Overwatch’s new custom game browser has given rise to everything from tense “predator” games of cat and mouse to sex role-play rooms. Good times all around, in other words. Other players, however, have taken to abusing the feature.
If you take a look around Overwatch’s custom game lobby, you’ll almost assuredly come across at least a handful of XP farming servers. Basically, these modes allow people to do nothing for the duration of a skirmish match and gain easy XP. All you have to do is select a hero every once in a while.
I decided to search the term “farm” in Overwatch’s custom game browser, and I found pages upon pages of the dang things.
It’s not surprising that these modes are popular. Overwatch rewards you with a loot box every time you level up, after all. I sincerely doubt, however, that Blizzard intended for people to use custom games this way, given that they’ve jam-packed Overwatch with other means of unlocking loot boxes—all of which involve, you know, actually playing the game. On top of that, some of these modes encourage players to use illegal tools like auto-clickers.
It’ll be interesting to see how Blizzard handles this. The obvious solution would be to remove XP from custom games altogether, but I imagine that’d pretty seriously detract from the number of people playing and creating new modes. My guess? Prepare for banhammer deployment in 5... 4... 3...