Many players of Blizzard’s Overwatch have been reporting a particularly nasty bug that’s been affecting Competitive Play. As per a recent Reddit thread, disconnections while the next map loads can cause the match to “wait” for players. Unfortunately, this process keeps repeating as players lose tons of Skill Rating and can even cause a seasonal ban.
It’s not an easy bug to fix given the conditions but director Jeff Kaplan said that it’s being worked on and apologized to those suffering. “This bug is a high priority for our team, and we’re working on a fix to prevent further instances of it occurring as we speak.”
As for those with bans, Kaplan said that the development team would be removing these from affected players and restoring their Skill Rating. Also, thankfully, it hasn’t affected a whole lot of accounts. “In the meantime, we’ll be removing the seasonal ban for all players affected by this bug as well as restoring their skill rating. To date, this bug has impacted fewer than 200 accounts, but we’ll continue to monitor for additional occurrences and provide assistance until we can implement a permanent fix.”
Of course, there’s also the issue that players who receive three seasonal bans will be permanently banned from playing Competitive ever again. Does removing the current seasonal ban ensure that the affected players have none on their record? Or is that currently one strike? Kaplan didn’t clarify.
Regardless, you’re probably better off not playing Overwatch’s Competitive Play for a while even with the low number of accounts affected.