Jeff Kaplan Says Blizzard is hunting down toxic Overwatch players on YouTube
It’s no secret that despite it’s popularity, Overwatch is no stranger to a toxic playing environment. A few months ago, game director Jeff Kaplan stated that they were trying to combat this and now it looks like they’re taking it to a whole new level.
Kaplan has made it no secret that fighting the toxic behavior within the Overwatch community is one of Blizzard’s priorities. In the latest developer update video, Kaplan called this fight a “major initiative” for the Overwatch team. “As you all know, we recently added the ability for our console players to report people which has been amazing and has shown us really great results. 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.” You can find the video below.
So is this active approach of seeking out cheaters and other toxic players through social media actually working? Kaplan says it is. In fact, he says the toxic player behavior in Overwatch’s competitive mode is on the decline, and this proactive approach has definitely helped. Blizzard is hunting down toxic players through social media, like Youtube, and taking action against them before players even report them. “We now proactively seek out social media sites like YouTube, for example, 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, these player-reporting tools and increased warnings have helped reduce “incidents of abusive chat” in competitive play by 17 percent! And that’s just the beginning of it. “We’re very pleased with those results. On the other hand, player reporting the amount 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.”
Have you noticed a difference when playing online? Do you agree with this more proactive approach from Blizzard? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below and keep it locked updates!