Overwatch: Abuse of Mei's Ice Wall Cheat to Be Punished
By Kyle Sledge 05 January 2017
The video game developer Blizzard announces its plans to “aggressively” punish players who abuse Mei’s ice wall exploit in its team-based shooter Overwatch.
Since its inception, Overwatch has been subject to some pretty interesting glitches, such as the one that let players skydive as Sombra. Of course, some exploits within the game, like the recent cheat letting players use Mei’s ice wall ability to get outside levels and become invincible, have sullied the experience for a lot of Overwatch players, which has led to Blizzard vowing to punish those abusing the Mei exploit in particular.
Overwatch‘s game director Jeff Kaplan announced plans for punishing players who abuse the cheat on the title’s official forums, and revealed two ways for the Mei ice wall problem to go away once and for all. The main objective is to eradicate the exploit altogether through bug hunting and patching it in a hot fix, but until that happens, players who take advantage of the system will be punished “aggressively.”
According to Kaplan, Mei’s ice wall exploit has been “surprisingly tricky” for Blizzard to locate, which is why the problem has become so prevalent as of late. That’s why Overwatch‘s game director has promised that players who decide to exploit the title in its current state will have to face the consequences. As of yet, however, Kaplan hasn’t fully explicated what action would be taken against the cheaters, but he did insist there would be retribution.
When it comes to dealing with Overwatch‘s cheaters in the past, most fans of the title would agree that Blizzard has been firm, but fair. For instance, when it was discovered that a sizeable portion of players were using “aimbots” or “triggerbots” to assist them in the game, Blizzard issued the cheater group a ban. While it remains to be seen as to exactly how serious the developer considers taking advantage of the Mei exploit to be, one thing’s for sure is that Blizzard will issue punishment of some kind or another for abusing it.
This isn’t the first time for Mei to be at the center of a controversy in the Overwatch universe. As a matter of fact, when Blizzard implemented a special event over the holidays for fans of the game, Mei’s skin for the event drew ire from the fan base.
Beyond the contentious issues within Overwatch, the team-based shooter had a fantastic 2016 as it was the most profitable paid PC game of last year, and its future is still looking bright. It seems as if Blizzard has plenty of ideas for the road ahead, and is ready to implement its full plans for 2017.
Overwatch is out now for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.
