Got a new security router and turned Geo IP filtering on. Overwatch won’t let me login now. I get a BC-101 error. On the US East coast.
I’ve white-listed the US, Canada, the U.K., Ireland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore but still can’t connect to Overwatch.
I realize the obvious fix is to turn Geo-IP filtering off, but literally all of my other games work. Given that so many hotbeds for hacking are popping up internationally, I’m leaving the filter up.
What’s the make and model of the router?
Are you able to whitelist host names and IP addresses? Or just locations?
If the filter is the issue I’m not sure we can solve it directly, but I’m kind of curious since I haven’t heard of an issue like this happening before with specific routers.
It’s the Unifi Dream Machine by Ubiquiti
Edit: sorry forgot to answer your question. The way the filter works is by country of origin. Currently I have the countries in my original post white-listed (allowed) and the rest of the world black-listed (blocked)
Hmmm, I’m not able to find a full manual for the UDM or why Overwatch would be blocked specifically by the geo-ip filtering feature. Since this is for the console version maybe there’s another server location that Sony/Microsoft connects from during the authentication process.
For Blizzard though the only countries where you would be receiving incoming connections from for Overwatch would be United States, Netherlands, France, Germany, Australia, Singapore, or Brazil. If you are located within the United States then really you should not be connecting outside of the US when logging into Overwatch.
Might want to double check that the firmware is up to date and try power cycling the network and console for good measure.
Very bizarre though. We did have a DDOS attack around the time that you posted this, have you double checked to see if you could log in again after that?
I’ve been trying to reconnect by adding a few select areas with no luck, so I decided to disable geo ip filtering and it began working.
Re-enabled geo ip filtering and it stopped working again.
I saw a reddit post that Blizzard leverages Amazon Web Services for Overwatch, so I’m going to try allowing just counties with AWS and see if that helps. Otherwise my next resort will be to set up some kind of packet capture.
To confirm, yes we do use AWS for Overwatch. Hopefully that helps.
I will definitely be on the lookout for any other reports of this happening for the Unifi Dream Machine. It’s definitely possible there’s something that is incorrectly flagged on either side. Might be worth reaching out to Ubiquiti Support to inquire if they have seen this before with Overwatch.
Ok so I’ve played with it some more and can confirm that by doing a blacklist (ie: block these countries) instead of a whitelist (ie: allow only these countries) it works.
Not sure if it’s a bug in the Unifi geo IP filter or if Blizzard has a web server in a country i just didn’t know to include on my white list (possible).
In any case, I was able to blacklist the countries I’m most leery of such as China, Russia, the Ukraine, and Brazil (to name a few) and can play Overwatch as well.
I’m going to make a note to submit a case to Ubiquiti to have them see if maybe something is up with their whitelisting in their geo ip filter.
Thanks for your help and responding!
Edit: wanted to add that it “only” allows 150 entries, and there’s well over 150 countries, so it’s much easier to do a short white list.
That said, my black list is about 20 or so deep and should be fine.
Please be advised that making these modifications may cause you to fail to connect to some servers when playing games if you would ordinarily connect to them. In such a situation, we would not reimburse any lost SR or remove any penalties, so just keep that in mind.
No worries, I’d rather leave my Geo IP filters up and risk not connecting to an international server than leave my systems vulnerable.
Thanks for the help!