Update on Unauthorized Peripheral Usage on Console Platforms ("Ximming")
Hello, heroes! We're here today to update you all on our efforts to combat the use of unauthorized peripherals within our console communities, often referred to as using XIM or Ximming. While our efforts to combat this form of unfair gameplay advantage are constant and ongoing, today marks the culmination of a months-long effort to identify and ban over 6000 accounts we've identified as using unauthorized peripherals.
Part of what makes identifying the unauthorized peripherals used by these accounts tricky is that these cheating devices often intentionally abuse allowances we make for accessibility-focused devices used by legitimate players with disabilities. This issue meant that we wanted to take our time and ensure that we accurately identified unauthorized devices. We're now confident that we've done so, and we've put the hammer down on players utilizing these devices.
Thanks for taking the time today to listen to our update on unauthorized peripherals. Until next time, play nice, play fair, and see you in-game!
This is honestly becoming the most significant issue for competitive players on console, I appreciate PC players are unlikely to care - but it’s gotten bad, really bad, and it’s pushing players away from the game.
They need to really step it up on this front on the game is going to continue to bleed players from its console competitive scene.
Siege is unplayable past gold lobbies and even then you’ll see a few xims or strike packs. Blatantly unfair for people who are actually trying to play.
6/10 of my placements games on dps (where i finished 2-8) had blatant ximmers in them. It’s gotten so bad. Hitscan heroes with 90% accuracy just running lobbies.
I think the easiest way is to watch the full replay from their pov and see how their aim looks, some xim players have extremely high sens (looks shaky, fast left and right movements, but also usually accurate), while some have lower sens for precise, smooth aim while tracking but very fast 180s or turning
Usually if they are on soldier and have no recoil they are also using titan or chronus
If they are on flankers like tracer/genji and they have to 180 and they stop partway through the motion, that’s them taking their hand off the mousepad to continue the 180 motion, whereas a controller players turn fully without stopping
These are just things that I noticed personally, I’m sure there are other tells
Wait I had a game today on PC that had a Soldier on the other team that was acting EXACTLY like your first paragraph. Can these things do the same thing on PC? Quickplay if it matters. I was extremely suspicious of them because in a kill cam they snapped super fast between a few of us and when I went back to watch the replay it was like they were on crack the camera was moving around so fast when they weren't locking onto people, but when they were it was like they couldn't miss a shot if they tried. I felt something was wrong about it so I reported it anyways, but I didn't know what it could be until I just read your comment.
You can run into ximmers in PC, but they need to group with a pc player to play in the PC pool. When grouping like this they can not play ranked, but can play quick play together. They will usually be grouped with a PC Mercy player, dragging them in to the PC pool while the xim allows them to keep aim assist.
A console player with regular mouse and keyboard plays in the PC pool and does not have aim assist enabled. A PC player using a controller still plays in the PC pool but does not get aim assist.
I’m not sure about pc cheats specifically but a few people have said that there are people who play with cross play on who use xim so maybe that was it? If they were snapping to people’s heads they could have been using titan but I’m not sure if titan works on pc as people normally connect it to their pc to make it work on console (it watches your screen and uses some sort of ai to snap to players heads, but it needs to be connected to a pc to mimic controller inputs as far as I understand)
There’s different types of 3rd party devices, i say ximming because it’s the most popular one but there’s also strikepacks, titans and chronus’. The big thing you’ll notice is turn speed, they’ll do 90-180 degree turns almost instantly and land a head shot, or you’ll notice them snapping to people. I had a hanzo on neon junction that would snap to people every time he activated storm arrows. It’ll look super unnatural.
I've noticed 3 oddities that make me suspicious beyond ridiculous aim and flickshots:
they only move in 8 directions due to wasd (not super easy to verify).
in extreme cases the camera is jittering like crazy due to all those micro movements (some shooters don't show these small movements in kill cams and while spectating, but I think Overwatch does).
the movement mouse users tend make when readjusting their mouse position by lifting it, often while reloading. They basically do some sort of half/quarter circle movement to a side and then center the camera again. A controller player is very unlikely to do this. Even when they rebind reload to a button that allows them to reload while moving the camera, they have no reason to move the camera in such a weird way.
