Overwatch 2 Players Are Getting Banned For Swearing, And They’re Not Thrilled

Blizzard’s customer service is in hot water after a series of exchanges about Overwatch 2’s profanity rules caught the attention of the community and subsequently went viral. Apparently, profanity of any kind is considered against the hero shooter’s code of conduct, and if someone reports it, seemingly regardless of context, you will get banned. The Overwatch community isn’t thrilled with this new ruling, nor Blizzard’s customer service representative’s response.

The saga started on April 12 when X (formerly Twitter) user @durpee82 posted a tweet asking for a response from Blizzard’s customer service account on a query about a banned Overwatch 2 account. The user had attempted to use Blizzard’s native customer service features to figure out why they were banned, but was only getting an automated response that claimed the ban was “in accordance with our Terms of Use and our In-game Policies.” When pressed for specifics, the user received the same response again.

Blizzard’s customer service representative responded to the post, saying the ban was enacted due to “inappropriate language” in text chat, including the use of “the F word and the SH word.”

Coming from a game where half the playable hero roster swears, and one of them even has the initials “BAMF” on their belt buckle, it’s an odd blanket rule to throw over Overwatch 2. But nevertheless, it is in the code of conduct, which mentions that “you may not use language that could be offensive or vulgar to others.” The customer service rep pointed out that it is “literally” in the first section of the code of conduct under Communication. Response to that tweet has been largely mocked for considering profanity inherently vulgar and for the flippant responses from customer service. One user said that Blizzard should be banning people who use slurs and send death threats over people using profanity, to which the customer service account responded in a since-deleted tweet: “Then report them, Joy.” As you can imagine, this was also not warmly received by community members, like streamer eskay.

While Blizzard’s customer service claims this rule has always been in place, it hasn’t felt this aggressively enforced before—and Overwatch 1 released nearly eight years ago. Plus, Overwatch 2 has a profanity filter that lets people avoid certain words altogether. However, according to the customer service account, this tool is more so people can ensure they don’t see those words in text chat when the rule is inevitably broken, rather than being used as a safety net for people who swear.

It seems the Overwatch 2 community has become fixated on the profanity rule, as fans have started swarming customer service tweets enforcing it. Popular Overwatch content creators like Flats, Overwatch Cavalry, and bogur have all weighed in and spoken out against Blizzard’s policy and official response. There’s an overarching sentiment across X and places like the Blizzard forums that this has turned people off of using text communication for fear of being reported and banned. Overwatch 2 has made some strides in trying to make the game a safe space for players to not have to worry about toxicity, but this ruling, which disregards context for a handful of commonly used words, has been deemed an overcorrection in the community’s eyes.

We’ve reached out to Blizzard for comment and will update the story if we hear back.

.

For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.