Blizzard: Don't Report Players Who are Better Than You

Overwatch! Otherwise known as "The good version of Battleborn", just had a successful run in Open Beta (which must be leaving EA super-bitter, considering what happened to Battlefront) and everyone is sufficiently pumped for the May 24th release date. But even with everyone convinced the gameplay is solid, there are still a few lingering questions surrounding the game: will there be local co-op? How soon till the release of new heroes? How many cinematic will the game have? And can I get away with cheating?

We might not know most of those questions, but according to a forum post by Blizzard community manager Lylirra, the answer to that last question is "no".

From the post:

We’ve always taken cheating in Blizzard games very seriously, and that stance is no different for Overwatch... If a player is found to be cheating—or using hacks, bots, or third-party software that provides any sort of unfair advantage—that player will be permanently banned from the game. Full stop. Not only does cheating undermine the spirit of fair play that all of our products are based on, but it works to diminish the fun and enjoyment of others.

This is hardly news, Blizzard has long been a big fan of the zero tolerance policy, even if in practice they were never quite able to enforce it with the consistency that they would like. But while this isn't very new or exciting, one interesting little disclaimer was added to the bottom for would-be reporters of hackers and cheaters.

some players are just really good at first-person shooters. Through practice and years of experience, these players’ movements and reaction times can occasionally appear unnatural (if not physically impossible) to those who may not have been exposed to that particular level of play before.

So, yeah: it's possible the other person is using hacks or bots, but it's also possible they just got gud and the solution is simply getting gud in return. But then, if you git gud enough, even hackers and cheaters can't stand up to you, so really, if you just put on your big boy pants and learned to play the game, you wouldn't have to report anyone.

Of course, I'm just being facetious. We can't all be xPeke. But we can dream...