Blizzard bans 250,000 Overwatch 2 accounts in cheating crackdown

Over 250,000 accounts have been officially banned by Blizzard for cheating and hacking in Overwatch 2.

Overwatch has been at war against cheaters since its introduction, and in 2022 Blizzard aimed to bring the fight directly to the hackers by releasing its purpose-built ‘Defense Matrix’ anti-cheat initiative.

The system has seen various improvements, with devs reporting that they have been taking serious actions every week to crack down on in-game cheaters, such as banning 100,000 players in April 2023.

In the latest update, they have revealed that over 250,000 Overwatch 2 accounts have been banned due to the outcome of their investigations into nefarious players.

Why have 250,000 Overwatch 2 bans been carried out?

Blizzard announced that the Overwatch 2 players were banished from the game due to cheating and botting, where they stated they are “combating cheating at its source.”

The developers further revealed that they have also suspended and banned thousands of players that “conspicuously group with cheaters,” who actively team with hackers in order to gain a competitive advantage.

This new system iteration has proven successful in regional tests, where they have stated it will be advancing worldwide. As well as this, they have announced they are going to be actively addressing inappropriately named custom games and ‘BattleTags’ in future Defense Matrix updates.

OW2 first released with a range of issues, involving a massive DDoS attack on launch day causing servers to be disconnected, followed by players having difficulties loading up the game and plenty of other errors over it’s first few days.

Overall, Overwatch 2 and Blizzard have made great strides into the reduction of cheaters since the introduction of their anti-cheat initiative and have drastically improved the fair play for fans.

Big competitive changes are also coming according to the devs, who have said they are open to OW1 SR returning.