In its commitment to maintain a level playing field, Blizzard permanently banned 22,865 Overwatch accounts last month to begin the new year.
All of the banned Overwatch accounts hail from South Korea, majority of which are attached to PC bangs that are found in abundance within the region. According to reports, close to 10,000 accounts were banned in the first two weeks of January while the remaining bans were issued in the weeks to follow. Incidentally, Blizzard wiped out an additional 575 Overwatch accounts from the region on February 1.
While the move is commendable, it’s still too soon for the community to breathe a sigh of relief. The large number of cheaters being produced in Overwatch from South Korea is directly linked to PC bangs. Public gaming cafes in the country offer players anonymity which is bothersome. If one account is banned by Blizzard, it’s easy to simple create another and resume playing. This is also why the number of bans are so high every time.
Looking at January, Blizzard didn’t really ban over 22,000 players. It’s likely that most of them played on a single system which went on to produce multiple back-to-back accounts. There really needs to be a more efficient way of cleansing the game of cheaters.
Last month, the developer stated that “nuking” was a major problem on South Korean servers. Players force others to disconnect from ranked matches by spamming their IP addresses and clogging their internet connections. The severe lag either makes gameplay unplayable or results in a disconnection.
Blizzard assures that it’s doing everything in its power to curb Overwatch of players using illegal third-party software. The community is encouraged to report cheating players by using either the in-game report system or directly emailing Blizzard support.
Hopefully, the developer will come up with a better anti-cheat system in the future.
