Bans happen for many reasons in games. Whether it’s cheating, exploiting a bug, or simply harassing other players, the list goes on and on. Games and the companies that develop and serve them have a duty to protect the integrity of the game and the safety of their players. However, when the ban reason is for something that seems superficial, fans will begin to question the results.
Instances like this can happen when a player is running an unknown program in the background. The game’s anti-cheat client sees something that could be registered as a program assisting with cheating and the player catches a ban for something that wasn’t their fault. While not the entire story, this was part ofthe reason Blizzard banned5,000 accounts this past week.
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A Twitter user and former pro-Overwatchplayer named @Carter_OW reported that 5,000 accounts forOverwatchhad been banned due to playing on Linux. This composed everyone that had been playing the game on Linux for the week. WhileOverwatchis not capable of running on straight Linux, players utilize a program called WINE (“Wine Is Not an Emulator”) to run Windows applications, which includesOverwatch. Evidently, this occurred to any user using version 5.x of WINE, whereas users had reported issues running the game in version 6.0. The latest stable version of WINE hasplayers reporting the game crashing.
Overwatchdoes not specifically list Linux as being a supported operating system to play upon, which can lend credence to the reasons for banning. Without testing and anti-cheat adjustments made for the systems, it’s clear that the system felt that something was off and hit the players with the ban.
Gaming and Linux have a strange relationship, andOverwatchhas been up and down with news most recently. SteamOS was developed based on Linux but has not seen the usage expected since the fading of Steam Machines.Overwatchhas also watched its Game Director Jeff Kaplan walk away from the company, as well asLead Character Artist Renaud Galand. With no release date set forOverwatch 2, loyal players are still going at the original game, but the bans are going to make it hard for Linux players to go back to.
The outcome of this situation has yet to be decided. Players are hopeful that upon review, their accounts will be reinstated and play can be resumed. However, this could happen again if changes are not made to the anti-cheat client. Whatever the case may be, it’s now in the hands oftheOverwatchteam to decideif WINE is a viable way to run the game.
Overwatchis available now on macOS, Nintendo Switch, PS4, Windows, and Xbox One.
