We all know that a gaming community must be safe from unsafe content as well as players. Therefore, where once Toxic players did use to constitute a part of Overwatch’s competitive mode, they are sure not going to be a part of it any longer. This was briefed by Jeff Kaplan who is the director of Overwatch.
Recently, there had been numerous reports of in-game online players about toxic players who went on to show some bad behavior. The reports were mainly through the in-game tools available. The efforts are not only limited to this, but there has been an attempt by Blizzard as well to curtail such behavior.
Blizzard has now resorted to banning any such player showing bad behavior by scrawling through YouTube videos and finding any evidence against them. The best thing is that the company is doing it on its own, and the ban can happen, even without another online player reporting the misdemeanor.
“As you all know, we recently added the ability for our console players to report people which have been amazing and has shown us really great results,” Kaplan stated. “We also added warnings for people who were about to get suspended, silenced or banned that their behavior was unacceptable and that if they kept getting reported by other players or noticed by us here at Blizzard that they would get in trouble and that’s helped a lot.”
All this was mentioned in Developer Update Video featuring Kaplan. The video highlighted that now one of the main goals of the Overwatch team was to remove any such “toxicity” from the game, making the game a safe and better experience for everyone.
“We’re very pleased with those results,” Kaplan commented. “On the other hand, player reporting the number of times that you guys actually report bad behavior is now up 20 percent. We’re restoring faith in the system — it’s starting to work much better, and it’s actually having a big impact on the community. We know those numbers are not as great as they could be. We know that the problem is not solved, and things aren’t perfect, but it’s getting a lot better and a lot of the initiatives that we’re doing here at Blizzard are starting to make a difference.”
Kaplan didn’t just show his and company’s reactions towards reported behavior but also have a short look at how the company was managing to curtail toxicity as well.
“We now proactively seek out social media sites like YouTube, for example,” Kaplan told in the video, “and look for incidents of very toxic behavior and track down the accounts that are participating in those and action them, often times before anybody’s even reported them or they’ve shown up in any other place. That’s just one example of us being proactive that I think is going to make a big difference over time.”
According to Kaplan, this move by the company has “proven very positive” to finally diminish bad behavior in Overwatch.
This campaign is not just recent but stretches out to more than just a few months. Though sadly, it does cost them a bit of resource which could have been very well put in development too. Therefore, it is also up to us to help them by reporting any such behavior and also avoid it our self, not just for the sake of getting banned, but also for the sake of Overwatch Gaming Community.