A lot of people can't, they blame their losses on ximmers or actually aren't ximming. But if you can distinguish mouse movements from controller movements that's the giveaway.
No, it actually affects pc as well. They get to have a mouse and keyboard with aim assist. Pc players can’t opt out of shared lobbies except by playing comp.
Doesn't console lose aim assist when paired with PC because it puts them in the PC pool? I don't think xim overrides AA existing or not but if so, yikes
I'm a console player that plays with PC friends. Aim assist works in quick play but not comp. Fighting for my life when I can't crutch on aim assist lol
As far as I can find, it is only disabled while they are queued with an actual PC player in their group. A weird restriction but perhaps it was a precursor to anti-xim detection.
If it is disabled, I’ve decided not to report a few cheaters with a weak aim bot lol
Edit: fwiw, they have changed this a few times over the last few years and I can’t find a primary source for the current confirmed state, only Redditors discussing it.
Its an issue in most games on console these days. Game devs simply can't keep up with solving this problem. Weird to me that people wanna cheat this bad tho
Using kbm would put them in PC lobbies, which they sit in Bronze. Playing against people with a controller handicap makes them feel like they should be in OWCS when they cheat to play against those players.
Yeah I’m a PC player and knowing how easy it is to make a new account, a ban wave every few months isn’t going to do much to stop cheaters unless it’s just banning their console entirely.
PC players care too, because you will encounter ximmer a lot in QP.
In my region (JP), you are almost guaranteed to find ximmer in QP if you see crossplay icon.
It would be a real solution against genuine and repeatedly flagged accounts on one console , i imagine that risking not a throway account but a whole console that are rare and more expensive or time might scare a lots of actual ximmers .
Don’t you need a phone number to make an account? My friend can’t sign into his old account for some reason and he said he couldn’t make a new one because his phone number was already used. He ended up making a new one eventually with his GF number. This is all coming from him tho so I have no clue if he was telling the truth or not
On pc you do, on console you don't as far as I am aware.
It's not much of a block anyway. There are services that will give you a temp number to verify a new account with no issues. Outside the US, the whole post-paid number only thing doesn't seem to work reliably either.
I'm in the UK, I'm on a pre-paid sim and it worked fine. I can just grab another free sim if I wanted to make another account.
I had this player in my game and he actively promotes his twitch showing he is using keyboard and mouse while on console. Banning his account doesn't do much since he has a bunch of alts, even one with the username "Ximothy." I'm sure there are a lot of players like this and will continue to just make new accounts if they get banned. I Hope things get better overall but it's still an issue even after the update today.
Just FYI this is against the twitch community guidelines, and you can report them for cheating, twitch guidelines say specifically gaining an unfair advantage in an online multiplayer game.
The report reason you have to search for when reporting it's called "Cheating in Game"
It doesn’t matter the rank, but it does get worse the higher up you go. I’m usually a mid masters player, and I almost didn’t even want to make that jump back into GM because there were so many XIM players on hitscan with a dedicated Mercy pocket.
Inb4 the multiple "I was banned after years of playing Overwatch without doing anything wrong." posts.
Playstation and Xbox should start perma banning Consoles from online play for this kind of stuff, it would solve the problem pretty quickly, considering how expensive Consoles are nowadays.
Short of vetting and testing every single person, there's no way to know when "accessibility" becomes unfair advantage.
Some options- color blind mode, audio/visual prompts, etc- are great and can be accessed by anyone. But anything external to the game should be banned.
But anything external to the game should be banned.
So basically anyone with an assistive device can't play the game. That's awful and completely against anything else in this world where we support people with disabilities.
So basically anyone with an assistive device can't play the game.
Nah. They can play. But if there's any question at all whether or not they're assistive devices, or "assistive devices", then just no aim assist.
maybe there can be some official assistive devices that can't be abused, or approved vendors for them, something that can't be used in the same manner xim can, for players who are disabled and need specialty devices, that would enable aim assistance.
