Blizzard bans more than 1,400 South Korean Overwatch accounts

Blizzard, the company behind Overwatch, has banned more than 1,400 South Korean accounts in the game following the end of Season 12 of competitive play.

The company suspended a total of 1,423 accounts for account sharing during competitive season 12, according to a post on the Korean Overwatch forum.

A representative from Blizzard tagged every account that was banned in Season 12 in the post, just like they’ve done for mass-bans in the past.

The representative wrote that “Blizzard Entertainment is committed to creating a fair and positive game environment for our players,” before listing the usernames of banned accounts and the reason for the ban.

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Blizzard’s End User License agreement states that players “cannot share the Account or the Login Information with anyone,” and notes that players are fully responsible for any activity that breaks the rules on their accounts.

It’s not clear if all of the suspensions are permanent though, as Blizzard only specified which accounts were banned and for what reason, they didn’t list the punishment in the post.

The company has handed out bans that were non-permanent or proportional to the extent of the violation in the past, so a lot of these accounts could be back after a while.

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This kind of public banning display is familiar to South Koreans, who are used to seeing account names and reasons for bans published in the open. 

Back in January, Blizzard banned more than 22,000 accounts for cheating, boosting, account sharing and more, smaller infractions.