'Overwatch': Player Video Reveals Aiming Issues In Blizzard's New Shooter

Overwatch has only been available for a couple of weeks, following the game’s May 24 debut, but it looks like Blizzard’s first new IP in almost two decades may already have its first controversy.

On Tuesday, YouTube user Darkstar published a video that appears to show a strange Overwatch bug that only manifests when players are aiming up or down. The video shows the game apparently failing to account for several different angles of attack -- each within a few degrees of looking directly up or down -- demonstrating the bug with Genji, Mei, Pharah and Widowmaker in the one-minute clip. The quickly video racked up thousands of views, despite initially being published unlisted, and attracted similar interest on the Overwatch subreddit.

While some players were quick to ignore the problem, since there are Overwatch heroes who can succeed while largely ignoring the game’s verticality, others were quick to highlight the ways the aiming problem could impact their favorite heroes. Unsurprisingly, concerns about how the issue could impact Pharah, both positively and negatively, wound up front and center. But the game’s resident flier isn’t the only Overwatch hero whose performance has presumably been affected by the recently discovered aiming issue.

“This screws me up when I'm doing DVAs ult,” said redditor knowwhatimsayin. “I try to angle it, but it goes straight up and then down. Very frustrating.”

"I think it might be that the shot is locked to the animation,” guessed TTTrisss, another reddit user. “If a character can't aim at a certain angle without looking awkward, they won't shoot at that awkward angle. i.e., they don't want a bullet coming out of a sniper rifle at a 45 degree angle compared to the barrel.”

Unfortunately, there’s been no official response from Blizzard. We’ve reached out to the company, hoping to find out more about the aiming issue, and will update this post if we hear back from the Overwatch team. In the interim, those who’d like a closer look at Darkstar’s aiming discovery, take a minute to check out the YouTube video embedded below.

Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes.com and follow Scott on Twitter for more Overwatch news throughout 2016 and for as long as Blizzard supports Overwatch in the months ahead.