Blizzard has always been pretty heavy-handed when dealing with cheaters. Though the developer actually allows cheats for single player campaigns in some of its games, it is largely unforgiving when dealing with cheaters in online multiplayer arenas. With its most recent blockbuster success, Overwatch, Blizzard is swinging the ban hammer harder than ever before.

Last month, the developer issued an announcement that clearly stated the firm's zero-tolerance policy for cheaters in its online multiplayer game. Just a bit more than a week after the game's release, thousands of players who have been caught cheating are being shown the door.

In China alone, Blizzard partnered with NetEase, a prominent Internet firm, in order to root out the cheaters in the country. With a top gaming firm and a tech giant nipping at their heels, 1,572 cheaters were immediately identified and banned from the game. Just to add a little bit of spice to the punishment for cheating, the two firms even published the username of each player that was identified and banned.

That's pretty awesome, and definitely savage.

Back here in the West, cheaters are not faring any better. A popular Overwatch cheat program has begun to report mass bans over the last few days to the point where the program's developers had to disable their authentication servers until they could get a handle on things.

What's particularly brutal about Blizzard's zero tolerance policy is the fact that it is completely unforgiving to those who had been caught. In fact, some cheaters who were identified even reported that they bought the game again, only to have themselves banned one more time.

"Got banned one day after the official release. Thought I got detected for using RPM tools, because the game was crashing for it at that time. Bought the game again, didn't hack on it at all, just wanted to enjoy the game a bit. Two days later-banned again. Bought the game again. But before doing that, I deleted Overwatch and launcher completely. Enjoyed it again without cheating only for a day," an alleged cheater stated.

The alleged cheater even stated that he tried purging hi PC, changing is hard drive IDs, MAC address, BiosDate and even purchasing a VPN. Alas, even those workarounds did not work. The player was still banned from the game.

So what's the lesson amidst all of these reports? It's simple. Don't cheat. 

Tags: overwatch overwatch news blizzard cheating cheaters