This Is What Happens When You Try To Leave A Game Of Overwatch

Blizzard is taking steps to cool the heels of folks who constantly leave games of Overwatch, implementing a system that will penalize players who drop out early a bit too frequently.

Drop out of too many rounds of Overwatch and you could find yourself losing three-quarters of your experience in future match-ups.

We've all been there: Sometimes the pizza arrives earlier than expected, your dog knocks something over in the kitchen or your folks call for one of those trademark extended chats. When stuff like that pops up, it's perfectly understandable that you might need to drop out of an online match from time to time. From Call of Duty to Battlefield, Rocket League to Overwatch, it kind of goes with the territory.

Some folks drop out at a rate that's faster than a human could ever eat and order new pizzas on a constant loop, however, and we like to call those folks "rage quitters." Whether they are unhappy with the map or mode they get dropped into or, more likely than not, can't seem to handle being on the receiving end of a whooping, these folks decide their time is too valuable to take a loss and simply bounce out of the match.

As you probably know, that can be extremely hurtful to a team, especially one as focused on cooperation as Overwatch. As a result, Blizzard is making it a little less enticing to leave your teammates hanging, implementing a penalty system if you leave a too many matches prematurely.

The question was recently posed on the Overwatch forums, where user Zeke asked if they would get hit by the "leaver" tag in matches that had just started. Zeke's argument was that they kept getting dropped into matches of Defend for Volskaya and that they were getting a bit tired of the repetition.

A few posts in and Blizzard's Lylirra came to the rescue, laying out the rules when it comes to quitting out of Overwatch matches too early. You won't get hit with a ban hammer or anything, but it's a pretty stiff (though we'd argue very reasonable) penalty.

For starters, if your games played stat versus your games completed stat rise above an unspecified threshold in your most recent 20 games, you'll receive a warning to stop leaving rounds of Overwatch.

Ignore those warnings that pop up in the lefthand corner of your screen and you'll receive a 75 percent experience penalty on all future games. That penalty isn't based on time, either. If you get pinged with the experience gimp, you'll keep getting hit by it until your games played and games completed stats reach a more reasonable level.

As a word of warning to those with terrible connections, leaving a match due to disconnect and inactivity counts the same. However, if you exit the game before the "Assemble Your Team" phase wraps up, you won't be penalized as the match hasn't actually started yet.

So, yeah, if you don't want to deal with low experience gains, stop leaving those Overwatch matches.