Few Overwatch glitches have received as much community– or official– attention as Mei’s Ice Wall exploit on Ecopoint: Antarctica.
The exploit, which is nigh-impossible to counter, involves finding a specific point in the room in which you spawn into Ecopoint: Antarctica. Basically, if Mei stands on the very top of the small staircase to the side of the spawn room, and then builds her Ice Wall directly beneath herself, she will be pushed safely out of map. She can fall back into the map, but from there, she can shoot opponents– but they can’t shoot her back. Opponents can choose not to engage, but waiting it out is a frustrating timesink. And most problematically, Mei’s teammates can also be pushed out of world, giving the entire team an invincible vantage point.
This made matches on Ecopoint: Antarctica– which are all either 1v1 or 3v3, making this viable for an entire side to use– irrevocably broken, should one side choose to use this strategy. Players, understandably, were upset, particularly when a patch containing the new map Oasis released without any fix, or even an official word about the glitch.
Game director Jeff Kaplan has now spoken out, and not without an explanation– nor without strong language: “This bug was surprisingly tricky for us to track down but we believe we have identified a fix. …This bug is clearly an exploit and we consider this cheating. …If you see someone abusing this mechanic, please report them. We will be taking action against those who abused this exploit. …Apologies that this bug lingered for as long as it did. Hopefully this should go away soon (along with those who abused it).”
It was unlike Blizzard to stay quiet about the bug, although they may have not wanted to draw “official” attention to the bug until it was fixed, as this may have led to its increased abuse. And we now know just how seriously Blizzard takes cheating– even cheating that occurs before they officially call it cheating.