'Overwatch' Game Director: 'Intentionally Losing To Lower Your Skill Rating Is Not Acceptable'

Blizzard might finally be taking action against Overwatch players who feed or lose intentionally. In a post on the Battle.net forums, Jeff Kaplan, Overwatch game director and Inquisitor supreme, said losing on purpose to lower your skill rating is a bannable offense.

Kaplan said: “We are strongly opposed to this behavior and working on a policy to make it consistently actionable and detectable. Even if you are in a 6 person team, intentionally losing to lower your skill rating is not acceptable.”

There are a few reasons a player would want to lose on purpose and lower their own rating. Maybe they want to be able to play with friends but their ratings are too far apart, or they want to piss off their own team members. Having a teammate intentionally throw the game is one of the worst feelings you can have in a team-based game like Overwatch , which is why I’m so happy Kaplan and his crew are working on a way to fight it.

The difficulty in creating a system that punishes people who intentionally feed is deciding who’s a griefer and who is just having a particularly shitty game. I’ve had plenty of games where nothing went as planned (I blame Roadhog) and just died over and over. How can this system tell the difference between my game and another where someone is just throwing themselves off the cliff for the “lulz.”

For right now, if you have a teammate who is intentionally throwing your games to lower their own skill rating, Kaplan says to just report them. If you are on console, you are going to have a wait a bit longer, but the report system is on its way.