Chris Pratt recently told Entertainment Weekly that he suggested an AI “actor” play the tyrannical AI judge in his new sci-fi thriller “Mercy.” However, the idea was quickly shut down by the production, and Rebecca Ferguson was cast in the role.
“I remember talking about the various people who could play these characters, and early on, I was like, ‘Should we have it be an AI, where the judge is actually AI, and we create an AI?’ And everyone was like, ‘No, I don’t think so,’” Pratt said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t think that’s a good idea at all.’”
He added, “So it was actually never a possibility any more than anything is a possibility when you’re zeroing in on what the outcome is going to be and what the choices are that you’re going to make. It’s a collaborative effort.”
Pratt then recalled another off-the-wall pitch he had early in the planning stages of “Mercy.”
“But one of my pitches early on was like, ‘What if [my character] could pick the judge, and I could pick Oprah, or I could pick anyone I want. Because ultimately it’s just a face on a [screen].’ And I thought that would be funny to have Oprah do it.”
Amazon MGM’s “Mercy” follows Pratt as Chris Raven, a cop from the near future who is on trial for the murder of his wife (Annabelle Wallis). Ferguson’s AI judge gives him 90 minutes to prove his innocence or face immediate execution.
The themes surrounding the oppressive nature of AI made the emerging tech a focal point during the “Mercy” press tour. At the film’s New York premiere, Pratt told Variety that he’s confident he’ll never be replaced by AI. He called the panic surrounding synthetic AI performers like Tilly Norwood “all bullshit.”
“I don’t feel like someone’s gonna replace me that’s AI,” Pratt said. “I heard this Tilly Norwood thing, I think that’s all bullshit. I’ve never seen her in a movie. I don’t know who this bitch is. It’s all fake until it’s something.”
The new year is almost here, and before we start thinking about Star Wars, The Avengers, or Christopher Nolan, let’s slow things down a bit. While the rest of 2026 is obviously loaded with very exciting, very big movies, the next three months have some pretty interesting, intriguing, and highly anticipated films too. Plenty to hold our interest before the more traditionally blockbuster-filled months.
Like what, exactly? Below are our 10 most anticipated genre films releasing from January through the end of March.
10. Night Patrol (January 16)
Justin Long, Jermaine Fowler, CM Punk, and more star as Los Angeles police officers who find themselves face-to-face with some very unnatural things in the middle of a gang war. We’ve heard that things get really wild and that it’s a very good time.
9. Mercy (January 23)
When he’s framed for the murder of his wife, Chris Pratt has to use an advanced law-enforcement AI that he himself invented to prove his innocence in a very short amount of time. The trailers have been cool, so we’re hoping for a ride.
8. Hoppers (March 6)
Any time Pixar releases a movie, you have to take notice, and its first 2026 release (the other being Toy Story 5) is the hilarious-looking story of a woman who puts her consciousness in an animal and mistakenly convinces them to try and overtake humanity.
7. Send Help (January 30)
The legendary Sam Raimi returns to the genre that made him famous with this intense-looking thriller about two co-workers who end up deserted on an island together. Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien star, and we’re praying for a little of that Raimi magic.
6. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (February 13)
Sam Rockwell stars in this bonkers-looking time travel tale about a man who is sent into the past to try to save the future. Or something like that. It seems insane, and we can’t wait.
5. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (March 27)
We loved Radio Silence’s 2019 film about a woman stuck in the middle of a family’s sick game, and now we are counting the days to its follow-up, which returns to the story soon after the events of the first. Add a bunch of new actors into the mix, and this could be as special as the original.
4. 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (January 16)
Nia DaCosta’s follow-up to last year’s excellent Danny Boyle sequel appears as if it’s taking the 28 Years franchise to some bold new places. Plus, the buzz is so good about this one, Sony has already greenlit its sequel.
3. The Bride! (March 6)
The year 2025 brought us one great Frankenstein movie, and we think 2026 is going to do the same. Maggie Gyllenhaal returns to the director’s chair with this punk rock take on the classic monster story from the woman’s point of view. Hamnet’s Jessie Buckley and Batman himself, Christian Bale, star as the creatures.
2. Scream 7 (February 27)
It’s a bummer that Scream 7 won’t directly follow the story set up by the previous two Scream movies, but we’re still holding out hope. Neve Campbell is back in an expanded role, and franchise co-creator Kevin Williamson directs for the first time in the series. Both suggest good things. Also, each Scream film brings its own unique surprises, so we’re expecting nothing less from this one.
1. Project Hail Mary (March 20)
For the first time in over a decade, Phil Lord and Chris Miller are directing a new film, and this one looks special. It’s based on a book by The Martian author Andy Weir; Ryan Gosling stars as a man trying to save the world in deep space. To do so, he’ll have to team up with an alien. If the movie is half as wonderful as the book, this one is going to be an all-timer.
There is one big question facing No. 17 Michigan State as it prepares to take on Detroit Mercy on Friday in East Lansing, Mich.
Can the Spartans avoid a letdown?
One certainly appears possible, given how impressive Michigan State looked in one of its most important nonconference games of the season, an 83-66 win over No. 12 Kentucky on Tuesday in New York.
It was the second resume-boosting win the Spartans (4-0) have already secured in the first three weeks of the season, after a home win over then-No. 14 Arkansas on Nov. 8.
There’s certainly a lot of reason for Michigan State to be hyped, which is why intensity could be a concern coming back home to play a lesser opponent, especially on such a short turnaround.
However, if Michigan State keeps sharing the ball like it has the past two games against San Jose State and Kentucky, there shouldn’t be much for the fan base to be worried about.
‘What I’m proudest (of), though, with this team, where it’s getting a little bit like last year, it’s very unselfish,’ Michigan State head coach Tom Izzo said. ‘Twenty-five assists on 32 baskets. The other day, it was 24 assists on 28 baskets (against San Jose State). I still think we’ve got some more upside. I think our running game can get better.’
Michigan State has been led so far by its four returning core players, senior frontcourt players Jaxon Kohler and Carson Cooper, junior forward Coen Carr and sophomore point guard Jeremy Fears Jr.
Transfers Trey Fort (Samford) and Divine Ugochukwu (Miami) have added backcourt depth, and freshmen Jordan Scott and Cam Ward have made early contributions.
The biggest revelation for Michigan State against Kentucky was the performance of sophomore Kur Teng, who played sparingly last year.
Teng will be used in a more expanded role this year and played his best college game against Kentucky, scoring 15 points and making three shots from 3-point range in 18 minutes.
‘Kur was really good,’ Izzo said.
Now, Michigan State will turn its attention to Detroit Mercy in what will be a homecoming game for Titans’ head coach Mark Montgomery, a former point guard for the Spartans who had two coaching stints on Izzo’s staff.
Montgomery is in his second year as head coach of Detroit Mercy (1-4). The Titans have lost their last two games, the latest being a 72-62 home defeat against Eastern Michigan on Tuesday.
Picked ninth in the preseason Horizon League poll, Detroit Mercy is led by senior guard Orlando Lovejoy, who averaged 16.4 points per game last year. Senior guard Jared Lary and sophomore guard TJ Nadeau are other returnees for the Titans.
But this year’s team is filled with plenty of new faces, with three transfers and five freshmen on the roster.
Montogomery said this time of year is important to get those younger players ready for league play and to instill a consistent rotation.
‘The young guys are gaining experience,’ Montgomery said after the loss to Eastern Michigan. ‘Most of them played more than 10 minutes a game. You want to come out on the winning end, but you have to learn from these kinds of games, pick yourself up. There’s a lot of basketball ahead of us.’
Bam! Just like that, New York Comic Con 2025 is underway, taking over the Javits Center from October 9 through 12. So far, the convention has debuted trailers for the more lighthearted Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and a Chris Pratt movie called Mercy, with more previews to come. Below, all the trailers released at NYCC so far.
We knew The Vampire Lestatwould have some slight mockumentary energy to it, with a camera crew trailing Lestat on his rock & roll exploits. But thanks to the new extended first look from AMC+, we now know that none other than Daniel Molloy will be directing it. The NYCC panel also unveiled the show’s Akasha, All Dirt Roads Taste of Saltand Woman King star Sheila Atim.
The Game of Thrones spinoff A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is based on a series of novellas by GoT scribe George R.R. Martin. From the trailer, it looks to be the first time a GoT property could be called a comedy. Starring Peter Claffey as Sir Duncan the Tall and Dexter Sol Ansell as his squire, Egg, Seven Kingdoms is set 100 years before the original series but well after House of the Dragon. “Rob me and I’ll hunt you down with dogs,” Sir Duncan tells his squire in the teaser. Egg counters, “You don’t have dogs!” The HBO series will return to Westeros beginning January 18, 2026.
Chris Pratt is begging for mercy and they won’t release him in the trailer for his new science-fiction film. Pratt plays Detective Chris Raven, a man who programmed an artificial intelligence called Mercy, which Los Angeles courts are using to determine guilt. When accused of murdering his wife, he gets only 90 minutes to prove his innocence. Inevitably, the AI goes haywire. “This was never about my wife,” Pratt tells Mercy, played by Dune star Rebecca Ferguson. “This was about me and you.” The film comes out January 23, 2026 — if AI hasn’t taken over by then.
