Overwatch leavers could face serious penalties in competitive mode

Overwatch's Competitive Play mode will come with major penalties for repeatedly leaving the game, according to users currently beta testing the feature. A screencap from the mode, posted to the Overwatch subreddit, indicates that Blizzard Entertainment won't just punish those who keep calling it quits during games, but the developer could ban repeat offenders for the rest of the competitive season.

"Repeatedly leaving games will result in a 75 [percent] penalty to XP earned," the pop-up reads. The message appears upon leaving a game during the competitive beta, according to players.

Blizzard takes it further from there: "Additionally, you can be suspended from competitive play for increasing periods of time, up to receiving a ban for the entire season."

The ban is a major difference from how leaving is punished in Quick Play. In that mode, leaving results in a warning. After that warning has been issued, players will incur the same 75 percent experience penalty. That penalty is removed after returning to a threshold of Quick Play games played vs. games completed.

The company has made it known that it won't take rule-breaking Overwatch players lightly. A wave of bans followed not long after launch, permanently kicking out more than 1,500 cheaters worldwide.

Launching later this month, Competitive Play is still a work in progress, and anything seen in its beta version is subject to change. Users can take the revamped feature for a test run in the Public Test Region, which Blizzard brought stateside to Windows PC yesterday.