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PermaBan Bugging You? Blizzard Working On A Fix

A rare bug has stricken around 200 players with a season ban, but Blizzard is restoring their accounts and monitoring for more issues.

Charles Singletary Jr

September 28, 2017 11:55 AM

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A finite solution like Overwatch's new permabans for competitive play is bound to have some growing pains, but a bug has provided quite the speedbump in Blizzard's efforts to improve their Overwatch community. This particular bug, which has affected roughly 200 accounts, has been banning players that get disconnected before competitive matches start despite not having any history of disconnects or inactivity kicks and Blizzard has put out a statement acknowledging the issue.

On the forum post addressing the season bans, Game Director Jeff Kaplan posted this in response:

"We recently identified a bug that, in extremely rare cases, can cause players to lose their skill rating progress and receive a seasonal ban from Competitive Play without any prior penalties for leaving early or being kicked for inactivity. This bug is a high priority for our team, and we're working on a fix to prevent further instances of it occurring as we speak.

In the meantime, we'll be removing the seasonal ban for all players affected by this bug as well as restoring their skill rating. To date, this bug has impacted fewer than 200 accounts, but we'll continue to monitor for additional occurrences and provide assistance until we can implement a permanent fix. We don't have an ETA to share right now for when the fix will go live, but we'll update this thread as soon more information becomes available.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience or frustration this bug has caused and are grateful for your patience and ongoing reports."

This has to be quite frustrating for those affected and there's no mention of any type of compensation for those whose progress has been hindered due to this bug. Hopefully, they'll toss them a couple loot boxes but, with so few people affected by it, they may not make such an effort.

Charles Singletary Jr

News Editor

Charles Singletary Jr keeps the updates flowing as the News Editor, breaking stories while investigating the biggest topics in gaming and technology. He's pretty active on Twitter, so feel free to reach out to him @The_CSJR. Got a hot tip? Email him at Charles.Singletary@Shacknews.com.