With advancements in technology comes many great things, especially in the world of video games. However, there are always dark sides to these advancements, especially in the world of video games. For example, being able to chat with friends and players around the world as you play certain games is a thrill. Until you realize that some of the players you’re talking to are incredibly mean, vile, and don’t mind throwing slurs at you. This is called Toxicity with gaming communities. And one of the biggest to have these is Overwatch.
It may seem odd that Overwatch would be a toxic title given its visual style and nature. But, because it’s a competitive game, it brings out the worst in people. It got so bad that people were literally being harassed out of the game, which is something that should happen to no one. Blizzard eventually took a big stand to try and weed out toxic gamers, and it’s apparently working.
Creative Director Jeff Kaplan made a post on the Overwatch forums, showing off the stats in the last while of the game, revealing that toxicity is indeed down. The chats that feature abusive or toxic players are actually down by 26%, that’s very impressive. Add to that, the daily abuse for the game is down, and other factors show a decrease in abusive too.
Kaplan notes that the features that Blizzard implemented to help tone down such things is working better than they could’ve hoped, and they’re going to keep working on taking the numbers even lower:
We’re really pleased with the community’s efforts to make OW a better place! Thank you all! And we’ll keep working on iterating on these features to make them better as well as exploring other systems to improve the gameplay environment.
Let’s hope they achieve that goal.
