We have seen a number of leaks come true from datamining, particularly where Overwatch is concerned. And now, it seems that according to recent strings, there might well be permanent suspensions coming to those who abuse Competitive Play.
In what should have been another progressive year of positivity for the Blizzard shooter, throughout 2017 there has been a shroud of controversy looming over the game, primarily down to the rising levels of toxicity in the competitive part of the game. This has led to game director Jeff Kaplan and the development team to put certain projects that would improve the game on hold to fix the broken report system, which itself took a particularly long time to make its way to the console versions of the popular Blizzard shooter.
Recent datamining efforts have discovered that there may well be a solution on the way, which will lead to permanent bans for those who are abusive and acting against the spirit of the game in Competitive Play. Surfacing on Reddit, we have seen excerpts of messages from Blizzard that could be sent to players if they are found guilty.
One message to repeat offenders reads:
Your account has previously been suspended from Competitive Play during three or more seasons. As a result of this continued pattern of behavior, you may no longer participate in Competitive Play matches in the current or future competitive seasons of Overwatch. Other game modes of Overwatch including Quick Play, the Arcade, and the Game Browser are still available for you to play.
Another string regarding abusive chat also states:
Your recent communication behavior is not in line with how most Overwatch players communicate. You have been reported multiple times for Abusive Chat, and further reports may result in you losing communication privileges or being suspended. Please help us create the best possible Overwatch community by staying positive and not resorting to hateful, discriminatory, obscene, or disruptive messages.
If you’d like to read the full set of strings that have been found, head over to this thread on Reddit. It seems that if this proves to be true, we could see Blizzard taking stern action against those who continue to ruin Overwatch for innocent players, something which many have been calling on for a long time it seems.