While Overwatch’s popularity on Twitch may not be today what the game saw at the peak of its success, Activision Blizzard’s team-based hero shooter has remained prevalent among fans concerned for the franchise’s future. The highly-anticipated Overwatch 2 has seen numerous delays since its reveal in 2019 and Microsoft’s high-profile acquisition of Activision Blizzard has raised several questions about how the purchase would affect the popular shooter and its competitive scene. Now, in a baffling and unexpected twist, the official Korean Twitch channel for Overwatch has been hit with a surprise ban.
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The automated StreamerBans Twitter account reported on Thursday that the official Korean-language channel for Overwatch has been hit with a surprise suspension from Twitch with seemingly no explanation or reasoning behind the ban. The channel had last gone live almost a week prior with a broadcast of a match between professional teams Talon and O2 Blast. The ban stunned fans and viewers of the channel struggling to fathom a reason why the channel would have been hit with such a hefty punishment, especially coming six days after the channel had last gone live.
Some fans took the suspension as a chance to make light of things, jokingly referring to Overwatch as a dead game since it has not received major updates or changes in quite some time as development focus has largely shifted to the sequel. The ban comes only weeks after the Overwatch League revealed its fifth competitive season would be shifting away from the first Overwatch and onto an early build of Overwatch 2. While a release date for Overwatch 2 hasn’t been revealed, fans are hopeful the upcoming PvP beta may come alongside the competitive season.
The recent ban of a game’s official channel is just the most recent in a string of significant and surprising bans to hit the platform since the start of the year. Popular streamer STPeach received a ban from Twitch earlier in the year after dressing up as Street Fighter 5’s Cammy for a charity stream that saw the female streamer raise $10,000 for the Gamers for Love charity, and Twitch’s automated system erroneously banned several Madden players streaming the game during the Super Bowl. Twitch’s automated ban system is far from perfect and Overwatch may just be the most recent unlucky victim.
Overwatch is available now for PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One
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Source: Dexerto
