UPDATE! Blizzard has given the all-clear and it should be safe to play again.
If you continue to encounter issues, please post in #technical-support.
Hey everyone, I can confirm that Blizzard is aware of the issues with logging onto any Blizzard game and is working on it. If you are able to log on, I strongly recommend avoiding Competitive Play until the all-clear is given.
https://twitter.com/BlizzardCS/status/1514381063031865344?s=20&t=Ija93MALVZqgeEeNK_PTgQ
Cheers! (^^)v
i was in a match on Hanamura when i seen the ping spike and a red icon i knew that was a bad sign
Servers appear to be going back online. I still recommend avoiding Competitive Play until we get the all-clear.
This is my cue to actually go to bed.
…As I said 2 hours ago.
Thanks as always 
But Blizzard in these cases should at least have the responsibility not to penalize its gamers who were online. Or at least organize for Overwatch 2 a safer monitoring of these incidents not caused by the user (SR refund, invalid penalties) 
is always the same story with this.
A little late on the uptake, we figured that out, now, how will this affect those of us that were in comp matches?
Edit: down 50 SR, and 10 on each role, will assume I was penalized, and the penalty (suspension) is already over.
If you are penalized there is nothing that can be done about that. See Blizzard’s policy here:
I’m aware, this isn’t my first rodeo, but the fact it was based on Blizzard servers, they should be rolled back to previous, like they used to do in D2 when people were duping.
If there was a “server” problem and it just closes, the match is ruled no-contest and you are returned to the main menu. What we are likely encountering is a network provider problem, possibly a DDoS attack, and that can’t be accounted for.
Yeah. Yesterday when i was playing total mayhem out of nowhere latency jumped above 1000 ms which to me has never happen. Later it jumped few times above 500 ms but after half an hour it returned to normal.
While that is not the fault of Blizzard, in other games when this happened, servers were rolled back to avoid unneeded penalties, suspensions, and unwarranted account sanctions, I’ve been a huge fan of Blizzard since the release of the original Diablo game, and this is how they’ve handled this exact situation in the past.
(and yes, I know full well you don’t work for Blizzard, being an MVP is a privilege, and well earned at that, I’m only saying what they’ve done in the past to rectify this same issue)
@WyomingMyst
Quote the original twitter you cited in the OP…
We are aware of an issue that is affecting our authentication servers
You then later said…
Servers appear to be going back online
But then when someone asks about Blizzard’s policy, you say…
If there was a “server” problem and it just closes…
Um, this one is a server problem, isn’t it? Isn’t that why it was announced as such, on the Blizzard twitter? Please forgive my stupidity, I know I will never get my SR back from Blizz (not my first ride!), I’m just seeking clarification. 
This is actualy the first time I didn´t get just “disconnected” screen, but my whole window/app crashed several times. What the heck?
Apologies for the confusion, the Authentication server is the service that is having issues. Basically, they handle your validation to be logged into Overwatch. Now what I referred to in my later post is the game server which is what manages a match of Overwatch. If a game server crashes, you usually get the message “Server closed due to an unexpected error” and get kicked back to the main menu. If you get disconnected entirely, that leans more to the issues we are seeing right now which is how Blizzard’s end of the network connection is dropping everyone and why penalties are issued because the game server sees it as a disconnection.
Good news everyone, we have been given the all-clear.
This would still 100% be on Blizzard (even if it was a ddos attack), again, I am not blaming you or anyone else, but why not, as suggested above, roll the servers back to avoid said penalties? I know you can’t personally do this (as said above) but more as a general question.
They have never rolled back servers for Overwatch for issues of this scale. It is not my place to comment about what other game companies do or what Blizzard may have done in the past with their other games.
I didn’t know that, I just knew about rollbacks on Diablo II, WoW, and D2:R recently, I realize the game engines are different, but I figured saved data could be rolled back 15-20 minutes to avoid this type of situation.
Yes, Blizzard is the only company in the world who had unpredictable shutdowns, of course.