Blizzard bring down Overwatch ban hammer on 10,000 cheaters

Overwatch might be the world’s premier defense agency, but the game itself isn’t immune to hackers. In response, Blizzard have banned a total of 10,000 cheating accounts in a recent ban wave. 

As we hurtle towards Overwatch 2, it’s pretty apparent that one of the features Blizzard need to implement is a more reliable ban system.

While the devs have promised to tackle smurfs when the new title releases, the current generation of Overwatch players are having to deal with a seemingly never-ending onslaught of bots plaguing their games.

Thankfully, though, it looks like there’s going to be more of an active attempt to clamp down on rule-breakers throughout the coming months.

Blizzard discuss Overwatch ban system

In a recent community discussion surrounding the issue of hackers and bot accounts, Blizzard’s Community Manager, Josh Nash, has shed some light on the subject.

He writes that the team “want to start being a bit more communicative on this subject in general,” noting that “while action has constantly been going on behind the scenes, it can be hard to understand or gauge how seriously we take hacking if we don’t talk about it from time to time.”

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Focusing on large-scale ban waves due to the sophistication of high-level hackers, he drops some shocking figures.  The Overwatch team is “banning around a thousand accounts for cheating every week,” and on 24 May “rolled out a ban wave that affected more than 10,000 accounts.”

Encouraging players to use the in-game report system to highlight any illegal exploits, he concludes with: “we want to remind everyone that one of Blizzard’s core values is to ‘Play Nice, Play Fair.'”

It’s reassuring to know that Blizzard are actively trying to combat the hacking issue. With games recently swamped with bot accounts using names like ‘Rose’ or ‘Christopher,’ jumping into a game of Quick Play feels a little bit like a chore.

As the Overwatch team continues to crack down on badly behaved players, it will be interesting to see how the game changes.