Game Freeze While Loading Into Matches (since Patch 1.23.0.1)

Today is my second time experiencing the game client freezing while loading into a match. I was unable to get through the load in screen and was prohibited from getting to hero selection. Had to force Overwatch to shut down, before reloading and finding out I had been removed from my team (I was que’d for competitive), received a 10 minute suspension, and lost 50 SR for a freeze that has nothing to do with my system.

First time occurred with my fiance the second day after the new patch was released who was playing on a completely different system who ran into the same exact issue. The screen froze upon loading in, he had to use Task Manager to shut it down, re-accessed the game where he tried to enter into the same team again. The game froze upon entering in a second time. He forced Overwatch to shut down again, and loaded back in to have a 10-minute suspension as well.

From what I can understand many others are experiencing the same issue - I’m gathering that much from what I’m reading in general chat where numerous people who have never experienced crashes before are trying to load into matches, being prevented from getting to hero selection and then receiving suspensions as well.

Totally understand bugs - but a reimbursement of SR would be lovely, considering Season 10 only just started.

I’ve been experiencing the same issues since the last patch was installed. On numerous occasions, I would be mid game and my system would freeze and required a hard reset on the blizzard game client. It would fix the issue for a while but still persisted to freeze. Not only that, but now I’m experiencing a bug where nothing under the Overwatch tab will load, not even the play button. Everything else was normal for my other games. I even received an error notice asking me to send a detailed report directly from my system to blizzard (not via the app but from my computer) assuming the app had completely crashed while I was away.
I’ve never experienced issues with this game prior to the patch and it seems to be really buggy. My s/o faced the same issue with the game freezing on their setup but that’s the extent of it. And I really hope blizzard performs maintenance soon to fix this issue considering I will not risk getting into a competitive match with this bug. It’s such a bummer.