Blizzard has revealed “the next evolution” of cheat detection in its hero shooter Overwatch.
In a developer update, game director Jeff Kaplan said Overwatch will automatically shut down a match where Blizzard has detected cheating is happening.
Kaplan insisted no player on either side of the match will be penalised for the match being shut down (except the cheater, of course), so if you’re in a competitive match you don’t have to worry about losing SR (Skill Rating).
As for the cheater, Kaplan said they can expect “very harsh actions”.
“We think this is the next evolution of cheat detection in the game, which is pretty awesome,” Kaplan said.
Kaplan didn’t go into detail on how Blizzard detects cheaters, nor reveal the “very harsh actions” it’ll dish out to naughty players, but you’d expect him to keep his cards close to his chest in a bid to avoid giving cheaters the information they need to combat Blizzard’s new system. The hope is, of course, that Blizzard’s cheater detection is so robust it puts cheaters off, since they won’t get to complete a match under the new system.
Meanwhile, Kaplan also talked about the upcoming Overwatch summer games event, which is due sooner than expected. Also, for each of the three weeks the event is live, there will be a mini-challenge to unlock an epic skin, which makes for a change in the way Blizzard distributes skins during the summer games event.
And finally, Overwatch’s next hero, number 31, will come out later than players had expected based on Blizzard’s previous release schedule. Kaplan didn’t reveal much, but he did stress the word “he” when talking about the new hero. Here’s what he said:
“We are working on a hero. Hero number 31 is going to be awesome. But he is going to be released a little bit later than you’re used to. But he’ll be here soon enough, so don’t worry. We think a little bit of extra time is going to make the hero even more awesome.”