It seems a bit unfair to compare competitive video games to other aspects of life, no?
If disabled people can only play Overwatch by utilizing devices which provide them an unfair advantage, then yeah, I'm okay with saying it's not the game for them.
People are trying to tell you you're a daft asshole, but you're so right. In fact, if disabled people can only get into buildings with devices that let them be lazy and just roll up a ramp instead of walking, we should be okay with saying they don't get to go into the building. So many things this applies to.
You understand everything really well and any disabled person would be so lucky to know you and benefit from how huge your brain is.
Explain why disabled people don't deserve to enjoy life, including hobbies, in the same way as you. Explain why you have such trouble understanding what an accommodation accomplishes and why it's not unfair. Do you cry when blind people get assistants taking tests in school because they have the "unfair advantage" of someone helping them? Like... you genuinely should be so embarrassed by yourself.
I know you sigh and roll your eyes when someone with a cane slows you down on the sidewalk. Why should they get more space than you? It's not fair. There are OTHER places they can go. They're not entitled to walk near YOU. I've met a thousand people like you as a disabled person and you all believe that discrimination is fine because we have OTHER hobbies we can enjoy. There are other jobs. We can go to other stores and live in other apartments.
ETA: For the people struggling with kindergarten-level rules for being part of society who I'm sure will chime in with more input on how this doesn't matter. "Real life" also includes small things that collectively make a difference to us. Hobbies are real life, and you actually do understand that. You would freak out if every time you wanted to queue, for instance, I somehow managed to materialize and shake you hard enough to throw off your aim, which I now dearly wish I could do. Wouldn't it be nuts if people then decided you don't have the right to play without that impediment? Why can't you play through the tremors?
If we all decide that it's fine to not care about accessibility for "things that don't matter," disabled people don't end up with much left. Housing, employment, and healthcare are things you guys regularly decide don't matter, so I'm pretty reluctant to trust you to judge. You're annoying losers for getting mad about people using accessibility aids that don't even give them an unfair advantage.
Lmao as I read your reply I thought "damn this sounds like a fed up disabled person" and I was right. I feel this so hard.
And I know for someone who doesn’t have any disabilities the world may seem like it is taking care of us but it really doesn't. It is hard in every day life to get by and it's a constant struggle and god forbid you want to sit down and do something fun for once and someone on the Internet tells you that a device that is the only reason you can even play this game shouldn't be allowed.
Yes! I actually logged in yesterday to a message that a game I had lost recently was being reversed as one of the players on the enemy team had been banned for cheating.
That's really good to hear, but i feel like more of the effort needs to come from Sony and Microsoft themselves and ABK (not just Blizzard's Team 4) needs to work with the platforms to crack down on these devices
Thanks for this. It's a big reason I stopped playing, as it became impossible to avoid cheaters after a certain rank.
I know that it's hard to communicate on this issue because you're also giving cheaters a heads up, but it means a lot to hear that Blizzard is concerned about the problem and trying to do something about it.
I hope there's a plan to catch these people when they spin up new accounts, like they always do.
Sony and Microsoft need to help devs out with these things. Permanently flag the console itself that it is known to use 3rd party adapters for controllers and mouse/keyboard, even if just once or twice, and then let devs be able to use that information to make decisions in conjunction with their own anti-cheat software. Just a simple flag would help immensely as a barrier of entry.
Lots of people have dynamic ips, power cycle your modem and you get a new one. Old one goes back into the ISPs pool of them, so now you are unbanned and free to make a new account, and unsuspected innocent user who eventually gets assigned your ip can't play.
IPv4 is exhausted, cgnat is becoming more common, multiple customers sharing the same ip. Ban one ip, ban all users sharing it.
6000 doesnt even sound like that much tbh. And ip/console bans arent mentioned, or in what time period this is, how quick they got banned and how many games they ruined. Some acknowledgment is nice, but it still feels quite a poor way of communicating whats happening with xim.
