Brutal new Overwatch “friend request” hack lets cheaters crash games

Hackers are ruining Overwatch games thanks to an exploit that can crash games if players press the wrong button.

It’s not uncommon for Overwatch to have the occasional bug or glitch, but the ones where players can get kicked from matches are the worst. Sadly, a new exploit does just that and it’s making streamers’ lives a living hell.

As shown on multiple Twitch streams, hackers will join games and send invites to players on the other team. Basically, by looking at a player and pressing P or O, the game can crash.

To make matters worse, for many, it seems like pressing P or O happens out of pure instinct for some players, and they find themselves being booted from games even after being aware of the exploit.

Press P to lose

This issue was documented on the official Overwatch forums too. One user explained how they were watching their friend play when, suddenly, he,“got a friend request from someone with tons of [numbers] in their username.”

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According to the user warning about the issue, if he presses O or P while that friend request is pending on Overwatch, his game will crash.

One of the worst things about this is that a disconnection will lead to a loss of -50 SR, so if it keeps on happening, players can lose a lot of their rank and even get banned for the season.

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So far, Blizzard hasn’t commented on the exploit, but hopefully they can get a fix out soon and put an end to this friend-request madness for good.

Until then, you might want to avoid playing Overwatch if you play on PC, but it seems like console players are safe from these shenanigans for the time being.