Blizzard to Start Banning Players using Custom Games to Cheat
Overwatch has proven to be a very popular game and like all popular games there are always players who are out to try and game the system to improve their characters without actually putting in the time to do it correctly. Yesterday Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan posted on the Blizzard forums that using custom games to keep your characters active while you are away from the keyboard (AFK) will get you banned.
Kaplan wrote, “When we introduced the Game Browser and new Custom Game features we were excited to allow players to earn experience playing the game in unique and different ways. We also knew that there was the potential for this system to be exploited but we wanted to give everyone the benefit of the doubt before becoming overly restrictive with the system.”
Kaplan goes on to say that the Overwatch team is very disappointed that gamers have abused that system to gain experience when inactive. The result of this type of cheating is that Skirmish Custom Games no longer award experience to those who play. The Overwatch team has also added an AFK timer in Skirmish mode custom games.
That change will roll out over a 24 hour period and was live in all regions at the end of yesterday. Kaplan also wanted to make it crystal clear it that gaining experience while inactive is not a grey area. Kaplan wrote, “I’ve seen some discussion in the community and in the press on this topic and sometimes it gets talked about as if it is a grey area. Is this wrong or is this ok? Well, let me take a grey area and make it starkly black and white for you. Abusing and exploiting Custom Game or any other game mode to earn experience in Overwatch while inactive is NOT ok. The reason I want to be absolutely clear about this is because we are going to start to take disciplinary action against people who partake in these activities.”
Kaplan says don’t name your custom games in any way that suggests you are using them for farming experience while AFK, if you do you risk having your account banned, even if it is a joke. He also says that you shouldn’t join any matches that have names that sound like they might be used for farming, you could get your account banned. If players continue to abuse the system Kaplan says the end result will be experience gain will be turned off for custom games.