Overwatch players are calling for streaming’s most infamous ranked challenge to be banned

The “Bronze to Grandmaster” videos that have become so prevalent in gaming over the years have landed firmly in the Overwatch 2 community’s crosshairs this week, with fed-up players claiming the infamous challenge needs to stop.

Players from all ranks—though mainly lower Elos that are hit hardest—claim the challenges are basically just “top players smurfing” right under Blizzard’s nose.

The topic flared up again in a Reddit thread on March 27, where a host of OW2 players came together to settle on one stance: everyone is sick of the smurfing challenges and simply wants them stamped out sooner rather than later.

The general consensus from players was the video content usually gives generic tips that aren’t actually going to help lower-level players. Instead, in their eyes, the fast-climbing videos from streamers and pros basically consist of top-tier stars destroying lower levels who are just trying to have a good time.

“There’s nothing educational about top 500 players playing in silver,” one annoyed player added.

The community concluded these types of challenges don’t take into account the vast “mechanical skill, game awareness, and positioning” that their intended audience has yet to grasp. Players compared it to a “professional baseball player going to play in T-ball league,” and claimed it was unfair for the “best Widows” to be smurfing in Silver.

Smurfing typically ruins a new player’s experience as they learn the mechanics of each and every hero, fans added. This problem is also exacerbated by the fact that ranks in OW2 have been all over the place for seasons.

Players have been put into lower ranks than they should have, placing them with other users who are significantly worse. This, paired with smurfing, is likely to make learning a new game incredibly difficult. Hopefully, Blizzard’s developers can find a way to make smurfing a little harder in Overwatch 2. Most other games have had difficulty ending the smurfing epidemic, and it seems OW2 isn’t immune either.

Really, the bottom line here is: to stop the content, stop watching it.