Overwatch Cheaters To Get Booted From The Game With No XP

In yet another example of Blizzard’s never-ending war against cheaters, the publisher recently announced that it is going to punish players who have been abusing an exploit in the game in order to receive easy experience points. As a result, anyone who wants to rise in the ranks and level up will have to do it through legitimate means.

The exploit in question has to do with the custom games option that Blizzard recently introduced. When choosing this option, players can basically become idle and still gain experience once the game is done. Up until this point, becoming idle or not participating would not end up booting out the player. In a recent forum post by the game’s director Jeff Kaplan, he announced that this is about to change.

“It’s very disappointing to us that players abused the system to gain experience while inactive,” the forum post read. “As some of you have noticed, Skirmish in Custom Game no longer rewards experience. Also, the AFK timer is now in place in Skirmish mode (in Custom Game only). This change is rolling out over a 24 hour period and should be live in all regions by the end of today.”

Even with these measures in place, players who have a mind to take advantage of some of the game’s vulnerabilities will likely still continue their activities. With that being the case, Kaplan is also warning users that further punishments would be meted out for those who refuse to comply with Overwatch’s standards in gaming.

Having written that, Kaplan did stress that he would prefer if they didn’t get to that point, GameSpot reports. As such, he is asking for the cooperation of Overwatch players to make sure that cheaters are punished for their misdeeds. Said cheaters could be reported by others if they notice that a teammate was exploiting the vulnerability.