlessly fun open-world hacking sandbox that has aged really well, and at around £2.49 it is one of the best-value games you can buy right now. It is single-player with optional seamless co-op, so you can play it solo or mess about with a friend, which is how I have been treating the city for years.
Is Watch Dogs 2 the best game in the series?
Most people think Watch Dogs 2 is the best in the series, and I agree, because it fixed the grim, humourless tone of the first game with a fun, hopeful, hacker-culture vibe, and it is widely considered a big step above Watch Dogs Legion. If you only play one game in the series, make it this one, and I say that as someone who already put the hours in rather than as someone who arrived with the sale.
Is Watch Dogs 2 like GTA?
In spirit, yes, Watch Dogs 2 is like GTA, because it is a third-person, drive-anywhere, cause-chaos open-world sandbox set in a beautiful recreation of the San Francisco Bay Area, and the twist is the hacking, where you control cars, cranes, drones and phones. It is one of the closest things to a GTA-style playground while you wait for GTA 6, which is a compliment I would still give it on a week when nobody else was looking.
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