Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: blizzard, cheating, custom game, farming, Jeff Kaplan, overwatch

Those Of You Farming In 'Overwatch', SURPRISE! Big Brother Was Watching

Yesterday we did a brief story about how the people farming in Overwatch due to the new lobby system was getting out of control, and at the end, I mentioned that the powers that be at Blizzard had to be watching and that allowing it was no mistake. A few hours later, Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan hit the forums and explained that the hammer would be coming down. He also confirmed what I suspected—that they expected as much from the player base, and that like any parent catching your hand in the cookie jar, he was sorely disappointed.

We are not naïve to player behavior and motivation. When we put this feature live, we had an internal escalation plan for how to combat this behavior. Today marks the first steps on that path. And in a lot of ways it really makes me sad. The feature is so much cooler and better for everyone if we do not have to put draconic restrictions on it. To fast forward a bit, the end of the escalation plan will result in experience gain being turned off in Custom Game. I really don't want to see us getting to that point. So I am going to ask for some help from the vast majority of you who are simply playing the game and having fun and not abusing it: please report those who are creating Custom Games with the intention of gaining experience while remaining inactive. If you select someone's Custom Game you get three options: Spectate, Join and Report. These options exist on all 3 platforms. Use the Report feature. It works.

There was no mention of banning or removing XP and Loot Box prizes for those who already cheated the system, but it wouldn't surprise me if we started hearing a flurry of complaints from people who have their precious rank and skins removed over the next couple days. What does surprise me is that after years of dealing with cheaters in World Of Warcraft, that no one at Blizzard saw this coming and decided to make sure it couldn't happen. Maybe deep down they thought the Overwatch community was better than that? If so, they just painfully learned that it isn't so, and now have to act much stricter than they did before against the bad eggs.

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