The beta period for Blizzard’s team-based shooter, Overwatch, has ended, with the game formally launching on May 24. In the meantime, they have released guidelines on how they’re going to handle cheating, including a warning warning about the game’s best players.
Though Blizzard themselves will be monitoring for cheaters in Overwatch, the community is encouraged to report suspicious behaviour. So I couldn’t help but chuckle at this guideline about players who excel at the game:
“Some players are just really good at first-person shooters. Through practice and years of experience, these players’ movements and reaction times can occasionally appear unnatural (if not physically impossible) to those who may not have been exposed to that particular level of play before.”
In other words: don’t report people who kick your arse.
It sounds like Blizzard is taking a hard stance, promising that anyone found cheating, even if it’s a first offence, will be permanently banned.
“Not only does cheating undermine the spirit of fair play that all of our products are based on, but it works to diminish the fun and enjoyment of others,” said the company in a forum post.
Besides asking players to submit reports to hacks@blizzard.com, rather than publicly shaming players, Blizzard warned that glitches can sometimes be misinterpreted as cheating. For example:
“Our in-game camera system does not always play back footage at the same fidelity as real-time gameplay (this loss in fidelity applies to the killcam, Plays of the Game, Highlights, and — to a lesser extent — the spectator camera as well). This can sometimes result in a player’s aim appearing more snappy or less fluid in playback than it did in-game.”
I wish From Software was taking cheating a seriously in Dark Souls 3 as Blizzard appears to be taking with Overwatch!
Comments
16 responses to “Blizzard: Sometimes Those Overwatch Players You Think Are Cheating Are ‘Just Really Good’”
Blizzard hasnt actually done anything yet though. They have also never done a good job of stopping hackers in games like WoW.
they’ve banned top raiding guilds going for world firsts when they have exploited which include 3days to 2weeks (enough to take them out of the race) as well as a revoking of acheesements and loot.
they do ban people quiet often, but massive banwaves are too few and far between, however they seem to be increasing them when it comes to Diablo 3. Last season Blizz did 2 banwaves 4 weeks before the end of season and another one two weeks before end they were perma-bans. On community on the US servers i believe went from 1000+ to 48 in the blink of an eye, with some of those people actualy streaming on twitch when they got banned for botting.
Of course, but I mean, they did nothing to people using speed hacks in BGs for years.
Blizzard’s always late ban waves. The problem is that you get months of cheating in the interim.
In the season just previous to the current one in Diablo 3, cheating was all over the leaderboards. The really competitive players have to endure this for months on end until the wave hits. That’s supposed to make players feel better? They’ve no idea what their actual rank is for months and then a small crazed window before season end with which to get final ranking?
As for Overwatch (beta) the kill cam can look really shady, more so on some characters than others. The toxic perception is there and politely pinning the blame on their in-game camera’s failings (even spectating? really?) won’t do a thing.
Fix game fidelity, fix the concerns. Perception dictates the reality and they’ve lost the perception battle already.
the system to show you how you died(killcam), doesnt show how you died. #onejob
“Some players are just really good at first-person shooters. Through practice and years of experience, these players’ movements and reaction times can occasionally appear unnatural (if not physically impossible) to those who may not have been exposed to that particular level of play before.”
so match making is realy, really broken? #wtf
Because of the beta everyone would have been rank 1 so starting in the same matches so you would have cross over there.
Matchmaking will get better as time goes on. Really good people will be much higher level than casual scrubs like myself. As the levels separate, matching will improve.
Not forgetting the 1 factor that has plagued online gaming since the dawn of time lag..
Another thing to take into account for consoles is that there will also be players using mouse/keyboard adaptors.
There are plenty of controller users who can wipe the floor with mouse & keyboard users… Mouse & keyboard might be more suited to such games, but it’s absolutely not an ‘I Win’ setup.
I’d LOVE to be able to play shooters with a controller the way some people I know can.
You can use KontrolFreek, i tried that on console controller and its help with aiming in FPS. Not sure whether you can achieve pro level with this.
lol that ‘esports pro’ shouldn’t have been snapping to revived players, or players who had just respawned on the opposite side of the map.
I have some younger mates who are ex-pro players who are constantly getting banned from BF servers because they are …. just …. bloody …. good.
Back in the Quakeworld days we didn’t shut awesome players out. We learned from those better players to get better ourselves. It’s sad that nowadays the first response by server admins who meet people who are on a whole different level above them is to ban them …. because “no-one can possibly be better than me!!”
So Valve didn’t deal with LMAOBOX for what 2 years? And when they did, a whole bunch of pros got banned.
I stopped playing the entire CoD series because of the amount of hackers in MW2. I heard it got better with later games, but that was just vile. God, and speaking of wonky killcams.
Now Blizzard has hackers in a game that hasn’t yet been released.
Yet every time I read comments, people are always sooking that these companies just don’t do anything about them. Is it really as easy to get rid of them as people make out?
In some ways it makes me miss the old days of dedicated third party servers, where hackers could be kicked and banned all the time. Then I remember that I had to update the first MW (even though I preferred the vanilla set up), because I’d been banned from all the remaining vanilla servers. I didn’t troll or hack, I was just reasonably good.. Not even great, just good and I got banned. In Red Dead, Titanfall, and Homefront on console my inbox is full of hate mail. I got called a hacker in Red dead.. Was that even a thing?! So yeah, I’m prepared to believe a lot of people get accused of hacking who aren’t. I’m slightly better than average at shooters and I get accused often enough as it is.
It’s troubling how many people are entirely certain they’re able to assess stuff like this with a sideways glance and dichotomous thinking.
Looks like Blizzard did what they said they would. Even they know what the PC community is like and aren’t afraid to exile the scum.