Blizzard Bans More Than 10,000 Players For 'Nuking' Overwatch Matches

Blizzard Entertainments multiplayer first person video game, Overwatch has made several headlines because of its gameplay and numerous awards. The team based shooter game has more than nine million players worldwide. However, many players use cheats which help them progress in the game easily.

According to a post on its message boards, Blizzard has banned more than 10,000 players on its South Korean servers, as reported by Kotaku. The players have found a new trick known as 'Nuking', as mentioned by Blizzard. The players are using a nuke tool which targets opposite teams which a distributed denial-of-service attack. This DDoS attack slows down the matches to an extent that sometimes players can't even report the infraction. This attack essentially overwhelms the internet connection with junk data.

The game developing company said that they are preparing counter measures to fight the attack. "Creating and delivering a pleasant game environment for the majority of our rule-abiding players is of paramount importance to us," announced the Blizzard Korea team.

The Blizzard Korea team has banned over 10,000 Overwatch game players for cheating and nuking. The attack can be a major problem in Korea as many people play games in internet cafes and if one player's IP address gets targeted the whole internet café has to suffer. This would essentially mean that every single PC in the internet café will suffer a DDoS attack and the whole network will be down as reported by Polygon.

While most of the players don't cheat while playing Overwatch, Blizzard is having a tough time with the cheaters. Though Blizzard is trying hard to ban, but the cheaters are proving to be clever. The company needs to provide an update to the game so that these attacks can be stopped or minimized further. The internet cafes in Korea called PC Bangs have customized versions of games like Overwatch which are free to play. Even if the company decides to ban a PC bang player, the player can create a new account and start playing immediately without having to buy the game.