If you aren’t going to play nice in Overwatch, you’re going to get punished.
Effective immediately, Blizzard will be issuing “increased penalties” to players who’ve been reported for bad behavior—if it can be verified, of course. The system, as it stands today, is exactly the same. Just report players if they’re engaging in abusive chat, harassment, in-game spam, inactivity, or griefing. Players in violation of Overwatch’s rules will be “silenced, suspended, or even banned” as a result.
It’s all part of a larger plan to invest “significantly” in the in-game reporting and player penalty system, a Blizzard community manager said in an Overwatch forum post.
Related: Overwatch’s console report feature is “extremely challenging” to develop
New features for the system will begin to roll out over the next several months, Blizzard said. Based on community feedback, the developer will add scaling competitive bans, a notification system that alerts you when a player you reported was actioned, and a new functionality that allows Blizzard to aggressively penalize players who abuse the reporting tool.
Unfortunately, Blizzard doesn’t have an update on a report feature for Overwatch players on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan has spoken out about the difficulties of bringing a report feature to console Overwatch, as it expands past Blizzard’s team to include both Sony and Microsoft as well.
“We are actively working on the feature and have many elements undergoing internal testing right now,” Blizzard said. “Our goal is to implement similar reporting options as are currently available on PC, and any improvements made to PC between now and when it’s available.”
The developer did not detail a timeline for the report feature on console—but at least we know they’re still working on it.
The lesson here is be nice—or be banned.
