Failed to connect to game server

I am honestly fed up of this… I’ve reached the 8 hour suspension because of it.
Every time I get even remotely close to high plat , I try to go comp and then… bam, failed to connect to server, there u go top tier butt effing -50 sr and suspension.
I never leave games intentionally and certainly wouldn’t leave before the attackers-defenders doors even open.
Please blizz, you have to do something about this, this is the first time ever that I stop playing overwatch for an entire week and a half, I spent at least 200 hrs across all my accounts and I still really enjoy the game, it’s a real shame getting banned for 8 hrs on my main account is gonna make me stop playing till the season ends cause I don’t want to get banned again.

I’m not sure why there is such hostility directed at Blizzard, as the error you’re getting is generally a sign of a local connection problem. If you know you’re getting disconnected, why not take the steps to investigate the issue before losing SR and getting a ban?

It was not a connection problem. I got kicked out of comp last night around 3 am est. “Failed to connect to server.” Was unable to rejoin match but I was still in group and could chat with my friend. They told me to restart Overwatch to rejoin the match. So I did that, got back in the match and did half of our payload push then bam, as soon as we switch side it happened again. Same thing. Everything else in the game seems to be functioning but I just couldn’t rejoin the match… Fine, I’ll restart again. But this time I couldn’t restart the game because Bnet isn’t connecting… well crap let me see, downdetector dot com showing hundreds of reports and lots of red on east coast… ugh… oh wait let me try this… I restarted the game from it’s file location and look it restarted… rejoined match and played the last 20 second of that match… my team miraculously won the game with 5v6 and only 1 healer for most of the game. I still lost 50 sr! By the time I gave up on continuing to comp and went to bed… Bnet app is STILL not connecting and giving me all kinds of error codes… none of them linked to anything because Bnet still seems down.

So no, it was not my connection problem. It wasn’t even the problem that Blizzard is trying to tell me it is.

Unfortunately all disconnections and game crashes counts as leaving the match and will be penalized appropriately. The game server has no way to discern a legitimate disconnection or game crash from one that is forcefully caused by a dishonest player to bypass leaver penalties. You can learn about this policy here:

Remember if you see the message, “Lost Connection to the Server” in the title screen or the message “Failed to Connect to Server” in yellow text in the text chat box, this means there is something that disrupted your connection to the game server and not necessarily a problem with the game server itself. There can be a variety of reasons this happens including those that don’t disconnect your computer from the Internet. There is great troubleshooting to start with that can most likely resolve most issues and I encourage you to check them out here:

As always if nothing in that guide works, please reply saying you completed these steps and additional advice can be provided. Good luck!

(^^)v

So here is something new to me, leaver penalties for disconnecting midgame are one thing but I recently won a match in comp, went back to lobby, qued up for another game and befor even finding a game got a “failed to connect to server” message with a 7 min ban and a high sr penalty. This happened while in a group, talking and noticing no discernable hiccup in connection with my group…nothing else in my house what so ever had any problem connecting to anything…yet just queing up for a game gave me a penalty…no hero select screen, no enemy team logos or names…just a simple failure to que?

Yes it was a failure to log into the match, meaning something blocked the connection to that game server. The penalty triggers because the server knows you were assigned for a match, and in order to prevent “queue dodging” (dropping from a match after seeing who you are playing with or against) a leaver penalty is issued.

If the “Failed to Connect to Server” message appears often follow the steps I have linked above.