How Blizzard Is Combating Korea’s Overwatch Hacking Problem

How Blizzard Is Combating Korea’s Overwatch Hacking Problem

As previously reported, cheating has been plaguing Overwatch‘s South Korean servers. Today, Blizzard Korea announced a new policy designed to combat that.

[Image via RealCPU]

To recap: Because of the way the net cafe business works in South Korea, Overwatch players there could walk into any PC bang and create a free Battle.net account to play. It wasn’t necessary to buy the game, as they were playing the cafe for hourly usage. This free account loophole led to hackers stockpiling burner accounts to hack the game and cheat. If that account got banned, no biggie, just use another freebie.

According to Blizzard (via tipster Sang), the way Battle.net accounts are used at Korean net cafes is now changing. This is a step toward dealing with the hacking problem plaguing the community.

Starting February 17, it will be necessary to log in with a Korean Battle.net account at the country’s PC bangs. Meaning? It won’t be possible to use those freebie accounts.

Korean Battle.net accounts require more personal information, including a Korean social security number. That means if someone is banned, then they will have to find another social security number to enter, which should deter hackers who previously could easily create another free one.

Blizzard announced that it will roll this same practice out for Diablo III and StarCraft II in South Korea at a later date.


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