Overwatch voice chat is bugged, muting all players in competitive lobbies

Overwatch players have started to report a major voice chat glitch that perma-mutes all players competing in competitive lobbies. The issue was first noted around 7 pm CT on 26th September and appears to affect players in all regions, regardless of platform (i.e. PC or console).

Many many players were left confused as to why they are unable to use their microphones to communicate with their fellow teammates, but Blizzard has since acknowledged the issue and advised that their engineers are currently "looking into" the problem.

Overwatch voice chat is bugged in competitive lobbies

According to an update posted on 26th September at 8:36 pm CT, Overwatch Technical Forum Agent, Jambrix, noted that: "Overwatch engineers have identified the issue and are working on a solution to get voice chat functional." Although engineers were made aware of the issue, Jambrix did not indicate an estimated timeframe as to how long it will take for a fix to be deployed.

According to player accounts, the bug makes it seem as though only one player is in the voice channel. "I'm able to join Voice channels perfectly fine, up until I realize that nobody else shows up in VC]" a player explained on Reddit.

"This applies to both Team VC and Match VC, I also asked other people in the lobby if their [sic] in either of the channels and consistently every time they say that there are multiple people in the channel," the player added.

Naturally, players were confused and enraged after experiencing the bug since the ability to communicate with other players is a core factor in synergizing with teammates in competitive lobbies.

At the time of writing, Blizzard has not rolled out a fix and the only way to communicate with other players is via the in-game text chat. We will update this article once a solution has been deployed.

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Featured image courtesy of Blizzard.