'Overwatch 2': Prejudice Reigns As Ban System Abuse Riles Community

Reports of players getting unfairly banned in "Overwatch 2" have been on the rise recently after members of the community discovered a simple trick to abuse Blizzard's system.

According to several users, their accounts were wrongfully banned after getting mass reported—some for simply picking Doomfist.

Doomfist players have recently been suffering from prejudiced reporting, as per Comicbook. Abusive behavior from teammates allegedly caused some accounts to get banned, as "Overwatch 2's" automated ban system does not discriminate between valid reasons and abundant reports against one account.

The character's transition from a DPS to a tank hero has not gone well with the community. Apart from many of Doomfist's previous combos no longer being viable, he is notorious for being significantly harder to use compared to other options, which has led to him being stigmatized by the player community at large.

Another alleged case of a mass report causing a ban occurred to a streamer on Twitch.

Grandmaster player Necros shared on social media how his alternate account got suspended for "various and continued actions deemed inappropriate" after streaming for eight hours. People speculate that the ban was due to Necros' smurfing, or intentionally making a new account to bully players in a lower skill bracket.

Without any actual smurf detection technology, a mass report was the only logical reason behind Necros' ban. Additionally, since there's no option to report a smurfing account, the streamer's ban implies anyone's account can get restricted for any reason as long as enough people vote against them—this circles back to the Doomfist debacle above.

Smurfing has been a hot topic across all competitive multiplayer games in the industry. A single high-level player can disrupt the experience for everyone in a match, and this remains in "Overwatch 2." However, there's a fine line between a dedicated smurf account and an actual alternate account that often gets misconstrued.

Players who get their accounts wrongfully banned can appeal to Blizzard support through their official channels. Accounts that are cleared of any real offenses will be re-enabled. However, the abusability of the system remains, and it may cause even more problems and controversies down the road.