The introduction of the Defense Matrix in Overwatch 2 saw thousands of players banned from the game last year. As gamers look forward to Season 3, Blizzard Entertainment is tightening the noose around cheaters and abusive players.

From Season 3 onward, players who willingly team up with known cheaters will face severe punishments, ranging from suspensions to outright bans from the game.

Players who knowingly group up with cheaters are looking to take the same advantage as those who use cheats themselves, including boosting their accounts to skill levels they would not normally belong in with their own skill. Doing so creates unfair and imbalanced matches for many in our community and does not live up to our core value of Play Nice, Play Fair. While those who directly cheat are often permanently banned immediately, we will be issuing severe suspensions for extended amounts of time, and in extreme cases, outright bans, to those grouping up with known cheaters.

In addition to this, Blizzard will further enhance the disruptive voice chat feature that was rolled out in Season 2. Besides identifying abusive players in the chat, the new feature will also incorporate chat silencing and account suspensions when necessary.

In our previous blog we announced that we would begin to identify and take action against those who are disruptive in voice chat through the use of our new voice-to-text transcription and AI learning algorithms. We've begun to rollout this new technology starting in Season 2 for select regions and it’s proven to be exceptionally accurate and effective in identifying abusive chat and language. We’ve already begun working to stop disruptive players with applicable chat silencing and account suspensions as needed.

Another form of harassment that Blizzard is addressing is stream sniping. If you've watched several live streams from gaming content creators, chances are you've come across this phenomenon. In simple terms, stream sniping is the act of hijacking a user's livestream, most often seen in online multiplayer games. While stream sniping can make for hilarious content, sometimes users take it too far.

"Stream sniping" is not an easy problem to solve, but starting in season 3, we’re introducing new streaming protection features that should be a huge step toward enabling content creators to share Overwatch 2 with their fans safely and without harassment from disruptive players.

Players will now be able to hide their current BattleTag or hide the tags of the other players in the same game they play in on their own game client. This will prevent those who may be watching that player’s live stream from identifying if they’re in the same lobby. Players can also now hide the current queue time and even delay it for a random time before the game actually begins to find a match for that player. Replay Codes can also now be hidden from appearing in the game client. These features will be available starting in Season 3 for all players and can be found in the Social options in your settings.

Overwatch 2's game director has confirmed that while Season 3 won't include any new heroes, Seasons 4 and 6 will add two new support heroes to the game's expansive roster.

Up until February 7, when Season 3 debuts, players can take advantage of the 2x Match XP currently available for Season 2.