Marvel is going meta with the teaser trailer for its upcoming series Wonder Man. Yahya Abdul-Mateen stars in the series as an actor who auditions to play Wonder Man, and the teaser is largely based around an interview with the “Wonder Man” movie’s fake director, Von Kovak (Zlatko Burić). “I know your question is ‘Why one more superhero film?’” Kovak says in the trailer. “Everyone is tired of superheroes. Why go see them in the cinema?” After the lackadaisical box-office performance from Thunderbolts*,Fantastic Four: First Steps, and Captain America: Brave New World, Kovak promises that “there is an opportunity to shock audiences.” Well, maybe Wonder Man can do the same as a limited series when it debuts on Disney+ in January.
Prime Video, leader of all dad-TV shows, released a trailer for Cross season two. Based on the Alex Cross books by James Patterson, the series follows the D.C. homicide detective, played by Aldis Hodge, hunting down a serial killer going after corrupt billionaires. “This begins and ends with me,” he says, so you know it’s serious. Season two premieres on February 11.
There’s trailers for everything nowadays! NYCC was the venue for Wizards of the Coast’s big Magic: the Gathering and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collab. The set is part of their Universes Beyond collection, which also includes cards from The Walking Dead, Doctor Who, Fallout, and more.
A cop accused of murdering his wife must battle the highly advanced crime-solving tech of the future to prove his innocence. It could be Minority Report. Or it could be Mercy, which doesn’t quite look on the level of that Philip K. Dick-Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise classic, but it does have some intriguing points, including Rebecca Ferguson as an AI-powered judge equipped to execute instantly in the event of a guilty verdict.
Chris Pratt is the star, though, so you’ve been warned; this will mostly be the Chris Pratt Show. According to NYCC’s panel description, Mercy is set in the near future, as “an LAPD detective (Pratt) wakes up strapped to an execution chair, on trial for murdering his wife. He has 90 minutes to prove his innocence to Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson), an advanced AI system, or face immediate death.”
Check out the first trailer for Mercy, which also stars Kali Reis (True Detective), Annabelle Wallis (Peaky Blinders), and Chris Sullivan (This Is Us), among others.
Director Timur Bekmanbetov is known for his high-stakes thrillers; his previous works include Wanted and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, as well as Night Watch and Day Watch, early-career Russian releases before he ventured to Hollywood.
Can Pratt’s character beat the system, having helped bring the system to life? Will he realize the dangers of giving AI too much control? Will Mercy join movies like Minority Report and Demolition Man in the pantheon of entertaining “future cop” movies, or will it be as doomed as a convicted killer in near-future LA?
Perhaps of even greater concern is how much of a “screen-life” movie it appears to be. Will it be next year’s War of the Worlds, with Chris Pratt doing all of his acting from chair jail?
We’ll find out January 23, 2026, when Mercy hits theaters, including in IMAX and 3D.
It has been far too long since we’ve read a speculative novel as powerful and political as Helena Haywoode Henry’s debut novel, Last Chance Live! This book centers around a reality TV show of the same name starring ten death row inmates between the ages of 18 to 21. The winner gains clemency, and the losers receive the death penalty within a week of exiting the show.
Last Chance Live! has all the makings of any popular reality show: drama, sabotage, secrets, and betrayals. Viewers root for and decide which contestant deserves a second chance at freedom. It sparks conversations among the general public and readers of which capital crimes can be forgiven, especially when the perpetrators are so young.
We sped through Last Chance Live! within a day, and we have a feeling it’ll stick with us for years to come. Its social commentary and themes of justice, mercy, and agency are too compelling to ignore. Here are three things that stood out to us about Helena Haywoode Henry’s Last Chance Live!
Image Source: Penguin Random House
Book Overview: Last Chance Live!
Content warnings: death, murder, death penalty, suicide, suicidal thoughts, bodies/corpses, prison, graphic violence, gore, torture, rape, sexual abuse, cutting, bullying, fatphobia, slurs, guns, car accident, attempted arson, swearing (Please read at your discretion!)
Summary:Last Chance Live! is the most popular reality show in America—and eighteen-year-old death row inmate Eternity Price’s last chance to live. Getting cast on the show could win her clemency preventing her execution… if she can convince the viewing audience she deserves a second chance. The catch? If America doesn’t vote for her, she loses the chance to appeal her sentence, and she’ll be executed within a week of being eliminated from the show. And since Eternity’s been unpopular her whole life, she’s terrified America won’t pick her. But any chance of getting out of prison and back to her little brother Sincere, no matter how slim, is better than rotting away in her cell.
Eternity never expected to find her first real friends in a reality TV house full of people battling for survival after being convicted of capital crimes, but that’s exactly what happens. So when she gets the opportunity to sabotage them and secure her own victory, she has a choice to make: protect the friendships and acceptance she’s always longed for at the cost of her own life, or sacrifice her newfound community. Eternity must ultimately decide what forgiveness, family, and freedom mean to her, and how far she’ll go to win a game where the stakes are literally life or death.
The Show’s Contestants
Last Chance Live! gives us a diverse group of young convicted criminals with a wide range of crimes. When we watch any reality show (or in this case, read about it), it’s easy to root for more than one contestant to win. But when the show’s sole winner gets freedom for a new life and the rest inevitably gets the death penalty, we learned not to get too attached to the characters. Even so, we had so many conflicted feelings toward each person, especially after the reveal of their crime. Like Eternity, the more the show went on, the more we wanted multiple contestants to survive and make it out.
Eternity’s Strategies
When the cast of Last Chance Live! are all death row inmates, it’s safe to say there are a lot of morally gray areas to consider. Eternity and the other contestants are fighting for their literal lives. They need to curry favor with the public, making sure their image on the show gives them the most votes. They also need to be ruthless no matter what. Eternity learns this the hard way after trying to set up an alliance with all the Black contestants. She twists and sabotages her way through each vote, somehow making it farther than she expected. But things come to a head when she starts to see how much her actions affect others, and she doesn’t only want herself to win anymore.
The Narration In Verse
Another thing that stood out to us in Last Chance Live! is the use of verse in Eternity’s narration. These poems allow us to slow our reading and really take in each word. We aren’t quite sure if there are any clear patterns behind each section of verse. And we never know when they’ll happen. They’re abrupt, cutting in to the prose and then reverting right back almost as if they didn’t happen. This unabridged access to Eternity’s thoughts puts us directly into her shoes, feeling her anxiety and terror as a result of her environment. Now we’re the ones in survival mode—in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode.
It didn’t take much for us to be hooked on Helene Haywoode Henry’s chilling speculative novel, Last Chance Live! From its themes of justice and agency to its masterful characterization and narration, we already want to reread it and uncover even more layers.
Last Chance Live! by Helena Haywoode Henry comes out October 7th, and you can order a copy of it here!
What do you think of the concept behind Last Chance Live! by Helena Haywoode Henry? Did you connect with her debut novel as much as we did? Let us know on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram!
When Overwatch introduced mad scientist tank Sigma back in 2019, he was immediately a powerful shakeup of the meta. His placeable shield was more flexible than Reinhardt or Orisa’s, and his primary rock-throwing weapon did can do damage and disrupt in equal measure. On top of this, his ultimate ability, Gravitic Flux, which lifts enemies within its radius off the ground, slams them down, and cuts their health by half its base health, is still one of the most powerful ones in the game. For some reason, with Overwatch 2’s mid-season patch, Blizzard decided that Sigma’s ultimate needed a huge buff. Naturally, it’s now very broken.
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Gravitic Flux is an area-of-effect ability signified by a dark circle on the ground that appears as its cast. There’s a darker center within this circle, and before this patch, a character had to be in the circle’s line of sight to be caught in the telekinetic slam. This is why characters like Mei or Lifeweaver were able to counter this ultimate by building an Ice Wall or Tree of Life that blocked teammates from being caught in the attack. This new patch removes that requirement, so now, if you’re in the circle at all, Sigma is giving you uppies. However, as some players have discovered, taking out the line of sight requirement means it can work through walls, even if Sigma can’t see those enemies.
Blizzard explicitly notes that this change was made because there’s a lot of counterplay against the Gravitic Flux, so perhaps this was the intention. But now all I can think about is how Sigma’s suddenly made for stealthy plays. Is your enemy team sitting on the payload in Dorado? Go into one of the buildings surrounding it and cast Gravitic Flux just on the edge of the room. You’re bound to catch at least one of them by surprise. This shit’s busted.
The full patch notes for Overwatch 2’s mid-season update are as follows:
COMPETITIVE PLAY UPDATES
Demotion Protection Modifier
The Demotion Protection modifier has been moved from below the Rank Progress bar into the bar itself to improve visibility when a player is in a Demotion Protection state.
When Demotion Protection occurs, you will not be told when your progress is below that skill division’s range. If you lose your Demotion match, the Skill Rank adjustment will show only the adjustment from that match, instead of the net total of that match and the adjustment of the previous match.
New – Pressure Competitive Modifier
This rank modifier appears for players who are at the far ends of the overall skill distribution.
For players who are very high ranked (like Champion), this modifier will show when you don’t earn as much progress from winning a match or drop more progress for losing a match.
For players who are very low ranked (like low Bronze), this modifier will show when you earn more progress for winning a match or drop less progress for losing a match.
Developer comments: This new modifier was added to show how our highest and lowest-skill players are being pushed toward a more average Rank. Competitive Play already calculates this Modifier to your Skill Rank adjustment, but it wasn’t visible until now. Very high or very low-ranked players will see this Modifier after every match while they continue to maintain a Rank at the outer limits of the ranked spectrum. Climbing to the highest skill tiers like Grand Masters or Champions is not intended to be easy, and overcoming Pressure to reach the top is no longer a hidden challenge that players must face.
Grouping Restrictions
The Skill Tier legend was updated to show the changes to grouping restrictions that were applied in a previous update. The grouping restriction changes we applied are the following:
Grand Master can now group within 3 divisions to be considered a narrow group.
