Blizzard is swinging the banhammer against Overwatch cheaters once again, as a new cheating tool known as nuking has started rearing its ugly head in the popular multiplayer shooter.
Blizzard has been very vigilant in keeping cheaters away from Overwatch, and the ban wave against players who are nuking their matches is the latest move to keep the shooter's playing experience as fun and fair as possible.
What Is Nuking In Overwatch?
Nuking is described as a form of distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attack. When cheaters nuke a match, they overwhelm the internet connection of their opponents with massive amounts of junk data. This slows the game down to a crawl for their opponents, sometimes to the point that the infraction could not even be reported by the affected players.
Nuking is not yet as widespread as other cheating tools such as aimbots, but Blizzard said that it has already started to crack down on players who are using the method to gain an unfair advantage over their opponents.
Blizzard Issues Bans Against Nukers
"We view 'nuking' or DDoS attacks the same way we view any other form of hacking or cheating," Blizzard said in a statement to Kotaku, reiterating its commitment of keeping the multiplayer gameplay experience of Overwatch as fun and fair as possible.
Blizzard also said that it continues to work on improvements to its anti-cheating and anti-hacking systems to protect legitimate players, while taking action against players who have resorted to nuking their opponents for cheap wins.
In connection with the crackdown on nuking, Blizzard has banned more than 10,000 players on South Korean servers just as the cheating method started to gain steam in the country. Cheating tools are a tricky problem particularly in South Korea, as many players log on to the game through so-called PC bangs, which are essentially internet cafes.
Players in PC bangs, if they receive a ban, can simply launch a fresh account and start playing the game immediately, utilizing cheating tools such as nuking once again if they would want to. This is possible because most cheaters utilize a VPN to create North American or European accounts, keeping their personal accounts protected from ban waves.
As such, perhaps an account ban is not the only solution needed to prevent cheating tools such as nuking from destroying the Overwatch experience. Nuking is not a new problem in online games though, as similar cheating methods have been utilized in titles such as League of Legends and StarCraft, so hopefully Blizzard will be able to put up a solid defense against nuking for Overwatch in future updates.
Blizzard Really Hates Overwatch Cheaters
Back in May 2016, after the open beta of Overwatch, Blizzard warned that players should follow the company's core value of "play nice, play fair," as cheaters will be permanently banned from the game on the first offense.
Blizzard followed through on its warning, as it wasted no time in banning cheaters after the game's official launch.
The latest exploit that players have abused is a bug on Mei's Ice Wall skill, and Blizzard has said that it will be punishing those who continue to take advantage of the glitch.
