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Blizzard bans "worst" griefer it has encountered in Overwatch

Blizzard bans "worst" griefer it has encountered in Overwatch

Publisher and developer Blizzard has taken action against the current and all future accounts of an Overwatch player who griefed the matches of "thousands of players".

This news was revealed by the Blizz_Griffin account on Reddit on a post in which popular streamers TimTheTatMan explained in a video that he might stop broadcasting the game because this one player kept coming into his game and interfering with it.

This account would "stream snipe" games, which is when someone watches a stream then join the particular match and attempt to ruin it for other players.

"We have recently taken action against this player due to pervasive griefing across multiple accounts. This player has been permanently banned across all and future accounts from Overwatch," the firm wrote.

"The reason we are sharing this information is because after investigating thoroughly due to the reports you all have shared with us on social media, we have discovered that the player is one of the worst offenders we have come across. They have a large number of separate accounts with copious reports each, all of which have been previously suspended for extended periods of time and one of which is permanently banned.

"To be clear this player is being banned, not for their hero choice, but rather for systematically ruining Overwatch games for thousands of players.

"We think it’s important to note that players like this are EXTREMELY rare in Overwatch and the action we’re taking today will be a positive step forward.

"We recognise that not finding this player faster is an unfortunate failure of our ever-developing reporting system and we’ve already taken steps to quickly eliminate outliers like this in the future.

"Your reports in-game and on social media continue to help us daily in our quest to eliminate toxicity and griefing in Overwatch. Let’s continue to work together as a community to make Overwatch better."

This is the latest example of Blizzard having to fight back against toxic elements of the Overwatch community. Game director Jeff Kaplan has been open about his team's struggle with negative aspects of the title's fanbase. Blizzard even had to set up a strike force to deal with such toxicity.

This is something of a trend in games right now, with the likes of PUBG Corp with Playerunknown's Battlegrounds and Ubisoft for Rainbow Six: Siege introducing features by which players can report other users who are attempting to ruin the game with hacks, cheating or just being toxic.

Just imagine what these massive talented development teams could be up to if they weren't forced to deal with gamers being morons.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.