Blizzard Bans Third Party Data-Tracking Tools in Overwatch

[cageymaru]

Blizzard has lowered the banhammer on third party data-tracking tools in the esports game Overwatch. These tools supposedly only allowed users to see extra statistics, but Blizzard stated otherwise in a forum post. "To provide more clarity, any third-party application that impedes on the competitive integrity in Overwatch is not allowed. For example, a third-party application that offers users information such as enemy position, enemy health, enemy ability usage, or Ultimate readiness creates an uneven playing field for every other player in the map." According to a Twitter user, Blizzard sent out notices to the community to stop using the tools as users may receive a permanent ban in the future.

Visor made claims to offer live feedback to players on enemy kills and other stats, while Pursuit sold itself as a post-game report program. Both pieces of software were named in the notice that Mastin posted. It's worth noting that Visor just raised $4.7 million to further develop its performance-tracking software. The company has not announced any new plans for Vision at this time.

 

[oldmanbal]

Any 3rd party software other than a voip or fraps/capture service should be banned. If you want to use something like cheat engine and pretty up your game, play offline, in a non competitive environment. If this is a problem for you, you're not getting it. Every single copy of every single game should be identical, otherwise the outcome can never be legitimate. When we used to play U2XMP and people used modified huds, it gave them an unfair advantage because a lot of their screen would be cleared up from the poorly designed layout of information that would typically impede portions of gameplay. Once you got labeled as someone that abused these types of minor advantages, you were done in the competitive scene.

Feel free to argue against my opinion, I'd be interested in other apps you feel warrant whitelisting for competitive play.

 

[Zepher]

Any 3rd party software other than a voip or fraps/capture service should be banned. If you want to use something like cheat engine and pretty up your game, play offline, in a non competitive environment. If this is a problem for you, you're not getting it. Every single copy of every single game should be identical, otherwise the outcome can never be legitimate. When we used to play U2XMP and people used modified huds, it gave them an unfair advantage because a lot of their screen would be cleared up from the poorly designed layout of information that would typically impede portions of gameplay. Once you got labeled as someone that abused these types of minor advantages, you were done in the competitive scene.

Feel free to argue against my opinion, I'd be interested in other apps you feel warrant whitelisting for competitive play.

Pursuit doesn't do anything for you during game, only gives you post game stats so you can see if you are improving or not. Not sure why Blizzard doesn't like that one.
One of the Overwatch League teams tweeted about Pursuit the other day saying that they use it, as well as Pursuit being a sponsor.

 

[oldmanbal]

Pursuit doesn't do anything for you during game, only gives you post game stats so you can see if you are improving or not. Not sure why Blizzard doesn't like that one.
One of the Overwatch League teams tweeted about Pursuit the other day saying that they use it, as well as Pursuit being a sponsor.

Unless Blizzard decided to build a data stream like that into the game, available to anyone that downloads their vanilla product, that would seem to give an advantage to the person that is modifying their gameplay based on its feedback of the 3rd party app. However if it was just an api on a 3rd party website, that's a different story altogether since the game developer would have to enable that collection of data in game making it public. I don't know all the information spit out by pursuit, but let me know how in depth the information provided by pursuit is.

There are marketing conflicts all the time, and typically they will get ironed out once new regulations are implemented.

 

[Dead Parrot]

Could be that Blizzard wants to be the only company data mining player's games for salable information.

IMO, bans on 'third party software' walk a fine line. Pretty obvious that an aimbot or 'X-ray' scope add in gives an advantage. Does a mouse driver(a third party software) that lets a player use a 10 button mouse give that player an advantage over a more traditional 2 button+wheel mouse? Or driver for a fancy keyboard? Both can have a single button programmed to do a multi step macro. How about software that allows a higher display FPS? Can become hard to know where to draw the line.

Still, Kudos to Blizzard for trying to level the playing field a bit.

 

[1Nocturnal101]

In Bronze, Silver, and early Gold bracket you get those people that are better than they are supposed to be, while smurfing is a thing, you typically shouldn't see it that often. Tools like these give excessive info that puts everyone else at a severe disadvantage, and also recently there are a lot of players complaining about that they were Plat or Gold and ended up in a competitive landslide pegging them in lower brackets than they should be in with really no clawing their way out or those god aweful teams and people who play Overwatch like Call of Duty, Battlefield, or Arena FPS styled games, C9 objectives, non-valid team comps and such. 1 person with enough info can completely wreck a team.

 

[1Nocturnal101]

Could be that Blizzard wants to be the only company data mining player's games for salable information.

IMO, bans on 'third party software' walk a fine line. Pretty obvious that an aimbot or 'X-ray' scope add in gives an advantage. Does a mouse driver(a third party software) that lets a player use a 10 button mouse give that player an advantage over a more traditional 2 button+wheel mouse? Or driver for a fancy keyboard? Both can have a single button programmed to do a multi step macro. How about software that allows a higher display FPS? Can become hard to know where to draw the line.

Still, Kudos to Blizzard for trying to level the playing field a bit.

No it really isn't, Hardware is Hardware, and software that alters or disturbs a competitive ecosystem needs to be limited, Sonic Radar as an example is cheating, a 7.1 headset is not, there is a distinct line, If you are using Macros to pull off hard Fighting combos in something like MK then yes you need to be banned for that, quality of like Macros like lets say in WoW that has a macro system already implemented is not cheating, Although you get the Rogue/Warrior that can clearly combo people to death in an Arena with 1 button, as long as Blizzard allows it its legal.

There is such a thing as "Honor" and "Integrity" If you can't compete fairly what makes people think they earned anything, It would like me beating a grandmaster at chess while using a program on my phone to help me determine what to do next, you aren't winning, the tools are winning for you, no props for that, anyone can throw money at something, that doesn't mean you have skill.

 

[Nauseous]

In Bronze, Silver, and early Gold bracket you get those people that are better than they are supposed to be, while smurfing is a thing, you typically shouldn't see it that often. Tools like these give excessive info that puts everyone else at a severe disadvantage, and also recently there are a lot of players complaining about that they were Plat or Gold and ended up in a competitive landslide pegging them in lower brackets than they should be in with really no clawing their way out or those god aweful teams and people who play Overwatch like Call of Duty, Battlefield, or Arena FPS styled games, C9 objectives, non-valid team comps and such. 1 person with enough info can completely wreck a team.

This is the entire problem with OverWatch, no matter how good you are you generally cant carry a team to a victory. That 6th player is just way too important. That is why i quit playing ow, the entire match can be ruined by someone who gets mad, butthurt, or just wants to troll.

 

[BloodyIron]

This is the very reasoning we disallow this at LANified!