“Overwatch” is Blizzard’s first foray into FPS games but it is clearly a winner already. The company has pronounced it “one of the most successful global game launches of all time” and already boasts a very impressive seven million global players since its launch. Blizzard has also made good with their promise and they have banned thousands of players who have resorted to cheating.
Millions of "Overwatch" Players and Counting
Game Spot noted the seven million player-count fr the game is the total between PC, Xbox One and Playstation 4 users. Between these 7 million players, 119 million hours of “Overwatch” have been played since its May 24 launch. As for the open beta last May, over 9.7 million players tried it.
Other numbers were provided by Blizzard such as players switched characters a total of 326 million times and 11 million payloads have been delivered since the launch. Unfortunately, there was no information on player accomplishments or preferences unlike the debriefing Blizzard gave after the beta.
Banning Cheaters and Hackers
As for the banning issue, Blizzard was very clear that they would not offer second chances to cheaters. And while “Overwatch” has only been out for a little more than a week, hackers and cheaters were shown the door without any hesitation.
Users of an “Overwatch” cheat program also started reporting bans by bulk starting yesterday. The program creators have shut down their authentication servers until a solution (if any) can be figured out. However, it seems that the permanent ban is true. PC Gamer reported the ban spans multiple copies of the game.
One “Overwatch” cheater said, “Bought the game again,” said one alleged cheater. “Didn’t hack on it at all, just wanted to enjoy the game a bit. Two days later—banned again. Bought the game... again. But before doing that, I deleted Overwatch and launcher completely. Enjoyed it again without cheating only for a day.”
Even changing hard drive IDs, MAC addresses, Bios date and utilizing a VPN still results in being banned after being labeled a cheater. The China situation is particularly brutal. There was a 1,572-person ban “wave” and the usernames of the banned players were also made public.
