Overwatch replay hack could expose cheaters in unexpected way

Players have revealed a hack that could make it easier to tell when someone is using cheats in Overwatch.

Watching a replay through the point of view of a suspected cheater has been the most common way players have tried to fight hackers in Overwatch, and there’s one hack that becomes a dead giveaway in replay mode.

User ‘J-Hack’ on Reddit pointed out the strange effect this hack had when they attempted to watch a replay of a suspected cheater. It seems that, whenever the hack was activated, the camera would switch to the POV another player.

The player in question is the Widowmaker: Whenever they line up their crosshairs to take a shot, the camera switches to another player’s POV.

J-Hack called it a “new” cheat, but Overwatch cheat expert ‘OWPD’ replied and said the POV changes in replay were intentional, and it was using tech that wasn’t new.

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“This tech is not something special at all just a flex really saying, ‘Hi, I can do this,'” OWPD explained, before showing how it can be used to switch your POV.

You would think that this hack, which makes it painfully obvious when someone is cheating, would make it easier for Blizzard to weed such users out – but so far, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

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Overwatch did introduce the ability to share replays on social media and with other players in a recent patch, but even if you send a replay to Blizzard, it’s still up to them to take action.

There is some hope that the new replay-sharing feature will help make cheating and hacking harder to pull off consistently in Overwatch, but it’s too soon to tell whether or not the new system is working or not.