Overwatch disables text chat in light of game-breaking bug

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Overwatch developers quickly turned off text chat because a serious bug was causing game lobbies to crash.

Text chat isn’t working in Overwatch right now. Blizzard turned it off on February 25, 2026, because a serious bug was causing problems in the game.

Players discovered a way to crash the game by repeatedly typing the ‘<‘ symbol in the chat. If they spammed it enough, the game lobby would fail, forcing all players back to the main menu.

The text chat feature was quickly disabled to address a problem, and it’s currently unclear when it will be available again. Blizzard hasn’t made an official statement yet, but we’ll share updates as soon as we have more information.

Ugh, so Blizzard had to turn off all text chat in Overwatch. Apparently, someone figured out you could crash the whole lobby by just spamming the ‘<‘ key – seriously! It’s a pretty big issue, and they’re working on a fix, but they haven’t said when we’ll get chat back yet. It’s kinda annoying, but I guess it’s better than the game constantly crashing, right?

— Overwatch Cavalry (@OWCavalry) February 26, 2026

Game-breaking Overwatch bug forces devs to disable text chat

It’s unclear why this character was repeatedly causing game crashes, but the developers are looking into the issue and working on a solution. While they investigate, text communication with teammates will be temporarily unavailable, and you won’t be able to see location pings or other important information in the chat.

Surprisingly, some people actually like the current situation, even seeing it as better than before. One popular discussion on Reddit even asked Blizzard to keep the change permanently, calling it an improvement.

You can easily disable text chat in the game if you prefer; this feature has been available for quite some time.

I feel like this is an upgrade, please keep it Blizzard
byu/Lockridge inOverwatch

We’ve discovered the first major bug in Overwatch since Blizzard removed the ‘2’ and returned to the original game, which has been very well-received. The game is experiencing a resurgence in popularity, with many players returning to try out Season 1 of 2026.

Overwatch has seen its highest player numbers in over three years thanks to the addition of five new playable characters and several improvements to the game itself.

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2026-02-26 06:48