Blizzard helps Overwatch player who lost thousands of credits and special items

Overwatch player Kaleptik ran into a strange problem.

After downloading Overwatch’s Eichenwalde update, he found that his in-game currency dipped into negative figures. At its absolute worst, Kaleptik had a terrifying -42,535 credits.

That debt came as a tragic discovery after he managed to unlock every item during the Summer Games event, both by earning a ton of loot boxes and buying 300 of them. Not only did he find himself in debt hell, but a mysterious set of 100 loot boxes began to sporadically appear and disappear in his account.

“I found it a little strange because I didn't buy any more loot boxes but there were 100 loot boxes in my account,” Kaleptik said on Reddit. “Not only did I have 100 loot boxes magically appear, I had my first issue with negative currency.

“I didn't open the 100 loot boxes and didn't even play the game for a couple days due to the fact that the ~5k currency I had turned into -1,815 currency.”

As Kaleptik continued to play, loot boxes appeared and disappeared, and his credit deficit grew. On Sept. 13, he said, “shit went down.”

“This is the point where items that I had bought/earned re-locked,” he said. “Over half of the player icons from the event were locked and many skins and voice lines were locked.

“Not only that, but my In-Game currency had dipped to a whopping -42,535.”

He recounted this bizarre story in the Overwatch subreddit, where he also posted a chat log with someone from Blizzard’s support team.

Luckily, a Blizzard employee saw the post on Reddit and offered to personally look into the issue. In just over two weeks, he and a member of the Overwatch team found the root of the problem; it turns out that issues with PayPal and Microsoft servers were the real culprits. Kaleptik explains:

As it turns out, PayPal had silently issued a charge back, but then reversed the charge back immediately afterwards.

This was an issue on ALL the loot boxes I purchased throughout my time in Overwatch.

Microsoft servers detected a charge back, however, it did not detect the reversal. Microsoft CS couldn't see the charge backs because after the reversal, technically, there weren't any.

In the end, Kaleptik was credited 500 loot boxes (100 regular and 400 Summer Games), along with every single Summer Games item that he lost. Good on you, Blizzard!