I still remember the wild months after Overwatch 2 dropped in late 2022. It felt like every single week brought a new, game-altering glitch, and the hero roster started to resemble a revolving door of temporary removals. As a player who spent way too many hours grinding competitive, I had a front-row seat to the madness. Even though we're now in 2026 and the game has matured into a much more stable beast, those early bugs are forever etched into community lore.

Looking back, one of the strangest glitches involved Kiriko — our favorite fox-eared healer who could apparently make herself immune to headshots just by staring at the sky. That's not an exaggeration. A streamer named Flats first brought it to everyone's attention (and Kotaku picked it up soon after), showing that if a Kiriko player simply looked up, her arm hitbox would fully engulf her head hitbox from the front and sides. The only way to land a critical hit was to shoot her from behind. Talk about an accidental superpower.

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I can't count how many Widowmaker mains I heard screaming into their mics after supposedly landing a clean headshot, only to see the Kiriko skitter away with full health. The bug was subtle enough that many players didn't even realize they were abusing it; they might have just been frantically scanning for threats and accidentally turned into a temporary tank. Blizzard never removed Kiriko for this — it wasn't as game-breaking as some of the other disasters — but it definitely explained those head-scratching moments where perfect aim felt completely useless.

But Kiriko wasn't the only one causing headaches. Mercy, the guardian angel of healers, found herself in hot water because of an exploit tied to her sitting emote. Players discovered that by activating the emote in certain spots, Mercy could clip straight into walls. Once inside, she could contest objectives like payloads or capture points while remaining entirely untouchable. On enclosed maps, this was a nightmare. Imagine pushing the robot on King's Row, only to have an invisible Mercy contesting from inside a building wall, with zero counterplay. The competitive integrity went out the window.

Rumors at the time suggested Mercy might get temporarily removed, just like Mei, Bastion, and Torbjörn before her. As a Mercy enthusiast myself, I was genuinely worried. The prospect of losing my main for weeks sent a chill down my spine, especially since the removal of Mei dragged on for what felt like an eternity. Thankfully, the developers acted fast with a server-side fix before a full removal became necessary, but it was another reminder of how fragile the hero sandbox could be.

Let's take a broader look at the exodus of heroes during that chaotic launch period. It wasn't just Kiriko and Mercy dominating the bug scene. The following heroes were pulled from rotation at various points:

  • 🐛 Bastion: His ultimate allowed infinite artillery shells in certain circumstances, turning him into an unstoppable war machine.

  • 🐛 Torbjörn: An exploit let him extend his Overload ability indefinitely, making him a pint-sized powerhouse with no cooldown.

  • 🐛 Mei: Ice wall could be used to clip out of bounds on specific maps, and she remained disabled for weeks.

  • 🐛 Sombra: She could teleport directly inside the payload, contesting while being completely untargetable — a glitch that went unresolved for an uncomfortably long time.

And then there were the smaller, frustrating issues: visual bugs, hit registration problems, and that time when Junker Queen's ultimate would just send enemies into the shadow realm. It was a messy, glorious, and often hilarious period to be an Overwatch fan.

Sitting here in 2026, I can confidently say that all of these specific exploits have been patched into oblivion. Kiriko's arm no longer serves as a magical helmet, Mercy's emote stays strictly in the visual realm, and Sombra's payload antics are a distant memory. The game has undergone countless quality-of-life updates, and the hero pool has expanded with new faces that (fingers crossed) haven't brought anything quite as absurd. Still, whenever I hear a Widowmaker player curse about a missed headshot against Kiriko, a part of me wonders if the trauma from 2022 is still lingering.

It's easy to joke about these bugs now, but they genuinely shaped the early Overwatch 2 experience. They tested the community's patience, gave content creators endless material, and forced the development team to adopt a much more aggressive patch cadence. As a player who stuck through it all, I've come to appreciate the resilience of the community — and the fact that I no longer have to fear a tiny Swedish engineer with a permanent Overload or a ninja who blocks bullets with her bicep. Here's hoping the next four years are just a little less buggy.