Blizzard’s report system is such that, you should be greeted by a wonderful large orange box filling the entire screen labeled “WARNING”. You must acknowledge this warning for it to go away.
So, is it “okay” for Blizzard to take action on accounts without warning? For example, it’s happened 2x now, and fail to even acknowledge this “warning” system of theirs, nor care to elaborate specifically why the account was being actioned against
Yes and they will if the violation is severe enough. For example, cheating often results in an instant permanent ban on your account. Any real-life threats to oneself or other players, doxxing, or other serious actions may also result in severe actions without warning.
Blizzard will provide the warning if they feel your behavior can be corrected with that message. Please note, once you get actioned for a violation of the Blizzard Code-of-Conduct, you are likely to be hit with repeated actions without warning if you fail to correct your behavior.
As a reminder, it should not take more than a warning to correct your behavior, if you are getting the warning message, then that is already a SERIOUS SIGN of a problem with your behavior in the game and something needs to change. Any attempt to “game” the Code-of-Conduct enforcement will very likely to get you into further trouble.
As always if any player receives a silence, suspension, or ban from the game and they feel it is unjustified, they must appeal the action to Blizzard. Also remember to refrain any specific details about actions here on the forums as they are not permitted (this post doesn’t cross that line so I don’t mind providing information that everyone should know).
I disagree with this statement. Not only do I personally receive these warnings after not breaking the code of conduct, but even if did (hypothetically) break the rules, following the rules (or hypothetically correcting bad behavior) after the warning doesn’t matter and will still lead to account penalty. So not only can following the rules result in penalty, but the chance at “correction” is meaningless since you will have a penalty if you get some more reports that push you over a threshold. And the only thing that really matters is what the reports say (in my case afking or feeding, completely false), not actual gameplay proof.
The warning is probably automated anyway, about 5 reports away from the threshold. This would make sense because it would allow for someone to be penalized without ever receiving a warning if they get enough reports in their last game. So if you received this warning then sorry bud, you’re a game away from a penalty; any “correction” in behavior being meaningless
Even the MVP doesn’t realize the warning is automatic
Those warnings are from the automated portion of the system that will ban you based purely off report amount received
Ask any one trick who has been auto-suspended before after the introduction of this ‘warning system’. They’ll tell you they got this message before being automatically suspended
Maybe Blizzard could apply that warning manually, but the overwhelming majority of these warnings are from you receiving enough reports to cause an automatic suspension that is not looked into by any human being.
Blizzard EULA Section 10, B ii: “Blizzard reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time for any reason, or for no reason, with or without notice to you.”
It’s on the forums too. People get suspended for minor offences without any warning, whilst people go free for harassing others. I’ve seen it happen.
Not to mention people who get reported for playing certain heroes, or even for just playing a little off kilter. The report system is easily abused.
I must admit, I’ve report spammed people - but I’ve report spammed people that I have personally seen harassing and bullying others (threatening, throwing insults and slurs) or hard throwing (afk in spawn, walling team into enemy, TP off cliff with old Sym) - I don’t believe these people should act like this in Overwatch, as they ruin it for others.
I can safely say it works in getting people actioned. Every time I’ve done it, I’ve gotten the pop up thanking me for reporting at least a day later.
Yeah the report system in-game and on the forum are pretty flawed and easily abused. And from examples I’ve seen of the GM and mod messages they don’t care and take action on false reports anyway. Meanwhile the actual toxic people and people who abuse the reporting systems seem to flourish without any action taken.
The game and the forums are just rife with hypocrisy.