Overwatch’s open beta finished a couple of days ago, racking up over 9.7 million players and breaking a record along the way. While the only issues I faced during the beta connection drops, it seems Blizzard is already playing hardball in one specific area: cheating. Anyone who has been identified as using bots, programs or anything else that gives him or herself an unfair advantage will be permanently banned. No three strikes, no slap on the wrist, no warning.
“We’ve always taken cheating in Blizzard games very seriously, and that stance is no different for Overwatch. “Play nice; play fair” is one of our core values as a company, and it’s something we’ve taken to heart not only when designing the game, but also as we’ve developed our plans to support it and our players after launch. What does this mean for Overwatch? If a player is found to be cheating—or using hacks, bots, or third-party software that provides any sort of unfair advantage—that player will be permanently banned from the game. Full stop. Not only does cheating undermine the spirit of fair play that all of our products are based on, but it works to diminish the fun and enjoyment of others. While we are unlikely to publicly acknowledge when accounts are closed as a result of cheating or using unauthorized programs, we have and will continue to monitor Overwatch for exploitative behavior, as well as take action as needed to preserve the integrity of game.”
There is no information as to how hackers will be identified by the server itself but an email address was given to which gamers can report hackers. Such reports will then be taken into consideration with suspected hackers being carefully evaluated, via the in-game camera system, before being banned or not. Furthermore the developer team have also decided to introduce a similar way of reporting hackers underneath the existing “report” function in the game client itself.
However before you report people for suspected hacking, Blizzard did point out some things you should know, key among them being:
“Some players are just really good at first-person shooters. Through practice and years of experience, these players’ movements and reaction times can occasionally appear unnatural (if not physically impossible) to those who may not have been exposed to that particular level of play before.”
Source: Battle.net Forums
