More than 1,400 Overwatch accounts have been banned in South Korea for account sharing

Blizzard has banned a number of Overwatch accounts in South Korea after the end of competitive season 12.

The company has suspended 1,423 users for account sharing during competitive season 12, according to a post on the Korean Overwatch forum today. A support forum agent listed every Battle Tag that was banned on that server, just like they did in season 11.

The support agent said “Blizzard Entertainment is committed to creating a fair and positive game environment for our players,” and reminded players that they can report others in-game or via email if they suspect any kind of account sharing is underway.

Blizzard’s End User License Agreement states “you cannot share the Account or the Login Information with anyone,” and another support page reminds players they are fully responsible for any activity that happens on their Blizzard Battle.net account “whether or not authorized” by the owner.

Like in previous suspensions, it is not clear if these bans are permanent. Blizzard only specifies that these accounts were suspended. It does not say what kind of sanctions players will face, and the company does not have a standard punishment for each infraction. It is also possible that some accounts in today’s list have received bans that were more severe than others, depending on what players did when they shared their accounts. Blizzard has dished out bans that are proportional to the extent of the violation in the past.

This kind of public information on bans is not out of the ordinary for South Koreans. The Blizzard staff in that country is used to publishing information on their work against cheaters every few months, from the big ones such as a 22-thousand ban in January for cheating and boosting to smaller ones for account sharing.