Champion can now group within 1 division to be considered a narrow group.
Developer comment: While the Season 10 changes to grouping up with friends have contributed to a large improvement in match quality for most players, we’re still looking to reduce queue times for players and groups, especially for higher ranks.
MATCHMAKING UPDATES
When a player is currently on a loss streak, the matchmaker will try to avoid putting the player on a team that is statistically calculated to have a lower chance of winning.
Developer comments: Loss streaks never feel good. Before each match, we make a prediction about which team will win the game, based on the information we have about the players on both teams. This is how modifiers such as Consolation, Reversal, Uphill Battle, and Expected give or take additional Rank Progress after each Competitive Play match. Since most matches will have a team that has a slightly higher chance of winning, placing a player on the team with the higher chance who is currently on a losing streak is aimed at helping them have a fair chance of breaking that streak. While this won’t guarantee they’ll win, it does provide a helping advantage.
HERO UPDATES
Armor health has been reverted to provide a flat damage reduction of 5 per projectile, up to a maximum of 50% damage reduction.
Out-of-combat health regeneration changed from 20 health per second to 10 health per second + 5% of maximum health.
Developer comment: Armor is being reverted to its original functionality to better resistance rapid fire damage and shotgun-type weapons. Out- of- combat health regeneration has been a positive but subtle addition to the game, but had a much smaller impact for tank heroes due to their massive health pools, so we’re adjusting it to heal for a percentage of maximum health.
TANKS
Role Passive
Tanks now have 25% damage reduction against critical headshot damage.
Knockback resistance increased from 30% to 50%
Developer Comment: Although armor health will now be more effective in some of the more difficult matchups, it will also be losing potency against the typically slower, higher damage instances. To help reduce the feeling of tanks being taken out too quickly by high bursts of damage, the role-wide passive now provides improved defense against critical headshot damage.
JUNKER QUEEN
Developer Comment: Junker Queen being able to activate Commanding Shout while swinging her axe or during her Ultimate ability will make it more responsive for when an additional burst of health or movement speed is needed.
Commanding Shout
Can now be activated while using other abilities.
Cooldown reduced from 14 to 12 seconds.
SIGMA
Developer Comment: Similar to how Graviton Surge functions, Gravitic Flux no longer needs line of sight to affect enemy targets in its area. There are a fair amount of counterplay options to deal with this ultimate so we’re making it more reliable to grab enemy targets within its area of effect.
Gravitic Flux
No longer requires line of sight to the center of the effect.
WRECKING BALL
Developer Comment: Wrecking Ball has been performing much better after his recent update and these tuning changes will help his abilities feel more impactful.
Grappling Claw
Impact damage increased from 50 to 60.
Piledriver
Movement lockout duration for enemies increased from 0.5 to 0.75 seconds.
Minefield
Damage increased from 130 to 165.
Explosion knockback increased from 5 to 10.
ZARYA
Developer Comment: We have been increasing the value of some tank ultimate abilities to account for the increased health pools and it helps to make the decision of when to counter-swap more of an interesting tradeoff. Graviton Surge was still very useful to set up combos with other ultimate abilities but we want to makes sure it’s powerful enough on its own.
Graviton Surge
Radius increased from 6 to 7 meters.
Duration increased from 3.5 to 4 seconds
DAMAGE
JUNKRAT
Developer Comment: Junkrat’s weapon has great damage output but is unreliable outside of close range due to its slow projectile speed, which is an intended drawback to its high output. The Season 9 health changes affected Junkrat more than most other heroes since it now requires one more shot to secure an elimination. We’re increasing the damage on direct impacts to return to 2 direct hits for an elimination, without making his combo with Concussion Mine as deadly as before since that one is much easier to execute.
Frag Launcher
Impact damage increased from 40 to 45 (Total damage increased from 120 to 125).
ECHO
Developer Comment: While the main benefit of Duplicate is a second health pool and the utility of another hero’s abilities, it was often too difficult to charge an ultimate in the Duplicate time limit so we’re increasing the bonus multiplier slightly.
Duplicate
Ultimate gain multiplier while transformed increased from 4 to 4.5.
HANZO
Developer Comment: The Dragonstrike ultimate hasn’t been very effective outside of being used in a combo with other abilities that restrict enemy movement, so we’re increasing its speed to help position it as less of a zoning tool and more likely to deal some damage.
Speed increased from 12 to 15 meters per second.
Dragonstrike
Speed increased from 12 to 15 meters per second.
SUPPORT
BRIGITTE
Developer Comment: Resetting the Shield Bash cooldown on ultimate activation was too much potential burst damage for Brigitte when the average maximum health of everyone was lower, but it’s much more reasonable now that it won’t be as lethal.
Rally
Now resets Shield Bash cooldown upon activation.
BUG FIXES
GENERAL
Fixed a bug with Mirrorwatch not generating stats in Game Reports.
Fixed a bug with Competitive Progress not incrementing correctly.
MAPS
General bug fixes and improvements were performed on multiple maps.
Eichenwalde
Fixed an area that could cause players to temporarily become stuck.
Samoa
Fixed a spot on the map that players could become temporarily stuck in.
Shambali
Fixed a location where players could become stuck for a period of time.
HEROES
Mercy
Vengeance Skin – Fixed a bug with the feathers on the skin not being properly aligned.
Venture
Fixed a bug with Tectonic Shock that counted turrets and other non-player targets as valid for the Excavation Annihilation challenge.
Fixed an issue that could occur with Burrow where Venture could remain burrowed above the ground.
In 2023, Blizzard opened up Overwatch’s world for third-party collaborations. The first was a set of skins and other cosmetics based on the anime/manga One-Punch Man, which naturally turned Overwatch’s own “one-punch man,” Doomfist, into the titular hero with a new skin. The cape is luxurious, but he’s not the only hero who got to cosplay during the event. Soldier: 76 gets to ride a bike as Mumen Rider, Kiriko’s green wig is wigging as the Terrible Tornado, and Overwatch’s resident cyborg Genji naturally becomes One-Punch Man’s cyborg Genos.
Looking back, the collaboration was strange because One Punch Man hasn’t really been doing much as of late, with the third season still in development and the last one having come out in 2019. But there’s a surprising amount of love shown in the skins, highlight intros, and other cosmetics, as silly as it is seeing Soldier: 76 pedaling like his life depends on it.
The second big collaboration was with K-Pop girl group Le Sserafim, and it was an absolute banger of an event. Take my hand, walk with me. Have you heard the good word of Le Sserafim’s catchy as hell bop “Perfect Night”? Have you basked in the glory of Tracer, Kiriko, Brigitte, D.Va, and Sombra geared up for a K-Pop concert, serving some of the most glamorous skins Overwatch has ever seen? And did you watch the music video, in which all the previously mentioned girlies attend a Le Sserafim concert and use their various abilities to have their own perfect night? It ruled. I’m still wearing the Sombra skin when I play her, and have no plans to take it off.
Le Sserafim / Blizzard Entertainment
While Blizzard looked outside of its stable for crossovers, it also looked to the other side of the office and had a Diablo crossover, as well. Moira mains rejoiced as she finally got a decent skin out of the arrangement, though the Diablo-themed co-op mode was extremely mid and tiresome. Also, John Cena showed up in a viral marketing campaign for some reason, though that had no impact on the game itself.
Even if you don’t watch One-Punch Man or jive with Le Sserafim’s music, Overwatch 2’s collaborative events have felt meaningful, not like they’re just cheap crossovers. The team at Blizzard has done a lot to capture the vibes of its partners without it coming at the expense of its own identity. Crossovers can be exhausting, as games like Fortnite can lose their entire sense of self as they clutter their worlds with pieces of other properties. But so far, Overwatch 2 has found a happy medium in paying tribute to something within its own framework. — KS
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According to Blizzard, these changes were meant to address criticism that Support characters had been enjoying a rise in power since Overwatch 2 launched last year, so almost everyone is seeing some tweaks, mostly in the form of nerfs.
High-impact abilities like Ana’s Biotic Grenade and Kiriko’s Protection Suzu have been given increased cooldowns, while building abilities like Illari’s Healing Pylon and Baptiste’s Immortality Field now have reduced durability and can be more easily destroyed by the enemy team.
Zenyatta, meanwhile, has one of the more notable changes to his Orb of Discord ability. The ability increases damage taken on whichever enemy it’s attached to, giving Zen’s team a chance to focus on them and take them out quickly. Now, it. can’t be reapplied to the same target for seven seconds after it’s removed. This means you can’t just keep spamming it on one high-priority target.
The full patch notes read as follows:
LE SSERAFIM X OVERWATCH 2 LIMITED TIME EVENT
Overwatch 2 is teaming up with K-pop sensation, LE SSERAFIM in an in-game music collaboration. Play Concert Clash, a 3v3 capture-the-flag mode set in a K-pop themed Busan. Play as D.Va, Kiriko, Tracer, Brigitte and Sombra—decked out in LE SSERAFIM-inspired skins—and compete over tickets and capture objectives to turn them in and score points. This limited-time event begins on Wednesday, November 1, at 11:00 AM PDT.
GENERAL UPDATES
ENDORSEMENTS
Endorsement level decay has been reworked to be more forgiving in some circumstances. The endorsement level always decays slightly whenever you finish a match, but that decay is now reduced by the percentage of players who could not have endorsed you. If none of the players in the match could have endorsed you, your Endorsement level would not decay. The following reasons prevent other players from endorsing you:
The player is your friend.
