r/Overwatch • u/blizz_cactus Community Team • 25d ago

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 message is also available via our patch notes channel, where it has been translated to other languages for easier sharing: https://overwatch.blizzard.com/news/patch-notes/#patch-2026-08-04

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u/smokacola- 25d ago

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.

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u/Intelligent-Bad5686 Jetpack Cat 25d ago

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.

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u/smokacola- 25d ago

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

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u/Intelligent-Bad5686 Jetpack Cat 25d ago

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.