Overwatch 2’s fight against cheaters and bad player behavior continues on, and while it’s likely a never-ending war, Blizzard is opening its latest player behavior-focused dev blog with a victorious claim against bad apples: The studio has banned over 500K cheaters and either banned or suspended another 40K accomplices, all while promising new anti-cheat tools to stop players from using hacks outright.
While the digital slaughter of cheaters is the headline for the post, there are other efforts to continue to make the shooter better for fair players. Among them are new restrictions for console players who use banned peripherals, new options to directly mute the text chat or voice chat of teammates or opponents on the scoreboard, and an update to the streamer protect feature that limits the “Hide My Name” function unless players have won 1,750 games; this update assumes there are streamers with that much in-game time still streaming the game, while targeting trolls but not accounting for smaller streamers who may have hitched their wagon to the FPS.
The post also talks up the earlier discussed expansion of the Avoid As Teammate list coming in Season 12 while explaining how its behavior will change based on rank. In short, those below grand master rank should see every name on their list ignored, while players in the higher competitive ranks may see lower priority ignored players land in their queue, though there will be the option to pin three names to the top of the list.
And speaking of Season 12, it’s officially live as of today.
This extraterrestrial is ready for an extraordinary season 🧑🚀✨
🚀 New Support Hero: Juno
🌪️ New Mythic Anubis Reaper
⚔️ New Core Game Mode: Clash
🤩 New Battle Pass & Shop Skins
🏆 Competitive Rank ResetJourney into Season 12: New Frontiers when it launches Aug 20 💫 pic.twitter.com/tRgVgMl9k8
— Overwatch (@PlayOverwatch) August 14, 2024