The player endorsed you within the past 24 hours.
Endorsement level decay also no longer occurs when a server shuts down. The most common reason for this is a competitive match shutting down when players leave the match early.
CHALLENGES
Added Legendary, Mythic, and Ultimate Player Title challenges to each hero’s progression challenges.
PROGRESSION
Victory Pose now shows your Progression Level instead of the Hero Level.
Developer Comments: The hero you end the match on isn’t necessarily representative of you as a player. This change is intended to better show off your overall progression.
SOCIAL FEATURES
The default option for match text chat is now set to OFF (previously set to ON) for new players. This can be changed in the Social Options.
The default option for team voice chat is now set to ON (previously set to AUTO-JOIN) for new players. This can be changed in the Social Options.
Current text or voice chat settings for existing players are not changed.
Developer Comments: We will be changing the defaults for both text and voice chat to encourage effective communication through the ping system while reducing the chance of encountering disruptive chat in the game.
HERO UPDATES
Developer comments: This balance patch is largely focused on widening the window of time players have during combat between some impactful cooldowns, such as Bastion’s reconfigure, Cassidy’s grenade, and many of the support utilities.
TANK
D.VA
Developer comments: The added projectile speed to Micro Missiles helps improve their consistency at medium range while the decreased movement speed penalty on Fusion Cannons enable D.Va to stick closer to mobile targets, making her more of a threat when diving into the enemy team.
Fusion Cannons
Movement speed penalty reduced from 40 to 30%.
Micro Missiles
Projectile speed increased from 40 to 50.
DOOMFIST
Developer comments: This change will give the stunned player more opportunities to react to Doomfist following a wall stun.
Rocket Punch
Minimum wall stun duration decreased from 0.25 to 0.15 seconds.
Maximum wall stun duration decreased from 0.75 to 0.6 seconds.
WINSTON
Developer comments: Increasing the range of the alternate fire will give Winston some more flexibility in positioning while dealing damage from range.
Tesla Cannon
Secondary fire range increased from 30 to 40 meters.
DAMAGE
BASTION
Configuration: Assault
Cooldown increased from 10 to 12 seconds.
Weapon spread increased 10%.
CASSIDY
Magnetic Grenade
Cooldown increased from 10 to 12 seconds.
MEI
Developer comments: With some of the recent changes, Mei is now slightly overperforming. Her improved primary fire damage output is good for her role, so rather than adjust that further, we’re instead targeting the more commonly frustrating crowd control aspect of its slowing effect.
Endothermic Blaster
Slow effect decreased from 40 to 30%.
SOMBRA
EMP
Ultimate cost decreased 10%.
SYMMETRA
Developer comments: With Symmetra recently gaining more lethality in her long-ranged secondary fire, she’s no longer as reliant on playing at close range, so we’re reverting her total health back to 200.
Base shield health reduced from 125 to 100 (total 200 HP)
WIDOWMAKER
Developer comments: Recon Visor is taking a long time to charge on average relative to other ultimate abilities so we’re reducing the cost. Widowmaker is also at a more severe disadvantage against Sombra with the recent rework and these changes will add more counterplay.
Widow’s Kiss
Unscoped shots to reach maximum spread increased from 3 to 7.
Infra-Sight
Ultimate cost reduced 10%.
SUPPORT
ANA
Biotic Grenade
Cooldown increased from 10 to 12 seconds.
BAPTISTE
Immortality Field
Health decreased from 150 to 125.
Cooldown increased from 23 to 25 seconds.
ILLARI
Developer comments: Illari’s overall damage output throughout a match is too high so we’re reducing how consistent her Solar Rifle damage is to apply. Her weapon has some other disadvantages such as needing to charge up and a reduced critical damage multiplier, but we’ll be evaluating how much of an effect this change has in combination with the reduced Healing Pylon uptime.
Solar Rifle
Primary fire projectile size reduced from 0.1 to 0.05 meters.
Healing Pylon
Base health reduced from 75 to 50 (total 100 HP).
Cooldown when destroyed increased from 12 to 15 seconds.
KIRIKO
Protection Suzu
Cooldown increased from 14 to 15 seconds.
LIFEWEAVER
Dev Comment: Lifeweaver’s total healing over a match is significantly higher than any other hero so to help bring it more in line we’re making some adjustments to his primary Healing Blossom.
Healing Blossom
Ammo reduced from 20 to 16.
Max heal reduced from 75 to 70.
Life Grip
Cooldown increased from 16 to 19 seconds.
ZENYATTA
Developer comments: The goal of these changes is to add more counterplay against Discord Orb and encourage Zenyatta players to think more about who to place it on. Now, if the effect ends for any reason, the target is temporarily unable to be targeted again by Discord Orb. A new soft-targeting reticle appears when aiming toward an enemy player that cannot be affected by Discord Orb to display the remaining duration before it can be reapplied. This is a significant change both to how the ability feels to use and how clear it is to understand, so we will be keeping a close eye on player feedback.
Base health increased from 50 to 75 (total 225 HP).
Harmony Orb
Time to wear off when not in line-of-sight increased from 3 to 5 seconds.
Orb of Discord
Can no longer be reapplied to the same target for 7 seconds after the effect has been removed.
Range increased from 30 to 40 meters.
HERO CUSTOM CONTROL UPDATES
In addition to the hero balance adjustments in this update, we are implementing additional quality-of-life settings and additional input options for several hero abilities to give you the ability to custom-tailor your experience of playing your favorite heroes.
Sorted many Hero-Specific Options into Advanced Hero Options category.
TANK
DOOMFIST
Added the Hero-Specific Options:
Relative Aim Sensitivity During Power Block – 100% by default.
Relative Gyro Aim Sensitivity During Power Block – 100% by default (Only available on gyro-supported platforms).
SIGMA
Added the Hero-Specific Option:
Rise During Gravitic Flux With Ability 3 – Off by default.
DAMAGE
ECHO
Added the Hero-Specific Options:
Crouch Activates Glide – Off by default.
Rise During Flight With Ability 1 – Off by default.
Flight Cancel Input – Ability 1 by default.
Automatically Toggle Glide After Flight – Off by default.
TORBJÖRN
Added the Hero-Specific Option:
Interact Cancels Deploy Turret – On by default.
SUPPORT
ILLARI
Added the Hero-Specific Option:
Rise During Captive Sun With Ability 3 – Off by default.
LÚCIO
Added the Hero-Specific Options:
Automatically Wall Ride – Off by default, Only available on Console Platforms.
Wall Ride Cares About Movement – Off by default.
MERCY
Added the Hero-Specific Options:
Crouch Activates Glide – On by default.
Automatically Toggle Angelic Decent After Guardian Angel – Off by default.
Rise During Valkyrie With Ability 3 – Off by default.
RUMBLE UPDATES
We’ve gone through and adjusted the Rumble and Trigger Feedback on several abilities for controllers. We looked to make the rumble more dynamic and responsive while also highlighting the unique feel of many abilities.
TANK
D. Va
Reworked Rumble on Primary Fire.
Added rumble on activation of Defense Matrix.
Adjusted trigger feedback on Defense Matrix to account for damage of destroyed projectile.
Added rumble on projectile destruction for Defense Matrix.
Added rumble on Self-Destruct activation.
Added trigger feedback on Boosters.
Added rumble on Call Mech start.
Adjusted rumble on Call Mech.
Added rumble on Call Mech hit.
Added rumble on entering the Mech after Call Mech.
Doomfist
Added rumble on start of Power Block.
Added rumble on Fist Empowerment.
Orisa
Fusion Driver rumble now scales slightly with Heat.
Added rumble on Overheat.
Added rumble on Javelin Spin start.
Added rumble on Javelin Spin duration.
Added rumble on Javelin Spin damaging an enemy.
Added rumble on Javelin Spin end.
Added rumble on Terra Surge start.
Added rumble on Terra Surge charge
Added rumble on Terra Surge activation.
Ramattra
Increase rumble strength and duration on Pummel.
Added rumble on Block activation.
Reinhardt
Added rumble on Barrier activation.
Roadhog
Added rumble on Chain Hook activation.
Added trigger feedback on Chain Hook activation.
Added trigger feedback on Chain Hook impact.
Added trigger feedback on Chain Hook retraction.
Sigma
Added rumble on Accreation fire.
Added rumble on Kinetic Grasp duration.
Added rumble on Kinetic Grasp absorb.
Added rumble on Kinetic Grasp Overhealth gain.
Added rumble on Gravitic Flux intro.
Added rumble on Gravitic Flux searching for targets.
Added rumble on Gravitic Flux found targets.
Added rumble on Gravitic Flux holding targets.
Adjusted rumble on Gravitic Flux slam.
Winston
Added rumble on Jump Pack activation.
Added rumble on Secondary Fire release.
Added rumble on Barrier Projector Activation.
Reworked rumble on Winston’s Primal Rage punch.
Added trigger feedback on Winston’s Primal Rage punch hit.
Wrecking Ball
Added rumble on Roll exit.
Adjusted the rumble on Piledriver impact.
Zarya
Added rumble on Particle Barrier.
Added rumble on Barrier Deploy.
Added rumble on Particle Barrier end.
Increased the rumble strength on Particle Beam while targeting an enemy.
DAMAGE
Ashe
Added rumble on Dynamite.
Added rumble on B.O.B. call.
Added rumble on B.O.B. landing.
Cassidy
Added rumble on Magnetic Grenade.
Added rumble on Deadeye start.
Genji
Added rumble during Dash.
Added rumble on Dash dealing damage.
Added rumble on Deflect start.
