Last week, a number of PlayStation 4 users reported seeing their levels, stats, and skill ratings reduced or even reset while playing Blizzard’s mega-successful team shooter, Overwatch. While Blizzard was able to quickly identify and patch the bug itself, the company had a harder time recovering lost player data — until today.
“We’ve completed a restoration of credits, levels, and competitive points on the accounts we could see were impacted,” said community manager Stephanie “Lylirra” Johnson in a forum update. “We can’t guarantee we’ve been able to restore everything that was missing, but we’ve done our best to get back as much as possible using the tools we have available.”
Blizzard was not able to restore affected Overwatch players’ skill ratings, which depend on moment-to-moment factors within the game and, thus, can’t be rolled back as effectively. The company’s solution here was a little less ideal, but under the circumstances, probably unavoidable.
“Unlike levels or currency, your Skill Rating is a dynamic piece of data. As you play, the rating is continuously updated, and the nature of this bug makes it difficult to establish the exact point of failure. So, rather than risking an incorrectly restored Skill Rating, the matchmaking system will use the player data that’s been collected since the failure to calibrate your new rating,” said Johnson. “Anyone who has not played since their account was affected will simply need to replay their placement matches.”
Johnson added, “Moving forward, we’re taking steps to improve our restoration processes as well as reduce the chance for issues like this to happen again.”
The update also notes that unlocked costumes from loot boxes were apparently not lost along with progression data, as was previously reported. However, some players may not be able to view them in a character’s Hero Gallery at the moment, due to a separate bug. Blizzard is still looking into that issue.
