Dallas Fuel and Guangzhou Charge see longest pause in OWL history

The Dallas Fuel and Guangzhou Charge recently experienced the longest mid-game pause in Overwatch League history.

The pause happened during game four of their series, on Havana. The Charge had already finished their attacking phase and made it all the way through the map’s three checkpoints. The Fuel were struggling to push the point and had less than 60 seconds to go when the game was paused. 

At first, the casters were under the impression that Fuel support player Benjamin “uNKOE” Chevasson experienced a malfunction involving his mouse. It was later explained by Fuel head coach Aaron “Aero” Atkins that it was a more complicated problem than that.

“Unkoe’s character bugged in-game and he’s unable to use his hero,” Aero explained on Twitter.

Aero said that Blizzard tried to fix it, but the team had already lost 25 seconds of valuable time and the use of an ultimate ability due to the bug. They were given the option to reload the state of the game and agreed to do so. 

Even after multiple attempts at reloading the game, the issue persisted. Guangzhou couldn’t get out of their spawn, so Blizzard decided to do a manual reset. Aero goes on to say that the referees wanted the solution to the problem to be a fair one. 

Although many attempts were made to quickly fix the issue, the pause ended up lasting for close to a full hour. To fill in the time, broadcasters came up with several solutions to keep viewers engaged, including broadcast features, interviews, analysis of the game, and an archery contest between caster Brennon “Bren” Hook and Justice DPS Corey “Corey” Nigra. Bren won 7-4.

The match itself didn’t mean much for the upcoming playoffs. The Charge had already clinched its spot in the season-ending playoffs, while the Fuel had already lost their chance at qualifying. 

When play finally resumed, the Fuel were able to successfully push all the way to the third point, but then lost in overtime, resulting in a 4-0 series loss to the Charge.