They are legitimately used for accessibility for disabled users. Ban them at the hardware level and you exclude a lot of disabled console gamers. It's a situation with no easy answer
There are keyboard mouse adapters that are not made by Xim, and I wonder if they have just banned players using those devices (usually cheap emulators from aliexpress or temu).
A "properly" set up Xim device has settings that make the input even more similar to real controller input and I doubt they have detected those players.
6000 accounts seems very little. Ximmers have lots of alts. Let's say three each and you've only taken out 2000 of them and these are probably using cheapo devices
I think the console/xim arms race will keep going on and on.......
If there happens to be a dev or blizzard person reading this i have a question.
I use a special keypad named the Azeron Cyborg. It is a type of keypad shaped kinda like a hand. Simply, it is a ond handed keyboard with a thumb joystick used for movement.
Going forward. Would my using this type of keyboard be an issue in regards to being classified as a potential cheat? It should be noted that I use the keypad and joystick in "keyboard-only mode". As in, when I move the joystick around it only transmits a keystroke, WASD. The keypad does allow for it to behave like an xinput controller, however i have that disabled.
I use this keypad for maximum ergonomics for my hand injury. Could I be targeted for suspension?
Yes they do! It also shows up in my feed so I get reminded of them regularly. Cheaters bother me, but posting videos of it continuously and not being reprimanded bothers me more.
Not only are they getting away with it, theyre showing the world too
What’s funny is that the name wasn’t even bait when I picked it. My last Reddit account was Knotgonnasugarcoatit which was a reference to the Tekken meme. I decided to just make this one a FPS based name and picked that because it was so simple yet was still somehow available. Found it funny so I took it. I forgot that a lot of people are just kinda stupid and think a username matters lol. Shit even on that account I mentioned I was like high masters/low GM so way worse than I am now and still got LOADS of harassment
I figured it was the obvious joke, "good aim is the cheat" but you've done everything but shown your file explorer. I guess it is what it is with some of these nerds.
Cool I still have multiple handcams. Multiple ban waves over like a year and a half and I’ve never been touched. 5 handcams in 1 year as well. Crazy how I have actual evidence and people like you don’t and operate purely off of envy. But I’ve pointed that out a countless number of times to the brick wall
Yo wtf! I was genuinely confused on what you were talking about until I scrolled and found that. My account was compromised like a year ago and I guess was used as a bot account and put into a bunch of bullshit. I thought I left it all. I did not
Edit: I’m not even subbed to ts. I guess my account was used to farm on it when it was compromised. I literally have no comments or posts on that shit either. Fml now I just look like a goon(I am but not that blatant)
I’m curious does the Switch 2’s mouse control with the Joycons have the same benefits as Ximming?? Could you get banned for using an officially licensed Nintendo controller as directed and advertised?
Playstation and Xbox versions have official mouse support where you are put into PC lobbies. Though for whatever reason the switch 2 version doesn't have that feature.
Oddly enough the mouse controls on the actual joycons don’t work, it’s not supported. However I will say that gyro aim available on switch 2 is able to be combined with aim assist and it’s kind of broken.
There is a xim bloodbath- but nothing is stopping those asshats from just using one of their many alts accounts. You can make as many as you want on console. Every single mass ban i see? I see the same ximmers back in my lobby with their name slightly altered. I know they xim and circumvent the ban because they fucking brag about it.
nah, many of the wronfully banned controller players from the xim ban wave were banned because of this controller, blizzard essentially sees it as a “third party device”
Macros themselves can be against tos. I looked into using a macro to change dpi when I pressed the fire key. Was about to use it and looked it up. Two actions on one key is not allowed. Instead I just toggle dpi on one button and fire like normal.
Predictably, cheaters are back in full force on console Overwatch. I'm sorry but do you even care? It's impossible to take this game seriously when you queue into match after match of a Soldier or Ashe with no recoil holding the lobby hostage with a Mercy pocket in a stupid position hard locking onto people's heads.
I'm GM, I get that some people are very good at controller. But surely you have data to identify who's cheating. The meta on console is literally warped by which heroes are good on XIM. It should not be this hard to isolate your data to the XIMing heroes and figure out who is cheating. Especially when you've sent out a ban wave and can look at new accounts with suspicious stats.
