Super calls out Overwatch’s “spaghetti” coding after frustration against Echo

Echo has been a controversial character since her introduction into Overwatch. Many players took issue with her ultimate being too strong, or that her kit just does too much damage in general.

During a stream on Nov. 28, Matthew “Super” DeLisi lamented the fact that Echo’s Duplicate makes enemies unable to switch heroes.

While Super tried to defend Anubis Point B, he played some Orisa. The Echo then duplicated his hero on their attack, transforming right as Super died. As he went to swap to a more mobile tank to stall, he was greeted with the message of “hero select disabled by Echo.”

After he regained control of the hero select screen, he shared a fun fact with chat. “The reason that’s in the game is because of spaghetti code. So instead of fixing the spaghetti code, [Blizzard] just turned it into a mechanic. They were like ‘when you copy, you can’t change heroes.’ So they just… made it a mechanic instead of fixing the code.”

What Super means here by “spaghetti code” is that the source code the game runs on is so convoluted and hard to maintain when new updates are added. This can result in unintended interactions and bugs, just like the one with Echo’s ultimate.

Many fans hope Blizzard will take the time to remedy these issues and straighten out the code with the release of Overwatch 2. Players will rage against Echo nonetheless, however.