Overwatch Will Automatically End Matches When It Detects Cheating

Overwatch developer Blizzard has never exactly been know to take cheating lightly. Across its stable of video games, from World of Warcraft to Diablo, the developer is notorious for heavily punishing anyone it actually catches trying to circumvent the rules of its games. That said, these punishments have largely been after the fact in the past, leaving cheaters to ruin the enjoyment of folks for at least a little bit before being caught. In Overwatch, however, a new anti-cheat detection system might change all that.

Speaking as part of the game's most recent regular developer update, Overwatch director Jeff Kaplan explained that there's a new anti-cheat system deployed on the game's PTR (public test region) that takes things a step further than simply penalizing cheaters. The update, which you can watch above, is mostly focused on upcoming events and content, but Kaplan does get into specifics about the new anti-cheat stuff in the pipeline.

"We have improved detection for cheating, and we now, we will automatically shut down a match where we detect cheating is happening, and we will make sure that nobody on either side of the match is penalized for that match being shut down," Kaplan says in the update. "So if you're in a competitive match, you won't lose SR if a cheater's on the other team or cheater's on your team, and very harsh actions are happening against that cheater you can be assured, but we think this is just the next evolution of cheat detection in the game, which is pretty awesome."

In addition to the new anti-cheat detection stuff, Kaplan notes that Hero 31, the much-anticipated next playable character for the game, is going to take a little extra time to perfect, but that his (and Kaplan emphasizes the pronoun in the video) release shouldn't be too far outside of the expected window.

What do you think about the new cheat detection on the PTR? Are you a fan of Blizzard handling cheating this way? Let us know in the comments!