Added rumble on Deflect deflection.
Reworked rumble on Dragonblade swing.
Added Trigger Feedback on Dragonblade swing hit.
Added rumble on Wall Climb.
Added rumble on Ledge Climb.
Added rumble on Double Jump.
Hanzo
Added trigger feedback on Bow charge.
Reduced rumble duration on charging arrow to match charge time.
Reduced rumble on holding arrow.
Reduced rumble on arrow fire during Storm Arrows.
Added rumble on Lunge.
Added rumble on Dragonstrike fire.
Added rumble on Wall Climb.
Added rumble on Ledge Climb.
Added rumble on Sonic Arrow Equip.
Junkrat
Adjusted RIP-tire rumble.
Reduced rumble on Concussive Mine when not hitting self.
Increased rumble on Concussive Mine when hitting self.
Added rumble on Concussive Mine fire.
Added rumble on Steel Trap fire.
Mei
Added rumble on Blizzard fire.
Added rumble on Ice Wall start.
Added rumble on Ice Wall destroy.
Pharah
Increased Rumble on Primary Fire.
Added rumble on hitting yourself with Concussive Blast.
Reaper
Swapped the Left and Right Primary Fire rumble.
Increased the rumble on the Left Primary Fire.
Added rumble on Wraith Form activation.
Added rumble on Wraith form ending.
Adjusted Shadowstep’s trigger feedback for player’s input settings.
Added rumble on Shadowstep start.
Sojourn
Increased rumble on Primary Fire.
Adjusted rumble on Secondary Fire.
Added unique rumble on Secondary Fire shots charged above 90.
Added rumble on Power Slide jump.
Soldier: 76
Adjusted rumble on Helix Rockets.
Added rumble on Sprint start.
Added rumble on Spring duration.
Added rumble on Tactical Visor start.
Symmetra
Added rumble on all three levels of Primary Fire on miss.
Added rumble on moving from level 3 to level 2.
Added rumble on moving from level 2 to level 1.
Added rumble on Teleporter start.
Added rumble on Teleporter destroy.
Added rumble on Photon Barrier start.
Lengthened rumble on Photon Barrier fire.
Added rumble on using the teleporter (as any character).
Torbjörn
Added rumble on Turret Deploy.
Added rumble on Turret Destroy.
Widowmaker
Added rumble on Infra-sights.
SUPPORT
Baptiste
Reworked Exo-boots hold rumble.
Shortened Exo-boots charging-up rumble.
Added rumble on Amplification Matrix Start.
Brigitte
Reworked Brigitte’s Primary Fire rumble.
Added rumble on Shield Barrier activation.
Illari
Added rumble on Healing Pylon destroy.
Kiriko
Reworked Healing Ofuda rumble.
Adjusted Healing Ofuda rumble to respond to acquiring targets.
Added rumble on Wall Climb.
Added rumble on Ledge Climb.
Lifeweaver
Reworked Rumble on Rejuvenating Dash to be directional.
Added rumble on Tree of Life start.
Added rumble on Tree of Life destroy.
Lúcio
Added rumble on Amp It Up.
Added rumble on Crossfade.
Added rumble on Wall Ride start.
Added rumble on Wall Ride ride.
Added rumble on Wall Ride jump.
Added rumble on Sound Barrier start.
Added rumble on Sound Barrier.
Reworked rumble on Sound Barrier Fire.
Mercy
Added trigger feedback on Caduceus Staff Secondary Fire.
Added trigger feedback on Caduceus Blaster.
Added rumble on Valkyrie intro.
Moira
Reduced rumble on Secondary Fire.
Zenyatta
Added rumble on Healing Orb.
Added rumble on Discord Orb.
BUG FIXES
GENERAL
Audio
Fixed an issue in the Training Grounds where the Heavy Training Bot’s Shield was playing the incorrect impact effect.
Adjusted the areas in the training grounds in which the default Training Bot’s weapon fire can be heard. This should provide content creators some additional quiet areas for capturing their media.
Hero Mastery
Fixed a bug that could result in a perpetual black screen if you died to enemy damage after a course restart.
Resolved an issue that resulted in no Hero icon being shown in the Results screen during a Replay.
Resolved a bug that could result in ‘New Personal Best’ being displayed for any score.
Fixed a bug that could occur on some platforms that caused the Kill Feed and HUD to vanish if Try Again was selected.
Resolved an issue for Mercy that resulted in Healing not being displayed in the Scoring Details.
Other Fixes
Fixed a bug that would disband your group if you selected ‘Leave as Group’ in a Competitive match.
Fixed a bug in the Hero Gallery that would cause the UI to highlight another cosmetic after equipping one.
Fixed an issue that caused the achievement ‘The Friend Zone’ to not unlock on some platforms despite requirements being met.
Fixed an issue that resulted in enemy team Roles being revealed via the scoreboard in Mystery Heroes.
Fixed a bug that prevented some Player Icons from being equipped.
Fixed a bug that prevented ‘Random From Favorites’ from working during Hero Select.
Fixed a bug with AI bots picking heroes excluded in the Custom Game Settings which would result in empty slots in the match.
MAPS
Antarctic Peninsula
Fixed some areas of the map that could get players stuck.
New Junk City
Moved some environment assets from floating in one of the spawn rooms.
Route 66
Fixed an area of the map that allowed players to stand outside the intended playable space.
Samoa
Fixed some areas that had gaps that caused unintended sight lines.
Fixed some areas that allowed players to stand in unintended locations.
Fixed some areas of the map that allowed turrets to be placed outside the playable space but still attack enemies.
Fixed some areas of that map that could get players stuck.
Fixed lighting in some areas of the map.
HEROES
Illari
Fixed a bug that resulted in the ‘Daybreak’ skin displaying twice in the Skin Selection while in pre-game Hero Select.
Resolved an issue with Healing Pylon that could result in players launching out of it.
Lifeweaver
Fixed a bug that prevented Petal Platform from falling when Hacked.
Lúcio
Fixed a bug with the Hermes skin that caused the sounds played during Wallride to be louder than intended.
Mercy
Fixed an interaction with Sombra that prevented Mercy’s beams not properly fading out when applied to a Stealth Sombra.
Moira
Fixed a bug with the ‘Be Beautiful’ Highlight Intro not displaying the window behind Moira on all platforms.
Sombra
Fixed in a previous update – Resolved an issue that caused Sombra to appear untextured after interacting with Random from Favorites.
Zenyatta
Fixed an issue where sometimes Orbs of Discord and Harmony would not stay attached to the target.
For a game like Overwatch 2, in which its story has been trickled out over dozens of disparate external media stories rather than in one, cohesive thing—you know, like, a video game campaign?—there are bound to be inconsistencies along the way. But lord, seeing the game’s 38 heroes suddenly get canonical birthdates and ages really just makes it apparent how weirdly incongruous these ages are with the timeline we know.
Overwatch 2’s New Story Missions: Worth The Money?
This new birth-chart fodder comes from the official Overwatch website, which was updated this week to give each hero a canonical birthday and age. Some of these make sense, like how many of the old-guard characters like Soldier: 76, Ana, and Reaper are in their late 50s and early 60s. The new kids on the block—like recent addition Illari being an 18-year-old sun-powered queen, or D.Va being a 21-year-old esports champion—probably check out too, because they’re mostly removed from the larger timeline of Overwatch. It’s when we start comparing more central characters’ canonical ages that things start to get murky.
Kiriko, one of the new support heroes introduced in Overwatch 2, is one of the most glaring examples of the math not mathing. When Blizzard first revealed Kiriko, it claimed she grew up with Genji and Hanzo, and even trained alongside them in the ways of the sword. However, now that all involved have official ages, things aren’t adding up. We’re told Genji and Hanzo are 37 and 40, respectively, while Kiriko is supposedly 21. On paper, I believe those ages because each of those heroes feels written to be those ages, it’s the pitting those numbers against the lore, art, and story we know that doesn’t click. Look at this illustration of the three training in Kiriko’s Origin Story trailer. You expect me to believe there are nearly 20 years of difference between these characters? Sure, Kiriko looks young and could reasonably be under 10 here, but you expect me to believe that Hanzo is pushing 30 in this image?
Screenshot: Blizzard Entertainment / Kotaku
Attack of the Fanboy compiled some examplesof Overwatch fans pointing out other oddities and inconsistencies. Consider Sojourn, who’s now listed as 47 years old. Her sister Valentine, introduced in the spin-off novel “Overwatch 2: Sojourn”, would have had to have been 14 years old when giving birth to Sojourn’s niece Bonnie. Which sure, isn’t impossible, but it does seem highly unlikely.
Personally, one of the biggest eyebrow-raising age questions of Overwatch is Pharah and Mercy, who became a canonical (possibly unrequited) pairing in the story when it was revealed Pharah is a lesbian during the game’s first Pride event. Mercy is 39, whereas Pharah is supposedly 34. Meanwhile, art of Pharah exists in Ana’s origin story that shows a very, very young Pharah standing with much of the original Overwatch crew; the gap between the two appears much larger than five years.
Screenshot: Blizzard Entertainment / Kotaku
Honestly, with all of Overwatch’s narrative changes and shake-ups over the years, I get it. Trying to get this game’s story off the ground has been tumultuous enough that expecting it to be airtight and perfect in its timeline and lore is just nitpicking. But it is funny to look at all the numbers next to each other and realize a majority of Overwatch’s story is about vibes more than getting into the nitty-gritty of the timeline.
