The first robot flies through the door to grab the battery. I guess if you boop it, maybe it works haha.
Can confirm this does work. How weird.
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Watch this and read description : How to complete the "Stop, Thief!" challenge in Overwatch 2. Unlock "Sparkplug" Brigitte. - YouTube
Can confirm as well, kill the thief before anyone picks it up. Just completed it with a bunch of great randos. Doesn’t matter if you fail the very first one, just focus on the rest.
(Sometimes the thief doesn’t spawn in, you could wait a while to be sure. Just make sure you achieve the 4/4 thieves requirement and you’re good)
Anyone up to group for it? Keep getting bad luck…
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Also can confirm that you have to kill the specific thief for the small battery. Couldn’t stop the first one but got the others and it got it. Kill the thieves before they touch the battery. I played Lucio and would primary 2-3 times first then boop to make sure they didn’t get close.
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“Investigating an issue with the “Stop! Thief!” challenge from not working in the Underworld Event Mission when you destroy the robot that steals the battery at certain times.”
Overwatch 2 Known Issues - August 11, 2023 - Bug Report - Overwatch Forums (blizzard.com)
To compete you must defeat the thief before collecting the battery. Lucio is good to boop them away while tracer runs to the battery. Once defeated, ONLY then you can pick it up. Winston can help defeat the thief too. Depending how fast you are, you have 6-5 chances to kill the required 4. Remember they don’t spawn for the heavy batteries, only the small.
(Tip: Use Lucio speed boost to escort the person with the heavy)
Thank you for the update. It helps to know what really needs to happen.
Maybe I’m just a fool but I can’t get it to pop. I’ve done specifically what’s described in the video at least twice. Nothing’s changed.
I used to like Underworld but now I am very sick of it. Haha.
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I just finished it with a random group.
I made a video, however for you the in-depth tutorial / step by step guide in the description probably is the most helpful, maybe you want to have a look at it?
Don’t give up, this took a few tries but eventually it worked out like a charm. The most important part is to politely ask people to NOT pick up the batteries and take care of it yourself, but that’s all explained in the video description in detail. 
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It’s called a “challenge”, not a “handout”
If you are still interested in a group, im looking for one too
Update: I finally got it to work, mostly through luck. Can confirm that the video outlining how to do it is correct.
The way I ended up getting it:
One player left at the start during character select, assumably because they didn’t get the character they wanted. Then, after we failed to stop the first battery snatcher, Tracer left, assumably because they were also trying for this challenge. But you only need four of the six, and now it was just me and Torb. I kept playing hoping Torb wouldn’t try picking up batteries, and he didn’t!
The second part of my luck, though, was the spawns. Some battery spawns put the enemy you need to kill RIGHT on top of it. Others give you lots of breathing room. Four of the five were the far off batteries that were easy to save. So without anyone trying to get the batteries but me, it was actually really easy.
That worked for me. Actually did the quest day 1.
The thing is, this challenge is near impossible if the rest of the teams isn’t participating in doing the challenge, they might just don’t know or care about the challenge. How many times I ask if the rest of the team wants to to the challenge, only to not get a response, or they don’t speak english at all.
Challenge is possible but requires players listening to you
I am pretty positive that you can finish it with bots if you wait until everyone left the lobby without picking a character to then pick Lucio and do it alone. HOWEVER, I also think that it is way easier and faster if you just try to find a group willing to listen or at leasts not touch batteries and let you do the pickup (see my video linked above, open it in a new tab and read the description section on youtube).
I made a guide on how to complete it:
There are a few things you need to do for the challenge to count.
This challenge is so pointlessly complicated and definetly bugged.
I’m pretty sure we played plenty of rounds killing every enemy before they had a chance of picking up the battery and yet we still didn’t get the achievement