Blizzard Has Banned 250,000 Overwatch 2 Cheaters, Claims Voice Chat Analyzing AI Can Often ‘Correct Negative Behaviour Immediately’

Overwatch 2

Are you sure they didn’t just quit?

Chances are good that you are like me and haven’t really given a rat’s ass about Overwatch in months at the least. Especially since May saw Blizzard reveal that the entire roadmap for the most unnecessary sequel in existence was out the window. The game has since seen a release on Steam, to rave reviews:

Overwatch 2

lol

Anyway, they made some changes to their text chat. Previously, there were three settings to choose from: unfiltered, mature, and friendly. Unfiltered was exactly what it says on the tin, and mature allowed some of the more common swear words, obviously sans-ethnic slurs gamer power words. Friendly, naturally, filtered out all of that. Their first upcoming change to text chat is the removal of the unfiltered setting, which they say “allowed harmful language and phrases that have no place in our community”. All players previously employing that setting have been moved to “mature”. They end by stating that the “online culture lexicon” is constantly evolving, and ask that players help by reporting altered or misspelled text. Also, they’re going after offensive nametags and custom games.

As for voice chat, they’ve employed a new AI to verify reports of disruptive players screaming invective into their microphones (a common occurrence in the game). This new AI is currently running globally. Blizzard claims that the technology “correct[s] negative behavior immediately, with many players improving their disruptive behavior after their first warning.”

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Also, they’ve been going ham on cheaters. They report having banned over 250,000 accounts for cheating. this is in addition to identifying accounts that regularly group with cheaters, having banned thousands of those as well.

Already, we’ve suspended and banned thousands of accounts verified as grouping with cheaters. The rollout of this system in regional tests has proven successful, and we’ll be expanding to new regions worldwide.

If you see something suspicious, please continue to report the cheaters and not others on the cheater’s team. Once the cheater is correctly identified, we’ll take action on the players grouped with the cheater separately as necessary.

Source: PC Gamer

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B. Simmons

Based out of Glendale California, Bryan is a GAMbIT's resident gaming contributor. Specializing in PC and portable gaming, you can find Bryan on his 3DS playing Monster Hunter or at one of the various conventions throughout the state.

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