Blizzard has banned over 250K Overwatch 2 cheaters since launch

In its efforts to make Overwatch 2 a healthy place to play, Blizzard Entertainment has banned over 250,000 cheaters since launch. The developer revealed the metric in its recent blog post, showing that its goal to reduce cheaters has yielded results.

That's worth noting, given its originally rocky path. At launch, Overwatch 2 had a controversial SMS Protect system which required players to use their phone number to verify their Battle.net account. It was especially damaging to those with phone plans, and required Blizzard to tweak the feature not long after.

Last year, Blizzard announced its Defense Matrix initiative meant to curb toxicity within the Overwatch 2 community. The studio's newest report outlines how it's worked to "help discourage and remove disruptive behavior and cheating," and the future steps it intends to take. 

Blizzard added that it also "suspended and banned" thousands of accounts that were intentionally grouping with cheaters to benefit from their actions. That's been effective in regional tests, so Blizzard said it'll expand its system to other parts of the world. 

Likewise, the company will grow out its machine-learning algorithms used for verifying and transcribing reports of disruptive voice chat towards other regions. The developer said the technology has helped correct toxic behavior "immediately" and lead to players changing how they interact with others after their initial warning. 

Amidst the improvements to come, Blizzard stressed that Overwatch 2 players should "report disruptive behavior as you see it. [...] Your reports help verify consistently disruptive players, as well as help us to identify emerging trends in disruptive behavior as the culture in online games continues to evolve."

Developers have had it with disrespectful player behavior

Player toxicity has been an issue within popular games like Overwatch 2 for years, and developers have only recently begun to really work at quelling it. For example, November's Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III will use AI as a way to moderate voice chat during multiplayer. 

Xbox has also been at the forefront of these conversations, thanks in part to its growing list of player reporting options and crackdowns on inappropriate player behavior.

Several studios have taken to Twitter to tell their player bases to cut it out and say that behavior (namely harassment against their staff) isn't acceptable. But sometimes, just saying that isn't enough, and more tangible action needs to be taken to make clear where a developer stands on the matter.

Last week, Bungie's lawsuit against a frequent Destiny 2 harasser (and cheater) saw the studio awarded $500,000 for damages. The offending individual (Luka "inkcell" Leone) is legally banned from anything to do with Destiny 2 or future Bungie titles.