Overwatch game director Jeff Kaplan has announced plans for punishing players who abuse the cheat on the game’s official forums. The glitch enabled crafty players to use Mei’s ice wall ability to get outside of levels and become invincible.
The glitch occurs when as Mei, the player heads to a particular corner of the map, crounches down, and places the Ice Wall underneath the character. They will send the player to the upper level of the room which should not be accessible. They can then roam about above the map.
Once the player is positioned in this area, they are able to continue fighting enemies, or just stand there and do nothing, all while taking no damage.
The main objective is to eradicate the exploit altogether through bug hunting and patching it in a hot fix. However, until that can be done players who take advantage of the system will be punished “aggressively.”
“Overwatch is a PvP experience so that means exploiting game mechanics like this comes at a cost to those you are competing against,” he said. “We take aggressive action against people who abuse game mechanics, hack or cheat. This case is no different.
“This bug is clearly an exploit and we consider this cheating. Do not attempt to reproduce this bug. If you see someone abusing this mechanic, please report them.”
“We believe we have identified a fix,” he said. “Our hope is to have it fixed by tomorrow (January 5), but there is always the chance that our fix could fail. We’re currently testing to verify the fix.” Kaplan said this a post that was made yesterday, but as far as we know, an update has not yet been applied to the game.
Kaplan says that Mei’s ice wall glitch has been “surprisingly tricky” for Blizzard to locate. This is why there have been so many instances of exploiting it as of late. This is also why Overwatch’s game director has promised that players who use this to cheat will have to face consequences. He did not explain exactly what type of action would be taken, but he did insist there would be retribution.
