Overwatch players could face demotion in Season 6

Earlier in the week, Blizzard’s Jeff Kaplan broke down some of the changes coming in Overwatch’s next season of competitive play, including reducing the length of the season down to two months and stopping placement matches deliberately placing you lower. Now additional changes have been announced, tweaking skill ratings and tiers.

With Season 6, diamond, platinum, gold and silver players will be demoted to a lower skill tier if they’re not able to keep up their rating. Each time a player loses, the game will take note of their tier and skill rating, and if it’s been below the minimum for the last five matches, they’ll be bidding farewell to that tier.

The skill rating system is being fiddled with, too, with tweaks being made to how it calculates how many skill points players get after a win, or how many they lose after a loss. Blizzard believes that this should fix some of the anomalies that have been reported.

Season 6 kicks off on August 31.

Fraser is the UK online editor and has actually met The Internet in person. With over a decade of experience, he's been around the block a few times, serving as a freelancer, news editor and prolific reviewer. Strategy games have been a 30-year-long obsession, from tiny RTSs to sprawling political sims, and he never turns down the chance to rave about Total War or Crusader Kings. He's also been known to set up shop in the latest MMO and likes to wind down with an endlessly deep, systemic RPG. These days, when he's not editing, he can usually be found writing features that are 1,000 words too long or talking about his dog.