The Jetpack Cat bug that never was
T1 head coach Yun "RUSH" Hee-won has apologised for suggesting Jetpack Cat's movement was bugged on the tournament client at the Midseason Championship, acknowledging the hero behaved normally from the opponent's perspective. OWTV's own testing on both clients supports that, finding the hero's movement identical and only her third person camera behaving differently.
On August 3, in a now-deleted tweet, RUSH shared a short clip of Jetpack Cat performing unusually fast manoeuvres with Lifeline active. The translated caption read, "Actually, there is a bug with the cat on the tournament server. Its movement is very different from the live server."
He followed up in a reply to the same post, saying, "We discovered it and immediately suggested it to the staff."
The clip landed a day after ZETA DIVISION had beaten T1 on their way to the title. ZETA main support Park "Viol2t" Min-ki played Jetpack Cat heavily across the run, and the hero was central to the team's championship victory.
RUSH made no mention of ZETA or Viol2t in either post. Commenters were quick to make the connection anyway, questioning the legitimacy of the win based on how often ZETA picked the hero.
Other teams leaned on Jetpack Cat just as heavily. T1's own Kim "Bliss" So-myung used her repeatedly against regional rivals Team Falcons and Crazy Raccoon.
ZETA flex support and tournament MVP Kim "Shu" Jin-seo addressed the claims on stream:
Honestly, we didn't even know about it either. And regarding that... I'm not sure if I even need to talk about it this much, but whether it was true or not, posting it like that really made our championship victory controversial. It felt like it cheapened our win, and the whole thing felt kind of unverified.
Shu took particular issue with the timing, saying that posting it the day after the finals "just felt wrong on a human level." He added that if T1 were going to post it, "they should've done it before the finals."
Reddit user /u/corgi_dance demonstrated that the hero's movement in the clip was working as intended, and that the third-person camera tracking her was the element behaving differently.
By default, the camera responds immediately to Jetpack Cat's movement. The camera in RUSH's clip carried its own inertia and moved independently of the hero, exaggerating the sense of speed.
/u/corgi_dance showed that the inertia can be reproduced on the Live client inside the Stadium practice range. However, Midseason Championship matches run on the Overwatch Professional Realm (OPR), a separate client used for official matches, scrims and tournaments.
Our testing
We ran our own tests on both the OPR and Live clients, using the Overwatch Workshop to compare Jetpack Cat's behaviour across three measures.
Top speed came out equal on both clients, at 5.50m/s without Lifeline and 7.70m/s with it active. The visual difference in third person was still obvious.
Acceleration also matched across both clients.
Our most conclusive test measured total distance travelled after 100 up and 100 down inputs in quick succession, replicating the movement in RUSH's clip. OPR returned 152.94m, and Live returned 153.73m, a deviation of under a metre.
Genuinely faster movement on OPR would mean quicker acceleration, a shorter time to top speed and a noticeably longer total distance. The numbers show none of that.
RUSH's follow-up
RUSH addressed the fallout in a further post on August 4, opening with an apology and stating he had since been told there were no issues from the opponent's perspective in game.
He attributed his initial reading to the gap between the tournament client and the standard one, saying that difference left him confused. He closed by apologising for the inconvenience caused to those following the tournament and to the winning team, and said he would take more care in future.
His account matches what our testing shows. The OPR client does present Jetpack Cat differently to the player controlling her, and that difference is noticeable without ever affecting how the hero performs.
Conclusion
Our findings point to the third-person camera for Jetpack Cat being the only element bugged on OPR, applying the Stadium mode camera and its inertia in place of the standard one.
Jetpack Cat only appears to move differently, and only to the player controlling her. From every other player's perspective, her movement is unaffected, and it would have made no difference to any game played at the Midseason Championship.