TT Show Episode 58 - Apple Intelligence, AMD confirms RDNA 4 details, and Russia fines Google

Blizzard acquires patent for Overwatch 'Play of the Game'

Blizzard has finally acquired a patent for Overwatch's 'play of the game', possible incoming improvements.

Comment IconFacebook IconX IconReddit Icon
Junior Editor
Published
Updated
1 minute & 30 seconds read time

One of the most iconic things about Overwatch has to be the 'play of the game' at the end of a match, luckily Blizzard has finally claimed it as theirs with a new patent.

Blizzard acquires patent for Overwatch 'Play of the Game' | TweakTown.com

Back in December 2016, Blizzard submitted this detailed patent claiming rights over the algorithm that scrapes the event log at the end of the game. This patent describes different 'play of the game' categories such as sharpshooter or life saver, each of the categories is represented by a score judged from a specific set of criteria calculated by the algorithm.

Taking the sharpshooter category as an example, numerous factors need to be considered in order to be rewarded with the most accurate 'play of the game.' Some of these factors include the range of the shot considering "A sniper character generally has an extremely long range and therefore the distance factor may be weighed less heavily when determining the sharpshooter score for a sniper shot. In addition, certain factors may be weighted higher than others due to drastically increasing the difficulty of the shots, such as shots where the player, the enemy, or both are airborne."

Patenting the 'play of the game' feature allows for Blizzard to expand on improvements while also not allowing rivaling companies to copy the idea. Jeff Kaplan, the Lead Designer for Overwatch said last year that at the moment the algorithm "catches a lot of cool stuff, but it's nowhere near as awesome as I think it will be some day." This suggests that in the near future we could see an update to the 'play of the game' feature, it will be interesting to see if the community would like to expand duration of 'play of the game' or keep it short.

Newsletter Subscription

Join the daily TweakTown Newsletter for a special insider look into new content and what is happening behind the scenes.

Junior Editor

Email IconX IconLinkedIn Icon

Jak joined the TweakTown team in 2017 and has since reviewed 100s of new tech products and kept us informed daily on the latest science, space, and artificial intelligence news. Jak's love for science, space, and technology, and, more specifically, PC gaming, began at 10 years old. It was the day his dad showed him how to play Age of Empires on an old Compaq PC. Ever since that day, Jak fell in love with games and the progression of the technology industry in all its forms.

Related Topics

Newsletter Subscription