External Programs: Are Accel Drivers and Overlay Crosshairs okay?

General Discussion
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I’ve seen this question asked a few times, and I just wanna clarify that it’s okay. In Overwatch, there’s a lot of things you can do outside of the game to get an advantage. Better peripherals, faster monitors, proper mouse settings, etc.

But one thing that’s in somewhat of a gray area is the use of external programs. Now, of course, we all know downloading cheats is obviously wrong, and that it is definitely not allowed. You have a program that essentially reads game data and abuses it to give you extra information or aim for you.

But what’s the consensus on third-party programs that do not directly interact with the game? One example (although I’ve never tried it before) is using macro programs such as the ones built into your mouse to press button combos to automate processes. You could, for example, have a macro that presses RMB>LShift>RMB for Genji Dash combos. You would still have to Aim your abilities, but the button presses themselves are facilitated by a single click.

Macros have always been a point of contention in games. I never enjoyed using them as I felt they didn’t really provide a substantial amount of benefit for the hassle required to set them up, plus I always felt like they were borderline cheating so I didn’t bother. However, some competitive games allow for the use of macros.

Another issue is the topic of mouse acceleration and screen overlays. At one point, I wanted to use a Circle Crosshair combined with a regular Short Crosshair on Tracer, so I had a main crosshair to line up shots with and a circle to illustrate my weapon spread. I used a program that drew a separate window of a crosshair over my Overwatch window, but stopped using it after a few days because I need to run the game in Windowed mode for it to work. I think a modification like this is more reasonable, but again I stopped because I felt like it might be unfair and for other reasons.

But now, I’m in a situation that I think might not be as cut-and-dry (although I think my previous point about crosshairs could be fixed with even more crosshair options, perhaps an option to draw a crosshair). If you’re not aware, Overwatch uses something called Raw Input. You’re probably used to a lot of games using your Windows mouse inputs to do things in game. This means that if your Windows sensitivity is modified, or you have “Enable Pointer Precision” turned on, then your sensitivity in-game will be affected. However, Raw Input means the game takes inputs directly from your mouse, bypassing all the settings that you have in Windows. This means that no matter what my Windows sensitivity is or what my Pointer Precision is set to, I’ll always have the same sensitivity in Overwatch if I run the same DPI and In-Game sens.

I’ve recently been using a mouse driver by a TF2 player named Povohat. This driver essentially takes your mouse inputs and applies mouse acceleration to them. This changes what your mouse itself is sending to the computer/game, allowing you to use mouse acceleration (and a bunch of other, weirder stuff) even in games with Raw Input. I’ve found this new mouse acceleration very comfortable to use in shooters despite playing with it off for years, so I’m not here to debate whether mouse acceleration is good for aim or not.

My only concern is whether something like this is legal in Overwatch? At first I figured it would be okay, because it affects my mouse inputs before they even reach by game. It’s essentially changing the entire input settings of my mouse, and it applies in my desktop, in other games, etc. It’s not like I have some weird program reading the memory of my game and changing my mouse movements to snap to heads. But, and I’m a long way from ever being a pro (probably won’t ever be), I kinda thought about what would’ve happened it I became an OWL player. Would the tournament organizers be okay with downloading this third-party program just so I can have my mouse move fast? Probably not. TOs don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of third-party mods, and I understand that fully. But does it trickle down? Would regular Overwatch players in the ladder, all the way from Bronze to Top 500 be okay to use drivers like these?

I just want to clarify again that I’m not a cheater, and that I don’t use third-party programs to auto aim or give me unfair information. I just use some extra things as quality of life adjustments and for comfort, and I want to make sure that it’s okay in Blizzard’s book to do stuff like that.

Part of what makes PC Gaming great is that you can change a bunch of small settings like that to suit your needs. I’ve really started to enjoy mouse accel, and I even have slight health benefits from it (I have tendinitis that prevents me from doing precise aiming with high sensitivity without wrist pain, but I need to have a high sensitivity sometimes to flick fast). But I’m concerned that something like this might not be allowed by Blizzard. And again, although I’m not really a pro player I kinda hope things like these are/will be allowed in pro play too (Especially since a lot of Quake players such as Rapha who tried Overwatch use mouse accel as well).

Thanks to anyone, Blizzard employee or forum member, for reading this and giving more exposure,

1337Noob

TL:DR - Are external programs such as (static) image overlays and mouse drivers okay to use in Overwatch, or does it count as cheating?

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Macros are bannable as cheats, plain and simple. The rule is 1 button press = 1 action. I believe this was stated as a blue post on the old forums.

As far as mouse acceleration, that doesn’t sound bannable, but I have no idea why you would want it on

1 Like
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Thanks for the response. I’d like to see Blizzard’s stance on these programs (although good to know that macros are banned), but from what I’ve heard from people that I’ve talked to, the community at the very least is okay with this stuff.

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It may not be with malicious intent. BUT anything that works along side overwatch can trigger their cheat detection and you could get banned. Unless its been verified by blizzard and they have said its safe to use, i would avoid using it.

1 Like
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Macros are definitely bannable, people have been on these forums complaining they got banned for using macros to double jump with Genji and burst fire with 76. Definitely not allowed.

Overlays I’m not sure about, a lot of people, myself included have overlays for chat programs like Discord. I don’t really know how far you can go with this.

Should be kind of irrelevant though now, since there’s so many crosshair options available, including circle+crosshair.

I don’t know about mouse acceleration.

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I use variable mouse acceleration because i have a small space to move around in and i need to both have precise aim (moving slow and steady) and general repositioning and target finding (quick movements). Im also pretty sure that at least is not cheating, its all done through my mouse with its designated software. But once you go third party i feel the line gets more blurry.

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What mouse do you use? The only built in Accel driver I’ve seen in a mouse is with Logitech mice and I didn’t like it much.

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I use a steelseries rival 500

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Razer has it as a software option, never used it though.

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Mouse acceleration tends to screw up my aim due to its non-linear scaling. Flick aiming becomes unreliable due to crosshair landing points having inconsistent results.

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Yeah there’s definitely a weird learning curve to Accel. It really wasn’t intuitive for me at first, but after sticking with it for a month I started to become better at adapting to the different speeds more effectively.

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So long as you can flick shot with reasonable accuracy while acceleration is enabled, then you will be fine. If not, then you may encounter problems when going against someone who can flick within a few pixels of their mark in under a second. These guys are absolutely scary when playing Widow, McCree, and other hit scan specialist.

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inb4 using your mousewheel to jump is bannable