If you’re curious, here are everyone’s ages and birthdays:
Tank
D.Va: June 22, (21)
Doomfist: May 25, (47)
Junker Queen: June 14, (31)
Orisa: May 9, (1)
Ramattra: March 29, (28)
Reinhardt: June 26, (63)
Roadhog: September 12, (50)
Sigma: March 12, (64)
Winston: June 6, (31)
Wrecking Ball: October 15, (16)
Zarya: December 4, (30)
Damage
Ashe: October 1, (41)
Bastion: ??? (32)
Cassidy: July 31, (39)
Echo: February 5, (14)
Genji: October 28, (37)
Hanzo: November 3, (40)
Junkrat: February 29, (27)
Mei: September 5, (33)
Pharah: April 15, (34)
Reaper: December 14, (60)
Sojourn: January 12, (47)
Soldier: 76: January 27, (58)
Sombra: December 31, (32)
Symettra: October 2, (30)
Torbjorn: September 21, (59)
Tracer: February 12, (28)
Widowmaker: November 19, (35)
Support
Ana: January 1, (62)
Baptiste: March 12, (38)
Brigitte: September 22, (25)
Illari: December 21, (18)
Kiriko: July 7, (21)
Lifeweaver: April 28, (31)
Lucio: March 20, (28)
Mercy: May 13, (39)
Moira: April 4, (50)
Zenyatta: July 14, (33)
Moving forward, we should all make a pact to no longer ask for people’s birthsigns; now, we’ll just ask each other which Overwatch hero we share a birth month with. Unfortunately, my own answer of “Wrecking Ball, the intelligent hamster” doesn’t sound particularly cool.
I started regularly playing competitive online games in 2007, with the launch of Halo 3. Back then, participating in in-game voice chat was harrowing for a 17-year-old girl whose voice betrayed her gender and her youth. I was subjected to such frequent and horrific hostility (rape threats, misogynistic remarks, sexually inappropriate comments, you name it) that I eventually started screaming back, a behavior my parents still bring up today. And yet, voice chat is essential in competitive online games, especially modern ones like Call of Duty: Warzone, Apex Legends, Fortnite, Valorant, and Overwatch.
All of these popular games require extensive amounts of teamwork to succeed, which is bolstered by being able to chat with your teammates. But in-game voice chat remains a scary, toxic place—especially for women.
Unfortunately, despite efforts from developers to crack down on toxicity in voice and text chat, it still feels, at times, like I’m stuck in the same world as that 17-year-old girl just trying to compete in peace. And I’m not alone in that feeling. I spoke to several women about their voice chat experiences, as well as reps from some of today’s biggest online games, to get a better understanding of the current landscape.
A 17-year-old me playing Halo 3 circa 2007.Photo: Alyssa Mercante / Kotaku
Voice-chatting as a woman
Competitive online games are intense, but doubly so if you’re identifiable as outside the industry’s so-called core playerbase for the last 35 years: white, straight, and male. “Marginalized users, especially women, non-binary people, and trans folks, are more likely to experience harassment in voice and video chats,” game researcher PS Berge told Kotaku’s Ashley Bardhan last year.
The moment a woman or woman-presenting person speaks in voice chat, they run the risk of being identified as an “other” and thus deserving of ridicule, ire, or sexual harassment. For many, that fear of being othered and how it could (and often does) lead to harassment directly affects their willingness to speak in competitive game settings.
“I usually wait for someone else to speak first so I know what the vibe will be,” video game level designer Nat Clayton, who regularly plays Apex Legends, told Kotaku via email. “Though I feel more comfortable chatting in Apex than I do going back to older PC games like Team Fortress 2 or Counter-Strike—games where the expectation of bigotry seems absolutely set in stone, where you feel like you cannot turn on voice chat without immediately experiencing a flood of slurs.” Both Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike came out in the early 2000s and still attract an older, male-leaning playerbase, many of whom can be hostile to women.
This problem has been long-standing, but companies are doing more to dissuade people from being toxic or abusive in in-game voice and text chat now than they were 10 years ago—though it often doesn’t feel like it.
Microsoft recently announced a new voice reporting feature that will let players save and submit a clip of someone violating the Xbox Community Standards, which a team will then review to determine the next course of action. “Reactive voice reporting on Xbox is designed to be quick and easy to use with minimal impact to gameplay,” reads the press release announcing the new feature. This means that Xbox players can report toxic voice chat no matter what game they’re playing, which adds another layer of protection on top of the ones set up by individual developers.
Those protections include ones laid out In the uber-popular battle royale game Fortnite. If a player is found in violation of Epic’s community rules (which have guidelines against hate speech, inappropriate content, harassment, and discrimination), they could lose access to in-game voice chat—a newer approach to punishment that the company introduced in 2022—or have their account permanently banned. Epic wouldn’t share specific numbers on bans, but did tell Kotaku that its team is “planning to introduce a new feature for voice chat soon.”
But Fortnite “[relies] on player reports to address violations of our voice and text chats,” which places the onus squarely on those who are on the receiving end of such violations. And for games that don’t record or store voice and text chat, reports can feel especially useless. When asked if she has reported people in Apex Legends, Clatyon replied, “Many, and often, but unfortunately the current Apex reporting system doesn’t monitor/record voice interactions and so doesn’t take action based on voice chat.”
Image: Microsoft
New ways games are combatting toxicity
Companies don’t always rely on players, though. Activision, Blizzard, and Riot Games all use a mix of automation and human moderation for multiplayer modes in Call of Duty, Overwatch 2,and Valorant.
As detailed in an official Call of Duty blog post from last year, an automated filtering system flags inappropriate gamertags, while human moderation of text chat helps identify bad actors. The aforementioned post (which is from September 13, 2022) boasts 500,000 accounts banned and 300,000 renamed thanks to enforcement and anti-toxicity teams. We don’t have more recent data from the Call of Duty publisher.
After the launch of Overwatch 2, Blizzard announced its Defense Matrix Initiative which includes a “machine-learning algorithms to transcribe and identify disruptive voice chat in-game.” Though Blizzard did say what it considers “disruptive voice chat” or what the algorithms entail, the company did say the team is “happy with the results of this new tech” and has plans to deploy it to more regions and in more languages.
But women still often find themselves deploying strategies to deal with the toxicity that isn’t caught by these systems. Anna, a UI/UX researcher who regularly plays competitive games like Overwatch 2 and CS:GO, told Kotaku over email that she also waits to see what the vibe of the chat is before diving in. She’s “more inclined to speak up if I hear another woman too because there’s potentially more safety in numbers then,” she explained. Others, myself included, play solely with friends or offer to group up with women they meet in matches to avoid encountering agitated players.
Toxicity persists, which is likely why companies continue to try new methods and approaches. When Kotaku reached out to Riot Games for details on its efforts combating disruptive behavior and toxicity in Valorant, executive producer Anna Donlon said via email that:
In addition to the player reporting tools, automatic detection system, and our Muted Words List, we’re currently beta testing our voice moderation system in North America, enabling Riot to record and evaluate in-game voice comms. Riot’s fully-dedicated Central Player Dynamics team is leveraging brand new moderation technology, training multi-language models to collect and record evidence-based violations of our behavioral policies.
While companies struggle to find a solution to an admittedly complicated problem, some women have been discouraged from trying altogether. Felicia, a PhD candidate at the University of Montana and full-time content creator, told Kotaku that she used to say hello at the start of every game (she mainly plays Fortnite and Apex Legends) but that willingness eventually “turned into waiting to speak, then not speaking at all.” The shift came as a direct result of her experience using Overwatch’s in-game voice chat function. “It got so bad I’d only talk in Xbox parties,” she said of the feature which allows you to group up and voice chat with friends.
Jessica Wells, group editor at Network N Media, speaks up in her CS:GO matches despite the threat of toxicity. “I say hello, give information, and see how it goes. If my team is toxic to me, I’ll either mute individuals or mute all using the command,” she said via email. “I used to fight it—and I mean really fight the toxicity online—but I find toxicity breeds more toxicity and the game goes to shit as a result.”
Image: Blizzard
Toxicity persists and worsens in highly competitive games
If you’ve played ranked matches in games like Overwatch or Valorant, you’ve experienced this direct correlation: Verbal harassment increases when competition levels increase. And no one experiences this phenomenon more acutely than women.
Alice, a former Grandmaster Overwatch1 player, told Kotaku over email that her experience with the original game “changed how [she] interacted with online multiplayer.” She was ranked higher than her friends, so would have to queue for competitive matches alone, and said she’d get “the usual ‘go make me a sandwich’” remarks or requests to “let your boyfriend back on” in more than half of her games.
Overwatch is a curious case when it comes to harassment and toxicity. Despite a cartoonish visual design that suggests a more approachable game and a diverse cast of characters, competition is at the heart of the team shooter’s identity. Over time, patches and updates have focused on balancing competitive play, and its popular esports league encourages highly competitive gameplay. Overwatch players who regularly watch Overwatch League may be more prone to “backseating” (telling other players what to do) or be more judgmental of the way people play certain characters. And the more extreme ire is often directed towards women—especially those who play support or the few playing Overwatch at a professional level.
“Sometimes someone else on the team would stick up for me, but most of the time the other players would stay silent or join in.” Alice’s experience may not be surprising when you consider the one study that tracked over 20,000 players and found that men played more aggressively when their opponents or their characters were women. “Through our research, we found that women did perform better when they actively concealed their gender identities in online video games,” the study said.
Me, likely playing Call of Duty: Black Ops or Modern Warfare III circa 2011.Photo: Alyssa Mercante / Kotaku
Because of her consistently negative experiences in Overwatch voice chat, Alice plays Valorant now—just not ranked. She chooses not to play at a higher level because competitive Valorant (which also has its own, uber popular esports league) is a cesspool of toxic masculinity.
