Overwatch 2 has banned over 250,000 cheaters since it launched

11.09.2023 - 18:45 / rockpapershotgun.com

Overwatch 2 has banned a quarter of a million cheaters since it launched last October, Blizzard has revealed as they outlined incoming improvements aimed at cracking down on “disruptive behaviour”.

Blizzard said they had worked to improve their “zero tolerance” anti-cheat detection, resulting in over 250,000 Overwatch 2 accounts being banned since the game’s release.

Alongside cheaters, accounts that “conspicuously group with cheaters in an attempt to benefit from the cheating” had also been targeted, with thousands of accounts suspended or banned as a result. The efforts taken in looking at those who group with cheaters will apparently roll out to additional regions around the world, following its success in catching accounts.

Other incoming improvements to Overwatch 2 outlined by the game’s latest ‘Defense Matrix’ blog post include the removal of the Unfiltered text chat setting - which allowed any language to be used - leaving the semi-filtered ‘Mature’ and the fully-censored default of ‘Friendly’ as the two remaining options for players.

“Starting this season, we are removing the Unfiltered text chat option from the social menu, since this allowed harmful language and phrases that have no place in our community,” the game’s devs explained.

Voice chat will also receive some updates, with Blizzard rolling out the machine-learning algorithms used to automatically catch and discipline offensive language users to more regions.

“We've seen this technology correct negative behaviour immediately, with many players improving their disruptive behaviour after their first warning,” they wrote.

As with text and voice chat, Blizzard also plans to crack down further on inappropriate names used in both player BattleTags and custom games, with accounts that post “malicious” custom games being dealt with accordingly. An incoming change will require accounts to have played 25 unranked or arcade matches before naming custom games, in an effort to stamp out both malicious names and attempts at using the feature to post advertising.

Urging players to continue reporting cases of cheating and “disruptive behaviour” they see, Overwatch 2’s devs added that they would work to improve the timely feedback of player reports, including more consistent notifications about action taken as the result of reports provided when players log in.

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