I know this sounds like a hot take but look at her weapon and compare it to other snipers in FPS history. A gun that requires it to charge up and can only one shot in the head. The only positive this gun has is that it has no sway. There are so many bad snipers in FPS history that are better it’s insane lol.
Just pointing that out
There are a lot of snipers that are much weaker than Widowmaker, too. A lot of snipers are projectile instead of hitscan, have to deal with sway and bullet drop, have limited ammo reserves, and/or have to unscope and reload between every shot.
And many snipers (particularly in FPS/MoBA hybrids like Paladins or the late Battleborn) can’t one-shot you even if they score a headshot.
Now this is bait posting
She’s not bad in context of Overwatch and that’s all that matters.
I mean I came from original CS where 1 person could wipe your entire team without even scoping and bullets go through bodies and walls. In that context Widowmaker is extremely bad.
Widowmaker is also in a game with healers, that she completely nullifies by existing. And she doesn’t have bullet physics so she requires little skill to use.
She comes with her own grapple and a built in wallhack.
You can’t dive her, or flank her. She’s all the benefits of sniping with NONE of the downsides; she’s the sniper’s dream come true.
Come on bro, you best be trolling.
But she has grapple. She’s harder to dive than mcree. Snipers in other games have no mobility, because that’s how it should be.
She should have wall climb only and no grapple
In the olden days, snipers had to use these things called “feet” to get to their next position and/or escape.
And if you couldn’t get away in time? Well that was just tough luck.
Not really.
She also has things that snipers in FPS don’t get:
She is not the weakest sniper in FPS hero. She’s probably the most coddled.
I mean he is right… if you too all FPS game from this long list
And then all sniper / character from this long list (from the game(s))
It is clear that Widow is the last one the list! 
Widow’s rifle is based on the TF2 sniper’s, which is arguably stronger because it does 150 on a zero-charge dink instead of Widow’s 120 on a body.
The counterbalance to the Sniper is that four of the six commonly played classes in 6v6 are effectively dive heroes with insane mobility and move speed, so you need to be a god level sniper to deal with them.
You trade Widow’s much more forgiving play environment for a slight decrease in bodyshot lethality, and a massive improvement in nobody else being able to range her.
bruh she can aim and headshot you in 2 seconds flat, she also has a venon min that can alert her to flanking enemies and can do extra damage. she can insta kill you within a single second and can easily headshot atelast 3 people in less then 10 seconds. her ult also allows her to see where every enemy is at once. she also has a hook that allows her to travel to most reachable spots on the map in seconds. shes not one of the worst snipers in fps history shes one the best.
Or fall-off damage. Or bullet drop.
If we’re going to make this comparison then soldier’s assault rifle is basically shooting bubblegums. OW just has lower damage weapons to create a fun FPS environment. Widow can one-shot squishies if she lands a headshot but her downside is that there’s a charge up time. Quickscoping is not a thing
Isn’t this only a Battlefield or Sniper Elite function?
Destiny 2 Snipers do have fall off, but you can still cross map someone.
Idk about other games…
Weak? No, she’s arguably one of the strongest snipers at least in compassion to the rest of Overwatch. Widowmaker is sniper on easy mode.
She has a grapple hook which means if she gets dived than she can just grapple away. It also means that she can get into position much quicker and safer than other snipers
Her Venom Mine lessens the danger of a backline assault on her. Basically, it reduces the threat of one of a sniper’s biggest threat and that is Flankers.
Her gun compared to other sniper rifles has a good rate of fire plus a decent sized clip. For comparison, Widowmaker has a firerate of 2.15s assuming that she always go for full charges. Meanwhile Sniper has a charge rate of 4.8s. Oh, and keep in mind Widowmaker has 10 shots per round while Sniper only has 1.
Her ultimate is wallhacks. I don’t need to say more.
Point being is that Widowmaker was designed to be Sniping on easy mode.
Who cares what snipers are like in other FPS games? You should only look at Widowmaker in the context of Overwatch, not anything else.
overwatch is actually the only game ever so
Which is absolutely something game needs. It’s one of the only ways to fight back against an ult disadvantage, of which the strongest are easily the support ults.