Overwatch 2 Players Face Bans For Leaving Games They Never Left

Overwatch 2 outlined several new rules and penalties it would be implementing in season 10 to help curate a less hostile player environment on April 10. But since the season began last week, players have been reporting bans that would typically be applied to someone leaving a game early being implemented for seemingly no reason. Blizzard’s rules already seemed to punish people out of context, but according to the company, these bans have been given in error.

Users on the Blizzard forums have been posting threads reporting they’d been banned from Overwatch 2’s ranked mode as if they’d left a match. For some, this started as a 15-minute ban, then repeated to the point where some users were banned for the entire season. Users note a queuing problem in which the game couldn’t connect them to a match, which I’ve personally experienced while playing Quick Play and Mirrorwatch on the night of April 23. Fans hypothesize the game could have registered those failed queues as leaving a match.

Whatever the case, Blizzard has put out a statement saying it’s looking into these issues and asked players not to submit any further ban appeals until they receive a direct update from the company. The full post on the forums reads as follows:

Hi all,

Thanks for the reports!

We’re currently investigating leaver penalties applying incorrectly in some cases and will provide further updates here once we know more.

Please do not submit appeals for this as we will address it for all affected players rather than reviewing individual cases.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

As we talked about when Blizzard announced these leaver penalties, this is the kind of issue you deal with when bans get thrown out for people who disconnect from a match, regardless of whether it’s from quitting out of the game or server issues. Hopefully, this will be resolved quickly and painlessly. Overwatch 2 fans have already been dealing with enough arbitrary bans following an uptick in bans related to profanity at the beginning of season 10.