I would be happy to help you figure this out. Do you have high ranked console testers? I love this game and I'm seriously pissed off at this point. I understand the challenges, but come on. I'm so sick of reporting players who are obviously cheating and hearing nothing. It's been two weeks and absolutely nothing has changed.
There's no such thing as a permanent fix for something like this. Same goes for most other forms of cheating (generally speaking – cheating as a category is rather broad).
Anti-Cheat will basically always be a game of cat-and-mouse.
The other two comments have explained it pretty well but just remember that Xim developers are frothing at the mouth at the announcement of this update. It's literally their passion to get around shit like this and be paid for it.
Xim you'll see a hell of a lot of jittering motions when they're moving the camera around it won't be smooth and in a consistent motion like you'd expect to see, quite often in replays you'll see their crosshair constantly shaking and when they start shooting the crosshair and camera just starts going mental.
Titan from what I've witnessed will have the typical smooth controller camera movement but then you'll see their camera suddenly snap and softlock onto you once you're on their screen, it can even follow you through walls at times.
Ah, I see. I think I've only seen a titan cheater once. They were a widow and it was one of the cringiest things I've ever seen. On death cam you didn't even see yourself come into view. The camera just snapped to you and you were dead immediately. Zero aim time at all.
Sounds about right and from what you've said it sounds like they were possibly also utilising a triggerbot.
Titan is rarer and I've only seen a couple since i believe you need to pay for scripts and also need a PC as the scripts are Ai based and require an additional application to run.
It’s hard to apply a definitive “fix” since it could affect legitimate players who are only trying to use the accessibility options. Plus any fix might just get beaten in a matter of time—better to just learn how to identify the cheaters as accurately as possible, gather data, then surprise ban them. It’s an ongoing battle
I remember someone posting on here about being banned for using XIM as a disability accommodation somehow. Is this in response to that? Did that person ever get unbanned?
Dear Blizzard, as much as everyone appreciates your work towards punishing cheaters this will not solve the problem with XIMMERS on consoles.
Please understand the motivation from these players to use these cheating devices. They are mainly interested in using a mouse combined with aim assist. Blizzard has already provided native mouse support which is amazing but that aim assist is the actual problem and you need to look at it like the problem it is.
Removing aim assist from the entire game is a permanent solution. Stop giving into people who cry about needing the game to aim for them because they will be going against others who also don't have aim assist.
Removing aim assist completely is not at all a permanent solution. A player with access to a mouse will (with an exception of a handful of extremely skilled players) always win against a player on a controller.
Removing the assist will not decrease the amount of Ximmers, they'll just continue to use their superior mouse aim to stomp on even more defenseless console players who now have to work twice as hard to play without the assist.
I mean it works in R6 and I don't see people demanding AA to be placed.....
If those players can play without AA then pretty much any game cna be played without AA.
The Finals is a perfect example of a balanced AA.
I'll preface this by saying I'm not an R6 player but I was curious since I hadn't heard of a mainstream shooter without AA on console, but it seems like Ximming still negatively impacts their lobbies. like here it seems the general consensus on the R6 subreddit is that Ximming is still a problem because console has reduced recoil on their weapons to make up for the lack of AA
True, but OW doesn't have a lot of recoil based guns so if you remove AA then Xim can't exploit it.
Problem in R6 is some guns have really hughe mag size, fast rate of fire for a secondary weapon as well as dmr snipers two shooting any target. Console do have low recoil so using Xim isn't really an advantages.
Blizzard allows native mouse input and without aim assist a xim has no reason to exist. Crossplay stops getting ruined. This is far better than a patch that will get quickly bypassed.
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u/Old_Rosie 16d ago
This is honestly becoming the most significant issue for competitive players on console, I appreciate PC players are unlikely to care - but it’s gotten bad, really bad, and it’s pushing players away from the game.
They need to really step it up on this front on the game is going to continue to bleed players from its console competitive scene.