It was the longest Overwatch match ever played in the league – or perhaps not played at all.
In the Overwatch League, exciting matches frequently take place that remain interesting until the last second and are memorable for the fans. At least the part about “being memorable” was likely also true for the last match between the teams Dallas Fuel and Guangzhou Charge. It actually went well over an hour. The culprit was a faulty mouse.
What happened? The match was almost over, as the last minute on the map Havana had begun. The Dallas Fuel team was still on the attack when the main support player uNKOE (Benjamin Chevasson) noticed a malfunction in his mouse, which apparently no longer worked. The referees decided to call a pause to replace the mouse. However, that was just the beginning of the mess.
A chain of crashes and errors: Within the first 15 minutes of the pause, Overwatch had to be restarted multiple times on uNKOE’s computer, but it kept crashing. The casters tried to bridge the time by discussing past matches to keep the viewers entertained. When that no longer worked, there were three stream interruptions in a row and the repetition of some video clips.
After about half an hour, the problem seemed to be resolved, and the match was to be continued – but right after the starting shot, Overwatch crashed again.
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The players were joking around: With so many delays, the players naturally joked around a bit. They posed sleeping in front of the camera or did other antics to keep the viewers entertained.
After almost an hour, all problems were finally resolved, and the match could continue. This is likely to go down as the longest match in Overwatch League history. At least so far.
This is probably one of the downsides of digital sports – so much can be broken.
