Overwatch Bug Bans Players But Blizzard’s Fixing It

There’s a serious Overwatch bug that could cause you to lose Skill Rating and even your account. According to a post on the Blizzard forums by Game Director Jeff Kaplan, in “extremely rare cases” players can lose hundreds of SR points and even get banned from Seasonal Play. Fewer than 200 accounts have been affected by the bug and Blizzard is doing everything in their power to fix the issue as soon as they can. Anyone who’s been affected will have their ban removed so that their accounts will be able to finish out the season and won’t get perma banned.

“This bug is a high priority for our team, and we’re working on a fix to prevent further instances of it occurring as we speak,” Kaplan wrote.

According to reddit user Chromega1231, the bug is triggered when any player leaves a competitive match in the loading screen. The game gets stuck in a loop of trying to start a game, realizing there aren’t enough players, then recreating the game with the same 11 players. Players lose hundreds of SR points because of this feedback loop, which can eventually lead to a ban by the system. It’s one of those weird problems that comes from having a massive competitive game that just can’t be avoided. You can blame it on “spaghetti code” or an overlooked byproduct of a developer, but at the end of the day it’s just another problem gamers have to deal with.

There’s nothing more aggravating than encountering a bug when you’re playing an online game. Losing to another person who outperforms you is one thing, but getting an “L” because of an unexpected computer hiccup is the worst feeling. Whenever I encounter a bug, tiny or game-breaking, I let out a heavy sigh. I know that whatever happens in the next 15 minutes is entirely out of my control and will most likely leave me agitated, like a Widowmaker getting hooked by Roadhog.

Bugs are an inescapable reality of online games, and can turn into a huge problem when developers don’t fix them. Overwatch’s team are some of the brightest, quickest and best coders in the entire video game industry, but even they can encounter a problem they don’t know how to fix. Never forget, that McCree might look like a cowboy, but he’s just a string of zeros and ones inside a server in California. Sometimes, those numbers get screwed up in ways nobody could even imagine, causing insane bugs like this.

Back when Overwatch was still in its first year, if you fought on Temple of Anubis as Genji and ducked multiple times in a row under the spawn point, the game would crash. It couldn’t handle whatever was going on, and players capitalized on the bug to end games they didn’t think they could win. If anyone used this bug, Blizzard banned them, regardless if they were just testing it out.

Were you one of the players affected by the Overwatch bug? Tell us in the comments.