Overwatch bug unfairly punishes players for leaving uneven games

Syed Mujtaba Naqvi Published 12/07/2019

Although Overwatch players are allowed to leave a match early if a team member has disconnected, some players are getting punished unfairly for the action due to a bug.

Competitive Overwatch games have a penalty set in place meant to discourage players from leaving a game before it’s finished. Once a player does leave, the rest of the team’s members should be allowed to leave within the next two minutes free of penalty, since playing with fewer members almost guarantees a loss.

However, even though they should be safe to leave during the two-minute period as the in-game notice shows, players are still getting punished for it. Players have been reporting this issue for a while, but the bug still persists.

Developer Blizzard has been receiving reports about this bug for quite some time. Even so, the development team is yet to publicly acknowledge it. A quick search on Blizzard’s forums shows many complaints about the bug, as well as players’ disbelief that Blizzard is actually working on a solution without publicly addressing the issue.

The immediate punishment for leaving a game is a penalty of 25 SR, as well as an additional 25 SR penalty after the next game.

In a situation in which a player is not the first one to leave the game but rather follows the first leaver, players often won’t get the immediate 25 SR punishment, but will get unfairly punished after the next competitive game they play. Players that have been unfairly punished by this system therefore either gain a small amount of SR for the next win, or lose a whole lot of it for the next loss.

The only way to avoid the punishment in this scenario seems to be staying in the uneven game until the bitter end, regardless of the disadvantage of being outnumbered by the opponent’s team.

A recent Reddit post shows that the Overwatch community has been trying to draw attention to this issue for the past two years, and yet remains saddled with the effects of the bug.

Read Also

Fortnite

Leaks Suggest That a Fortnite X One Piece Collaboration May Be Coming Hannan Mundia Fortnite has collaborated with all sorts of franchises over the years, but a potentially leaked collaboration with One Piece may be the largest yet. When it comes to games collaborating with known IPs, it’s borderline impossible to compete with Fortnite. The battle royale game has some insane collaborations under its belt, including one with Kingdom Hearts when the Square Enix IP’s popularity is at an all-time high. However, if recent ...

Kick

FaZe Banks Thinks N3on’s AI Clone Could Be Worth $100M — How AI Is Changing Streaming Khizar Mundia Rangesh “N3on” Mutama may have received widespread backlash following his decision to use an AI model for certain content, but FaZe boss Richard “Banks” Bengtson has compared the streamer to legendary TikToker Khaby Lame. N3on was recently in the limelight after viewers noticed that a GTA 6 streamer NPC resembles him. The Kick streamer wasted no time in recreating the GTA 6 Netflix Extended Look in an IRL livestream, and ...

Twitch

Twitch Is Testing An AI Stream Coach — Here’s How It Works Khizar Mundia Amazon-backed livestreaming platform Twitch is testing a new feature that will act as an AI coach for streamers, giving them personalized feedback to improve. Twitch has been playing around with several experimental features to improve things for its users. One of these includes auto clips, which was a feature that would automatically generate clips from the best moments of a stream. Another is AI-generated summaries of what happened in a ...

Twitch

Kai Cenat Talks Streamer University, Vivet, and Streaming Future Khizar Mundia Kai Cenat recently sat down with The New York Times for an interview. In a wide-ranging discussion, the Twitch streamer talked about what he looks for in Streamer University participants, and also delved into both his Vivet brand, as well as what the future holds. Kai Cenat may have gone on a break following his massively successful Mafiathon 3, but the creator returned with with a bang in Streamer University ...

League of Legends

Riot Games eyes Polymarket and Kalshi for esports sponsorships Michael Hassall Riot Games, the creator of League of Legends and VALORANT is reportedly exploring the protentional of sponsorship deals with prediction market operators including Polymarket and Kalshi, as per reports emerging late last night (Sep. 10). First reported by Cecilia D’Anastasio of Bloomberg, Riot has started conversations with the two top prediction market operators, Kalshi and Polymarket, with a view to one or both of them becoming sponsors within Riot Games’ ...

Slots

This Is How Gates of Olympus 2500 Builds On The Iconic Series Ian John Since the first Gates of Olympus slot hit casinos in 2021, the series has evolved into one of the most recognisable in the Pragmatic Play stable. The combination of scatter wins, tumbling symbols and dramatic multipliers has established a formula that has been followed in a number of sequels and spin-offs. The latest in that series is the Gates of Olympus 2500 slot, but this game takes a slightly more ...

Dota 2

ESIC hand down ruling in EWC Dota match-fixing case: Lifetime ban for coach as DarkMago gets a nickel Michael Hassall South American Dota 2 player Gonzalo "DarkMago" Herrera will be banned for five years from competitive Dota 2, with his coach Juan "Vintage" Angulo banned permanently, following the results of an The Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) investigation. ESIC handed down the findings and rulings from its investigation into match-fixing allegations leveled at members of South American Dota 2 team PlayTime during the Esports World Cup on Sep. 10, in a ...