'Overwatch' Competitive Leaver Penalties, Loss Distribution Explained By Blizzard

We’ve only had access to Overwatch ’s Competitive matchmaking for about a week, following its late June debut, but many fans are already running into issues with the stricter leaver penalties handed out to those who abandon a competitive Overwatch match before it’s ended. Thankfully, it sounds like Blizzard is already on the case. And it might not be long before we see the first fixes.

For many players, last week’s return of Competitive matchmaking has been exactly the shot in the arm Overwatch needed after a few weeks of Quick Play. But not everyone is having a great time with the newest addition to Blizzard’s multiplayer shooter. As is the case with most competitive games, match quitting is proving to be an issue for some in the Overwatch community. And those abandoned matches are having a negative impact on more than just the rage-quitter.

Fortunately, Blizzard is already working on solutions to make the experience less frustrating for those who affected by match quitters. Details remain scarce at this time but Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan says the team is “working on a bunch of fixes” to address the way the game handles disconnecting, leaving and losing. But it doesn’t sound like there’s much hope for those who’d like to see Blizzard stop handing out losses to those abandoned by a teammate(s).

In a lengthy post on the game’s forums, Overwatch principal designer Scott Mercer broke down exactly why the players who stick around still have a loss added to their record. Turns out, if one of your teammates disappears during the first 30 seconds of a match, he/she will be the only one who picks up a loss for the match. But if the disappearing act comes more than a minute into the action, then everyone on the losing squad is going to get an L. That decision hasn’t been popular with Overwatch community but Mercer says Blizzard doesn’t want to give players any incentive to fall back on the toxic behavior commonly found in competitive games.

“Why do the remaining team members still receive a loss? How is this fair? The unfortunate answer is that the alternative would be worse,” Mercer wrote. “We don't want to create an awful situation where players who think they're losing are now encouraged to do whatever it takes to get someone else on their team to leave. By removing any possible incentive for anyone to "tactically" leave, it also means that more matches will complete normally.”

It’s not all bad news, though. If you’ve found yourself on the wrong side of the leaver penalty in the last seven days, resulting from an unintentional disconnect, Kaplan says a fix is on the way. Better yet, the patch could apparently arrive as early as next week; however, there’s no word on which platform(s) Blizzard expects the patch to be ready first. It seems likely we’ll see the PC patch first, with console deployments following certification on each platform. That said, we’ve reached out to Blizzard, hoping to get a bit more information on the matter, and will update this post if/when we hear back from the studio.

UPDATE: A Blizzard representative has confirmed our assumptions, telling iDigi that the studio hopes to release a new PC patch later this week. Console updates will go live "soon", after clearing certification for PSN and Xbox Live. Here's the full statement:

We’ll be aiming to make the patch this week for PC first. Our hope is to patch console soon, pending first-party certification.

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