Annoying Overwatch silent footstep bug driving players crazy

A sneaky Overwatch glitch appears to be making heroes footsteps completely silent for no reason, allowing them to creep around undetected.

As the loading screen tips have told us for years, enemy footsteps are louder than your teammates, which makes them a great way to tell if you’re about to get snuck up on.

Zenyatta and Sigma can move in complete silence because they float, and every Overwatch hero can stay silent by crouching, but some players have noticed the absence of footsteps when they should be sounding off.

Lately, a number of players have reported the bug, and some of the best evidence for it so far is a video from Overwatch player Tanner ‘Tanner‘ Pack that shows a Reaper roll up on his Widowmaker without making a peep.

The Reaper wasn’t crouched nor was wraith form active the killcam, so it certainly seems like the Reaper should have made some noise.

https://twitter.com/Tanner_OW/status/1202845970767253504?s=20

Instead, the Reaper waltzes right up without making any noise that can be heard in the clip, and takes Tanner out with a few blasts of his shotguns.

Tanner was scoped up as Widow when the bug popped up, but that shouldn’t affect what she’s able to hear around her.

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So far, the bug isn’t listed on the Overwatch patch 1.42 known issues list, but Tanner is far from the only player complaining about the lack of footstep noise.

Exactly what causes the bug or exactly why enemies’ footsteps become silent is unknown, but Overwatch streamer Carter also tweeted about the issue a few days before Tanner.

Thanks to Jeff Kaplan we know the Overwatch PTR patch is due to go live on Tuesday, December 10, but whether a fix for the footsteps bug, if it is a bug, will be included remains to be seen.

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It certainly seems like something is going on with enemy footstep sounds in Overwatch, but with the exact cause so hard to pin down a fix might be a longshot by the next update.