Anna, who regularly plays Riot Games’ 5v5 hero shooter, told Kotaku over email that she’s “encountered increasing amounts of toxicity in Valorant…which can include anything from sexual assault threats, threats of general violence or death threats, to social media stalking.” Male players have told her to “get on [her] knees and beg for gun drops, and proceed to use their character to teabag or simulate a blowjob.”
Anna says she changed her Riot ID to a “common household object” to try and prevent harassment from male players.
Stacy, a full-time streamer, told Kotaku via email that the harassment has bled into the real world, too. “Threats of DDOS, stalking, assault, murder and other crimes – a lot of which ended up on my live stream…I’ve had people ask me for my personal connections and accounts like Snapchat…as well as my phone number, and have even had people use my PSN account name to find me on social media like Instagram for non-gaming related reasons. [They even found] my email address to try to either harass me, send me unsolicited photos or attempt to bully and berate me beyond the console.”
The future of competitive games for women
It’s clear that even with automated moderation systems, extensive reporting options, and loud declarations against toxicity from publishers and developers, women who play competitive online shooters still regularly experience harassment.
“I have reported people in the past and it was an easy report button but with all the toxicity I encountered it made it feel like reporting them wouldn’t make a difference,” Felicia said. “I stopped reporting for the most part unless they come into my stream or in my comment section being toxic.”
Overwatch has a feature that will show you a pop-up upon login if the team has taken action against someone you’ve reported, but many players rarely (if ever) see that login. I’ve only ever seen it once.
Jessica finds that reporting players in CS:GO is virtually useless. “I can’t think of a single case where it felt like Valve directly took action,” she said.
Image: Alpha Intel / Respawn
The same can be said for Valorant, which has a similar reporting feature as Overwatch. “I think I’ve only seen [the report was actioned on] screen three or four times since it was implemented,” Anna said.
And though the process of reporting is simple, it requires women to retread traumatic territory. “With the particularly nasty people, it always feels gross having to recount the words someone used to explain how they’d like to assault me, or typing (partly censored) slurs that I’d never dream of using myself, but it feels like if my report is not water-tight, it won’t get dealt with,” said Anna.
Unfortunately, eliminating toxic game chat, like so many other problematic things in the gaming industry, requires changing the perspectives of people perpetuating the problem. We need a holistic approach, not one that’s centered solely on automated monitoring or the reports of victims.
“I think more than anything it is a cultural problem,” said Alice. “FPS games are ‘for boys’ and until we change that perception, I think people will continue to be rude in them, especially when there are minimal consequences.”
Game studios can and should center more women and marginalized creators, players, and developers in marketing materials, streams, and esports events—and they should make it explicitly clear that a toxic culture has no place in their games. Instead of shying away from providing details on banned or otherwise penalized players as a result of toxic behavior, studios should wear them like a badge of honor, presenting them proudly as a way of saying “you have no place here.”
FPS games like Splatoon 3 are a great example of how competitive games can be less toxic. Nintendo’s ink-based shooter has minimal communication tools and a diverse character creator that allows for some more gender fluidity, allowing it to feel less like a “boys game.” The perceived casual nature of a Switch player stands in stark contrast to the console warriors and PC try-hards, which begs the question: Can competitive games exist without toxicity?
Nat Clayton has some suggestions: “You need to visibly and publicly create a culture where this kind of behavior isn’t tolerated, to make your community aware that being a hateful wee shit to other players has consequences.”
Update 07/24/23 at 12:00 p.m. EST: The original story included a Jessica Wells quote about Overwatch, but Wells was referring to CS:GO’s reporting system, which is calledOverwatch. The quote has been adjusted to reflect that.
It hasn’t been the best week at Blizzard, so let’s check in and see how things are going with something other than Overwatch 2 like…ah, the company’s management sending out emails about how AI tools are going to be help design character outfits and “generate concept art”. Lovely.
The Week In Games: Protecting The Precious And Time-Twisting Platformers
Shannon Liao, writing for The New York Times, has published excerpts of an email sent to Blizzard employees last month by the company’s chief design officer Allen Adham. “Prepare to be amazed,” he writes, “We are on the brink of a major evolution in how we build and manage our games.”
He’s talking about ‘Blizzard Diffusion’—a play on Stable Diffusion, one of the more popular AI image generation platforms—and says that presently “it was being used to help generate concept art for game environments as well as characters and their outfits”, though he also adds Blizzard is looking at further AI implementations for everything from “autonomous, intelligent, in-game NPCs” to “procedurally assisted level design” to “voice cloning,” “game coding” and “anti-toxicity.”
Blizzard is one of the most famous and, until very recently, most dependable video game studios in the world. It has survived for decades not just because it creates great games, but because it has filled those games with memorable characters. To hear people at the company enthused about letting robots, trained to serve an algorithmic gruel, take over even some of that work bums me out more than I can put into words.
About the only good news to be found in the whole story—which also includes mentions of similar efforts everywhere from Halo studio 343 to Ubisoft—is the fact that a different AI approach Blizzard had been trying (and had even patented) has already been canned because “the tool was taking up too much artist time to be effective”.
There’s a phenomenon in the Overwatch community that has persisted through the original game’s 2016 release, its gradual decline, and the launch of the sequel. This phenomenon is an interesting one, a sort of “IYKYK” situation that requires membership in a specific community in order to recognize its members: in Overwatch, a lot of queer players choose to play as healers. Maybe you haven’t noticed this—maybe you’re straight (I’m sorry) and can’t spot an alphabet army soldier in your lobby, but if you’re in the LGBTQIA+ community and play Overwatch 2, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
Mercy mains with rainbow player icons, Moira one-tricks wearing her Bowie skin, two-stacks who instalock support with some iteration of “-ussy” in their gamertag—if you pay attention, you’ll see that the gays are everywhere in Overwatch, and most of the time they’re playing healer.
But this is all anecdotal evidence, right? Surely gays don’t gravitate to playing healers that disproportionately, do they? After hundreds of hours logged in Overwatch 2 comp , most of which I played as a healer, I felt a burning desire to delve deeper into this phenomenon and figure out why I kept encountering fellow gays in the support role. I had my theories: queer people are used to supporting their found families in the real world, support roles are notoriously less toxic, many of the healer characters are femme or androgynous—but I needed more.
So, I put out a call for “gay people” on Twitter, I interviewed players and peers, and I spoke to a queer-identifying counselor, all in an attempt to properly investigate Overwatch’s gay healing agenda. The result is a fascinating look at a subculture within a subculture, one marked by real-world social queues, kink play, emotional connections, and, unfortunately, a frustrating lack of scientific research.
Gay icons
Image: Blizzard / Nico D.
The most obvious answer (and one of the more common ones I received on Twitter) as to why queer people play healers in Overwatch is that the characters themselves are gay icons. Even though the only two openly queer characters are both DPS heroes, the lineup of support characters looks a lot like the line outside of Happyfun Hideaway on a Saturday night: the uber-feminine and soft Mercy, the muscular and bold Brigitte, the sweet but strong Baptiste, the spunky and sarcastic Kiriko, the calm and collected Zenyatta, the androgynous and tall Moira, the soothing and maturely sexy Ana. Compared to your typical FPS lineup, and even most of the other Overwatch characters (save for outliers like Zarya and Mei), the support squad in this game feels demonstrably queer.
Overwatch player and freelance writer Nico D. echoes this sentiment via email, saying the characters “are designed in such a way to be desirable to queer communities—Moira is a REALLY good example of this, but I also know a lot of queer women or other queer people who are attracted to women that love Mercy, Ana, and Brig.” Nico suggests this has to do with the futuristic, sci-fi fashions depicted in the game “that also happen to be on characters with typically queer-coded appearances like slightly more atypical body types/silhouettes/haircuts.”
That definitely describes most Overwatch support heroes. And though Mercy is slim and white and traditionally attractive (Blizzard does, after all, historically have a problem with portraying women’s bodies), she still doesn’t feel as aggressively sexualized as someone like Widowmaker, whose impossibly long legs and massive tits scream The Male Gaze everytime she runs (in heels) across the screen.
Others who identify as queer and play Overwatch predominantly as healers tell me that the support characters are “gay icons” whose presence/vibes suggest queerness even though it’s not outright stated. “They feel queer” is a sentiment that, while scientifically impossible to prove, is consistently echoed in both messages to me and Overwatch community spaces. But “feeling queer” is a helluva lot different than being canonically queer—so why doesn’t it seem like members of the community play Tracer and Soldier: 76 as much as they play healers?
Gender roles
Image: Blizzard
Venture into the Reddit or TikTok trenches in search of an answer as to why gay people play healers and you’ll likely stumble across the “I can’t aim” meme. Like many internet fables, this one is somewhat rooted in reality. Evie Mae Barber, writer and narrative designer, tells me via Twitter DM that when she played Overwatch, she mained Lucio and Mercy because she finds healers in FPS titles “require less precision and more strategy,” whereas the DPS characters’ effectiveness are largely rooted in accuracy.
A desire to avoid roles that require accuracy could be a side effect of traditional multiplayer FPS titles being largely unsafe spaces for women and non cis-het men—it’s hard to feel comfortable or competent in these roles when the skills you need to excel at them should have been honed in the dark and scary servers of Halo 3 or CS:GO, during a time when the mere hint of “otherness” was met with viciousness, slurs, and threats.
