Overwatch 2 dev responds after player allegedly finds “free SR” exploit

An Overwatch 2 dev has responded to a worried player after they allegedly found an exploit that gave more SR than intended.

Overwatch 2 has been an inherently competitive game since its inception. Pitting two teams of five (previously six) heroes against one another in an all-out battle for supremacy over the payload or objective. As such, it’s often about one-upping your opponents in skill, strategy, and dexterity as a team to attain victory.

Overwatch’s competitive mode has been a long-standing tradition within the game, with players vying for that sweet, sweet SR at the end of their match. SR works slightly differently in Overwatch 2, however, with no visual indicator of how close a player is to ranking up. Though your SR still determines your rank after five wins or 15 losses, with higher amounts leading to higher ranks.

SR is a sought-after currency in Overwatch 2, which makes it all the worse when a player allegedly discovered a strange exploit that allows them to gain more than intended.

Reddit user xlShadylx reported that they had discovered a bug that allegedly handed out more SR than they’re supposed to gain, and could be the reason players are ranking up despite negative win rates. Naturally, being able to manipulate your rank on the competitive ladder is a huge deal for the community.

Many players on the Overwatch subreddit were quick to respond to Shady’s post, with multiple comments speaking about how the exploit appears to revolve around disconnections.

Some commenters believed that whilst going on a losing streak, if you disconnect during a match it will reset your wins and loss count.

“If you’re on a losing streak, go into a rank game then disconnect your Wi-Fi, you will get a ban but what happens is it resets it to 0-0, so you can get a fresh start. It will show like (4-7) but it just resets again” a user stated.

It appears that the developers are also aware of this broken exploit, with an Overwatch dev asking Shady to contact them via message on Reddit so they could figure out the exploit together. So if this is a legitimate bug, don’t expect it to be around for all too long, as Blizzard will surely want to stamp it out sooner than later.

For the time being, Overwatch 2’s competitive mode is still going strong and it appears that this new SR bug should be receiving a fix in the near future.