In an attempt to combat cheating, over a quarter million players have been banned from Overwatch 2.
Looks like the waiting lobby for Overwatch 2 will be quite a bit emptier thanks to the recent purge done by Activision Blizzard to combat cheating. It would seem that the company has recently banned over 250000 players who have been found engaging in cheating, ‘griefing’, inappropriate naming, and, of course, disruptive chat.
To say that things have been rocky for Overwatch 2 is quite a bit of an understatement. When the game was first announced, many were hesitant to believe that the sequel was a thing, let alone that it would be replacing the original. One of the game’s more humorous “controversies” was the fact that it was the worst-rated game on Steam when it became available on the platform. However, one of the game’s more long-standing issues has been cheating. Unlike its predecessor, which was a paid game, Overwatch 2 has been struggling with griefing, cheating, and numerous other forms of misconduct.
That’s not to say that Activision Blizzard hasn’t attempted to remedy these issues; in fact, the company has implemented both a strict End User License Agreement and an in-game Code of Conduct. However, it would seem that both have done little to nothing to stop a large portion of the player base from completely disregarding them and wreaking havoc in-game. It would seem that the Overwatch team has finally said enough is enough, and has finally addressed the numerous griefers and cheaters.
Since its release back in 2022, Overwatch 2 has maintained a daily player count of roughly 1,570,000 players. However, after a wave of recent bans, that player count has dropped by over a quarter. This ban was a part of the Defense Matrix Initiative. This new initiative aims to address cheating, griefing, inappropriate naming, and disruptive chat and bans all players found guilty of engaging in such misconduct.
The initiative uses machine learning techniques to find and ban players who are found guilty. Unfortunately, it would seem that you don’t even have to engage in cheating in order to get banned; players who were in the same lobby as cheaters have been banned as well. It would seem that players who benefited from this would be banned along with the cheaters themselves.
While this battle against misconduct is impressive and many players will be grateful that Blizzard is taking a stand against cheating, sadly, much like the company’s other attempts, some players have already found a way to bypass the algorithm. That isn’t the only issue caused by the initiative, since due to many of the bans being issued by an algorithm, some innocent players have had their accounts banned despite not doing anything.
