Overwatch Stealth Nerf Targets Cheaters And Aimbots

Today’s Overwatch patch has a ton of awesome stuff. The Horizon Lunar Colony map is finally live, Reaper lost his death globes and “Rate This Match” feature has been removed from the game. There’s even an undocumented change, one meant to stop aimbots and scripters in their tracks. According to reddit user a16425 , Korean Overwatch players have noticed that the red outline around every enemy hero changes a little bit each game. It’s nothing an average eye would notice, it only changes color by a tiny margin.

These scripting programs work in Overwatch by targeting the pixels inside the red outline and shooting those. Heroes with hitscan attacks, which automatically hit a target after the key is pressed, are popular with players who use these programs. McCree’s revolver or Ana’s Biotic Rifle automatically land on a target if they are inside the scope, meaning all a program has to do is aim a set amount of pixels inside the hero for an instant head shot. Now that the color’s changed, the bot won’t be able to get a direct read on where the enemy is.

I’m not an expert at scripting programs and nor do I ever want to be. Still, if you play enough competitive games, you’re going to run into some players who just happen to dodge every skill shot and attack. It’s infuriating to be up against, beating another person is hard enough, but when they have a robotic aid it’s near impossible.

This won’t be the end for scripting programs in Overwatch . Blizzard already sued one of the largest cheat manufacturers, Bossland, and won an $8 million suit. Even with them gone, there’s still a huge market for Overwatch cheats, especially in Korea. A bill was passed making the use and creation of hacking tools illegal and punishable by jail time.

Scripting programs are used by players who want to win at any cost. Learning to aim is hard and makes climbing the Overwatch ladder even more infuriating, but that’s the whole game. If you cheat and have a program aim for you, then are you really playing? Your rank is irrelevant if you didn’t earn it yourself.

Back in my college days, I knew this guy who would boast about being a Diamond level League Of Legends player. My friends and I would be discussing the newest patch or champion and this guy would always control the conversation, claiming that since the rest of us are in Gold, his high-ranking opinion should be the only one that mattered. Eventually, I got tired of him claiming to be the best and challenged him to a one-versus-one duel. His face turned white, saying “I don’t need to prove myself to a scrub” and walked away. Later, I find out that his account was bought and had decayed so much that he was actually just in low Platinum. He was just a cheater, who wanted to feel superiority over others without putting the work in.

As competitive gaming grows larger every year, it’s going to be more important for companies to squash cheaters. Nobody wants to spend all their time practicing and honing their skills, just to join games full of people with an unfair advantage. Stealth nerfs like this go a long way to creating a healthier community, one that isn’t bogged down by cheats and scripts.

How should Blizzard stop cheaters in Overwatch next? I’m hoping for a ban to all Hanzo mains. Tell us in the comments.