The boys’ club of FPS titles may not exist in such severity today as it did in the early 2000s, but its effects linger. “There was a meta-analysis done that had several results, specifically about Overwatch,” says Dr. Sarah Hays, a queer-identifying counselor at nonprofit org Game to Grow and director of programming at Queer Women of Esports, during a video call. “Of course, it was on a gender binary, but male esports competitors are seen as more competitive than female competitors. Female players believe support to be the easiest position to play and prefer to play it because they don’t want to be blamed for not doing well.” She pauses. “That meta study has a whole bunch of data. I just hate that it’s done on a gender binary.”
It’s clear that the lack of adequate research around LGBTQIA+ gamers and the roles they choose to inhabit in multiplayer titles frustrates Dr. Hays. “My plea is: ‘people, let’s do research on this because it’s so cool,’” she says earnestly before returning to the meta study, combing through it to try and find some more connections to the theory at hand: “Non male-identified people tend towards picking a character that they can feel confident in. So they reduce harassment and they reduce some of that input. ‘It’s easier to play support because I’m not getting as much shit, I’m not getting blamed for that.’ That’s something we’re seeing both based in research and generally: people want to look and appear and feel like they know what they’re doing, so they’re not going to receive flack for being another ignorant non-dude. Which sucks. But it’s true.”
Dr. Hays doesn’t say this word during our chat, but it lingers overhead: toxicity. “I think queer folks trend toward support as it feels like the least toxic role or at least one that has less toxicity associated with them,” says Threshold Games’ community manager Colin Cummings in a DM. So, part of the reason queer-identiying gamers may be choosing healers is to avoid the rampant toxicity that comes with playing competitive FPS games. But how much do real-world experiences outside of gaming tie into choosing the support role?
Support systems
Image: Blizzard / Nico D.
I’m pleased when one of my theories is echoed by a few fellow healers: queer people, so often forced to protect themselves because the government won’t protect them, so connected to found families made up of supportive friends, would naturally gravitate towards characters who provide safety and security.
“I don’t think that it’s a far stretch to imagine that the fantasy of support or healers is appealing to groups of people who require communities around them for safety and affection,” Nico writes.
When I mention my theory in a DM with Eric Ravenscraft, product writer and reviewer at Wired, he’s on board, too. “Honestly, that wouldn’t surprise me too much,” he writes. “Support is very much herding cats, keeping your precious babies alive while they’re getting chased down by a mean dude with a hammer…most of the LGBTQIA+ folks I know live in a very found-family kinda space that becomes very protective of outside threats. Every single person I know in that space knows what it’s like to protect their friends—or even randos—from a bigoted parent or institution or whathaveyou. That kinda mindset maps pretty cleanly onto keeping four randos you just met safe online.”
This social connection between support roles IRL and in Overwatch is something Dr. Hays “loves” during our chat—it clearly sparks her interest, and I can see her cogs turning on our video chat as she begins pondering the larger ramifications of this idea. “I wonder if there isn’t a correlation between oppressed identity and feeling better as a person in the position of healer, because it means that you get to avoid the blame, but also you get to be reinforced as someone who’s helpful and supportive, and more effective in that role? Yeah, because of the way that our real-life experiences have catered to that, as well.”
While Dr. Hays is clearly inspired by these ideas, she reiterates that there’s just not enough research about this kind of stuff to provide us with much concrete evidence. She does, however, bring up a scientific study that leaves my jaw on the floor.
Piss play
I have used this image three times on Kotaku.com.Image: Blizzard / Kotaku
When I wrote about how Overwatch 2’s shorthand is a specific brand of twisted, the slang term for Moira’s healing (pee) was at the top of my mind. So when Dr. Hays starts talking about a scientific study about Overwatch’s “healsluts,” I am, as the kids say, gagged—the connections are there, drawn together by queer players who are, in fact, little freaks.
Assuming the role of a healslut, according to the study from Finnish academic journal Widerscreen, “[invites] players to deploy elements of BDSM kink and sexuality not merely within the vocabulary and design of the game, but also in a communal paratext surrounding the game involving forums, voice chat, and viral fan-designed images.” Kotaku already wrote about this kinky phenomenon almost eight years ago—a r/healslut moderator toldwriter Luke Winkie that healsluts take classic dominant and submissive roles that are synonymous with traditional BDSM and apply it to the roles laid out in Overwatch.
The tank (dom) protects and compliments the healers (subs), occasionally scolding them if they fail. Healsluts have one main duty, and it’s to protect their doms (DPS characters are considered darker, more violent versions of tanks, which makes sense if you’ve ever tried to pocket heal a Genji). Though much of the writing about this community was published several years ago, I can confirm that r/healsluts is still an active subreddit.
In many cases, the Venn diagram of kink and queer communities is a circle, with kink playing an important role in Pride events and in the history and legacy of LGBTQIA+ people. Kink play in Overwatch is a “a way for resisting ‘masculine-normative hegemonic fandom’ in video games,” according to the aforementioned study, and it persists even after Overwatch 1 was sunset in place of a free-to-play sequel.
So whether it’s because of cishet-y FPS pressure making support a more attractive role, social roles within found families that translate to games, the indefinable but still somewhat tangible queerness of the healer characters, or a preternatural need to heal big, dommy tanks, it’s very clear that there are a lot of LGBTQIA+ people playing support in Overwatch 2.
I could happily unpack this phenomenon in another 2,000 words, but maybe I should just leave it at what Kaitlin Jakola, managing editor at The Trace and former Gizmodo employee, had to say about it:
“I assume we all heal because gays love to be both extremely powerful and woefully unappreciated in our own time????” Work, bestie.
An inappropriate Overwatch 2 game mode reappeared, but it’s not one to get excited about. The mode, titled “sexual harassment simulator,” was played enough times that it appeared as one of the most popular over the weekend for some players, according to PC Gamer, which spotted the reappearance just before Blizzard quickly pulled it down.
Another “sexual harassment simulator” was discovered in October 2022, but both tasked players with knocking down Overwatch 2‘s female heroes (like Mercy and Widowmaker) while playing as the cowboy Cole Cassidy and repeatedly crouching over their bodies, apparently, as PC Gamer reported, with the word “raping…” until the character in question is labeled “pregnant” as an AI-controlled Torbjorn supposedly fills the role of the baby. This is disgusting on so many levels it’s not even funny, especially because players are forced to play as Cassidy, previously known as McCree, the same name as the ousted Activision Blizzard developer who took part in the controversial “Cosby Suite” meetups.
A screenshot of the custom mode was posted to Overwatch’s official subreddit by user Joyolo13, who simply asked: “What in god’s name?”
“Lol I remember seeing this every day in [Overwatch 1],” said Redditor sw1nky. “Can’t say I’m surprised it’s still around, [to be honest].”
“McCree is back in the game I guess,” said user FoulfrogBsc.
Kotaku was unable to find the custom game mode in Overwatch 2 as it appears Blizzard took the “sexual harassment simulator” offline—for now. So, it seems the company is aware that such a mode exists but might be having a hard time preventing it from reappearing in the game.
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“Inappropriate or explicit content has absolutely no place in our game,” a Blizzard spokesperson told PC Gamer when the outlet asked about the first version of the mode last year. “We immediately removed the user-created game mode once made aware of its existence. We are continually working to improve automatic filters to prevent inappropriate user-created content, and manually removing any that are not caught by the system.”
Kotaku reached out to Activision Blizzard for comment.
While this is at least the second time the “sexual harassment simulator” has popped up in Overwatch 2 specifically, players noted that a similar mode existed in some form in the original Overwatch game. At the time, players posted PSAs to warn the community about the offensive content. Of course, not all player-created game modes are this egregious. But it is concerning that this issue has come up more than once within a few months.
This left arm of mine? Yeah, it’s indestructible.Screenshot: Blizzard
Overwatch 2 continues to incur issue after issue, with the latest problem leaving the icy damage dealer Mei totally unplayable due to a “critical issue” with her Ice Wall ability. Well, Blizzard may also want to investigate the hero shooter’s newest support character, Kiriko, as it appears she can block headshot damage by simply [checks notes] staring up at the sky.
Kiriko is a kunai-wielding ninja healer who leaked at the beginning of September. Previously locked behind Overwatch 2‘s battle pass, Blizzard has since opted to give the kunoichi away for free following some rather uproarious criticism of the developer’s initial decision. Though she’s a pretty squishy hero, with only 200 health points, she can deal some solid damage and has a kit perfectly suited to buffing her teammates. In other words, she isn’t as passive a healer as, say, Baptiste or Mercy, but you probably don’t want her charging the enemy frontline like Brigitte or Zenyatta either. However, that might change considering an exploit discovered by Twitch streamer Flats.
A partner of the Overwatch League’s Florida Mayhem, Flats tweeted a video on November 15 of Kiriko blocking headshot damage with her arm by looking up at the sun. Flats shot at an opposing Kiriko a few times with Widowmaker, only for the bullets to merely graze the ninja’s seemingly indestructible arm, allowing her to immediately heal back up. Flats eventually murked Kiriko with a single headshot, but only after positioning himself at just the right angle, saying you “have to get behind” Kiriko to “shoot the back of her head.” Who knew that staring up at the sky could save you from death?
What’s appears to be happening here is that, when she looks up, Kiriko’s arm gets in the way of her dome’s hitbox, impacting the damage she takes from headshots. In response to Flat’s tweet, one Twitter user noted that Mercy was able to do the same thing, but only when casting her Resurrect ultimate ability, which sees her raise her arm in the air to revive a dead teammate.
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Kotaku has reached out to Blizzard and Flats for comment.
