Overwatch ‘Disconnect Loop’: Players furious as bug left ignored by Blizzard

Irate Overwatch players have blasted Blizzard on social networks for failing to resolve an ongoing issue with the game that causes players to be endlessly disconnected.

Blizzard’s ‘Bug Report’ forum for Overwatch is littered with complaints written by gamers who have been affected by the so-called ‘disconnect loop’ bug. According to players, Overwatch will disconnect them from games seemingly at random, and when they rejoin, they’re disconnected immediately. The loop continues until they’re kicked from the game for endlessly leaving, which has resulted in some players losing their ‘Competitive Play’ scores and even being banned.

“When I try to play with a friend in a group, the map starts to load, and on hero selection the game appears to be disconnected and the map starts to load again, and it’s like this afterwards in an infinite loop,” explains MahmoudEGYPT, in a post dated November 17. “And it ends only with me leaving the game, and after a few times I received a penalty for leaving early. So did my friend in the group, and he’s now banned from competitive play.”

One user, called Ky0, posted a video of the issue to YouTube:

Much of the anger can be traced to Blizzard’s silence on the issue, with complaint threads left unanswered by Blizzard support staffers, despite some threads even going back as far as May, the month the game was released.

“There are at least five new posts on a daily basis informing about the ridiculous disconnection bug which doesn’t allow a reconnect and results in SR loss and a ban. Stop ignoring this please,” writes Asparagus. “It’s been happening since the last competitive season. People post the same thing every single day, and not even Blizzard responds to them,” writes Asparagus. “What can we do to be heard? Everyone says the common denominator is OW or Bnet.”

Users have taken to Reddit to voice complaints too, with nine different threads detailing the same disconnection loop issue posted over the past seven months. In a thread posted in November, user Darknyss detailed how he feels let down by Blizzard’s customer support: “We tried all the suggested fixes, so far, nothing has helped.”

The player went on: “I’ve had a ticket open with Blizzard for about two-and-a-half weeks now trying to get this problem resolved. I don’t know what else to do, and I have a feeling if I reopen the ticket, support is just going to give me the run around yet again. Can anyone please give me a solid fix so I can go back to playing?”

He also uploaded a video depicting the issue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOV_HF3qQa0

A big part of the problem is Blizzard’s punishment system, which penalises Overwatch players who regularly leave matches. The feature is intended to stop gamers from quitting matches when they’re losing, but the disconnect loop is causing some innocent players to be inadvertently suspended. And for Overwatch customers playing ranked matches, the disconnect loop means any affected match is counted as a loss, which will lower a player’s ranked ‘Skill Rating’ score.

On user, called bobjoeii, asked if Blizzard would be willing to reset the Skill Rating for players affected by the bug: “Disconnect loop has happened in 4/5 placement matches. What’s up Blizz? Any chance of getting placement matches reset once this bug is gone?”

And some customers are so angry that they’ve threatened to return the game:

“I refuse to play another match until I feel like Blizzard has handled the situation fairly,” says GrayWalker. “If we are forced to keep these scores which were given to us because of lags and disconnects then I am forced to take back my support for the game and will go trade it in for a game that’s actually working and fair to the players.”

We’ve asked Blizzard for comment and will update this article with any response.

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