Blizzard announced that they are doubling down on banning players for using their in-game chat features, at a time when everybody and their mother knows that the report system is abused and people are constantly getting falsely penalized.
And what’s the funniest part to me is that Blizzard insists on banning accounts for chat infractions, instead of, you know… Just silencing the account, as would actually fit the crime. All while during Overwatch’s biggest player retention crisis, they felt that it was a good idea to prevent their fans from being able to log in. Just lol.
Even in a perfect world where the report system wasn’t being abused, imagine getting the same punishment as a hacker, for typing the actual in-game voice lines in chat, lol, such as “Is this easy mode?” (D.Va) or “Settle down, monkey.” (Reaper).
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Yeah, it’s sad…
Are they playing their own game? It’s like they are disconnected from reality x)
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Idk I’ve had people throw the past few weeks and say some really racist stuff in chat and I’ve yet to get a notification saying they were actioned.
I think a lot of people aren’t being truthful with their bans.
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It would probably make more sense to do that.
Throwing games (afk in spawn/jumping off the map)? Banned from playing the game.
Saying mean things? Banned from chatting in game.
However, they seem to be allergic to even trying things that make sense.
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Well, what are they supposed to do? They can’t rehire the team that they fired who did the job that they now run by bots as it would damage their ultimate bottom line.
They did say they’ll silence the chat, but after repeated infractures, will ban.
If someone can’t control themselves from simply not typing, I doubt they’d have self control to not do other forms of disruption or griefing.
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This is simply untrue. Bantering and chatting is fun to do. I would never throw a Comp game, but I would definitely smack talk someone.
Imagine killing the Genji for the fifth time in a row, when he tries to solo dive you, and then typing, “Genji just stop trying, lol”, and then getting your account banned for that, lol. Come on.
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100%
They’ve said they use machine learning to help identify toxic behavior, and honestly? That part is completely understandable. In a game with millions of players (their words, not mine), there will be hundreds of thousands of reports being filed every single day. A team of humans attempting to sift through all of those reports and determine whether what was said is toxic or not would take far too long. So they use machine learning tech to capture the logs, transcribe them into text, and identify if the text is toxic (especially useful for voice chat recordings). That makes the process far more efficient. We’ve known they use technology in this way for years across multiple games.
But whether or not you get your account actioned is always the decision of a human being.
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Ngl, this is just one of those things that hurt Overwatch’s reputation more than Blizzard could fathom.
Blizzard: “Alright, so we’re giving you guys the power of judge, jury, and executioner. If you don’t like something that someone says, no matter the context, please report them, and eventually, if their account receives enough reports, their account will be actioned.”
Also Blizzard: “Wait, how come no one ever uses TC or VC anymore? How strange.” 
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Yeah… That’s not how it works. The ban system is based on the amount of reports you get. If enough people report you, your account will be automatically banned, and it is not reviewed by a Blizzard employee. And now, your first appeal will not be reviewed by an employee either.
You will be redirected to a bot, and the bot will give you a scripted response about how the action was taken in accordance to their ToS.
Further appeal attempts do sometimes get to an actual representative, but historically it is not guaranteed.
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No, it isn’t. How do I know this? Because just the other week I encountered an extremely toxic player who was also throwing. They were the tank on my team; they were only barely engaging the enemy to avoid the AFK timeout while they loafed around, most often near our spawn.
And most of my team spent the game being really frustrated because of this thrower. Enemy team members even ran over to our side of the map to check and see if he was throwing and confirmed it. We all said we’d report him, so 9 other players are all reporting this guy for throwing and being toxic.
I wasn’t instantly told that account action had been taken. Not that day or in the days that I logged in afterwards. I got a notice about account action being taken against an account yesterday, a week after I encountered the toxic thrower. That doesn’t sound ‘automated’ to me.
Also, if it were automated, we’d all be getting messages about ‘account action being taken’ far more frequently. That isn’t happening either.
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You have to cater for the handful of snowflakes left playing Ow2, I take great joy in seeing people leaving OW2 in droves.
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It’s hilariously naive and quite sad that you think you have to type to be banned for abusive chat.
As previously stated, and this new chapter LITERALLY CONFIRMING IT, the ban system is automated and people are still trying to tell you otherwise. Nobody reads reports, it’s done by quantity and quantity only. You can be banned for saying GG if enough people report it. I love seeing people finally realising this… It makes me feel justified.
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I get account action notifications every time I log into the game. Every time. I think it caps out at 2-3 per log in though, because I never see it go beyond that.
Also, evidence, although I am sure I’ve been on this rodeo with you before, and proven this you already:
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Two of these videos are WoW, of a regular player. One is an Overwatch content creator. These videos are all the evidence you will ever need, and why I use them as my bread and butter. Although, they are getting to be a few years old now.
That’s not what the blog post confirms.
The blog post only confirms that they use machine learning to identify toxic language. We’ve known this for years because it’s not the first time they’ve admitted to it. For a game with millions of players (their words, not mine), it makes sense that you’d use tools to make the process more efficient. They’d easily be getting hundreds of thousands of reports a day. A team of humans trying to handle that? They’d be backlogged for weeks, if not years.
So an automated system filters through all the reports (transcribing voice chat communications), identifies the toxic language and then that data is sent to the Risk Department (confirmed to exist by current and former Blizzard employees), who then hand out account actions based on the report in question.
If bans were handed out by automated systems every day, players would log in to see, “We’ve taken action on an account.” far more often. That doesn’t happen.
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I’ve told them all of these things in the past, i’ve shown them all of these videos. I’ve shown them the video of the Overwatch speedrun ban. They deny it.
Your account will probably be banned soon, they have burners and will report you and the forum bans are automated, too.
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You do realize that people abuse the crap out of the report system since its ran by bots not people… people report for anything and everything. Doesnt matter what a blog said. Its abused everyday and some people not all do get ban for nothing then fight with the AI ticket support until get a real person to get their ban over turned when said person had all chats turned off to begin with
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Yes it does, lol. Every time I log in. Every time. I have to close that window.
Look, I get it. You like Blizzard. I won’t be mad at you shilling for them. But you can’t really expect to win people over to your side, when you are advocating for Blizzard stealing people’s money.
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Yeah, I seriously doubt that.
I report players often in my games for valid reasons because I don’t like seeing toxicity in the game. I also report anyone I clearly identify as hacking/cheating in games or clearly throwing. I get notified once every few days, maybe once a week, depending on how many times I run into players who break the rules (doesn’t happen often, but it happens)
Also, correlation =/= causation. Just because someone gets banned after they ‘do a test’ or say something toxic in a game doesn’t mean that’s their only offense. I know for a fact that in Overwatch you’re given two warnings for toxicity before you’re banned. If someone got instantly banned for toxicity in a YouTube video? That means they already got warned multiple times, and then the hammer dropped on them the third time. Which means they were being toxic in previous games that no one saw on that video.
So which is more likely, do you figure? That an automated system banned them instantly for the ‘test’? Or that they were being toxic in games you didn’t see and someone at the Risk Department banned their account which just so happened to coincidentally occurr after they did their ‘test’.
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