Blizzard has summarily banned a player going by the handle of Fuey500 for only having one main character: Torbjörn. PCGamesN is reporting that the player was reported multiple times for his unwillingness to play as other characters in the game’s competitive mode. Now he’s fresh out of his $60 for what Blizzard considers to be a case of exercising “bad behavior” when it comes to teamwork.

Fuey500 asked to be unbanned via a tweet.

https://twitter.com/Fuey500/status/929183480218640384

According to Blues, Blizzard community manager Josh Engen posted a response over on the Battle.net forums, explaining that the company is upholding the ban. Engen claims that their new authoritarian report system is working as intended, and that Fuey500 should have been more considerate of his teammates, and therefore they will not be lifting the ban on him…

“After investigating a number of the cases that have been surfaced over the past 24 hours, we can confirm that the system is working as intended. “None of these were simple cases of “one tricking” or off-meta hero selection. These were examples of behavior intended to disrupt Competitive Play. As such, the punishments will stand. “To be clear, specializing in certain heroes or playing off-meta heroes is not bad behavior on its own. In fact, we actively encourage people to be clever with their team comps and work with their teammates to counter the enemy comp. Teamwork is important and should be considered when making your hero selections, especially in Competitive Play.”

Surprisingly, many of Blizzard’s high-rep loyalists did not agree with the company’s decision.

Many actually deferred to live-streams from Fuey500 for evidence that he was not behaving as badly as Blizzard claimed, and asked Blizzard to provide evidence to justify banning Fuey500.

A few more rebutted that this was not a good look for Blizzard because some people only main a single character.

TheReinhardt sums up the situation quite succinctly, writing…

“I watched Fuey’s stream, nothing in that seemed toxic outside of him playing Torbjorn. “If Torbjorn is so bad that simply playing him immediately hurts your team, Why is he playable? “I was hoping you guys would rise above this and actually acknowledge something’s not right. “You’ve set a prescedent for trolls that they can now band together and say “switch or we report”.[sic]

Many others joined in the chorus of negative feedback aimed at Blizzard for banning a player for having only one main.

The thread gets rather serious, and all fanboys attempting to defend Blizzard are being promptly downvoted for sycophancy. Some linked to footage claiming that it proves that Fuey500 was a “toxic” player, which features the player discussing with other players how he only plays Torb.

[Update: The footage below is actually of a different Torb-only player that some Blizzard defenders have been using as a means to smear Fuey500.]

Majority of the community responses show that they aren’t pliable for Blizzard’s blandishment. The company has been attempting to cater to the fringe outliers in the gaming community known as Social Justice Warriors.

The developers even went so far as to blame the community’s “toxicity” as the reason why they are unable to make new content for Overwatch.

As Activision is spending a lot of money to get the Overwatch e-sports league off the ground, Blizzard seems to be making a lot moves to kill off its own community before it has a chance to grow and saturate any further. And banning players for having only one main is the perfect way to kill off the community quicker than the mainstream news media killed its own reputation by repeatedly publishing fake news.

(Main image courtesy of Trumpet Player)