“While we encourage you to report players that are behaving in a disrespectful manner, falsely reporting another player with the sole intent of restricting their gameplay is also unacceptable and will result in penalties to your account.”
I’d really like to know if this has ever occurred…?
Or I wonder if Blizzard has something implemented (for their eyes only) to show just how often a player does report. For example, let’s say PlayerA has played for 5 years, and PlayerB only 1 year, but PlayerA has submitted a total of 100 times, while PlayerB has submitted a total of 1,000 times. It then would be much more likely that PlayerB’s reports are frivolous and perhaps require an investigation? Or in all fairness, maybe PlayerB just does a much better job at always reporting.
Just curious to know how Blizzard battles the integrity of players reporting other players.
Because many players have the notion “i’ll just report and let Blizzard decide”, while others just “report out of spite”
It has, many many many times, albeit Blizzard does not talk about doing so
The most famous example was a very popular but toxic streamer sending multiple false reports on someone while between rounds of a comp match. He actually streamed while sending these false reports. He got the message that he was banned as he attempted to enter the next round. Again…all while publicly streaming
I think they throw this sort of stuff in to try and deter people from reporting one-tricks for one-tricking or whatever. I vaguely remember them doing something similar in a blog before.
I can’t quite recall the context, but it might have been something about serious leaver penalties first being introduced into QP and the blog saying something along the lines of “we’ll be keeping an eye out in case people start throwing games instead of leaving, so don’t do it or we’ll punish you for it!”
I seriously doubt they (somehow) improved thrower detection somehow, and were in fact telling a little white lie in order to try and stop degenerates from acting degenerately.
These are the only circumstances in which false reporting can get banned, as Blizzard went into this stream and personally saw that he was false reporting.
Your average user who spams false reports will never be actioned.
sadly, you are being misinformed at the moment, Jello
false reports are an act of breaking the rules of the game, and one can be actioned for it, and many have been
The example I provided was simply the most famous occurrence…how can one legitimately claim, with no evidence, that it didnt happen a second time? and a third? a thousand and twenty sixth? etc etc etc
That said, there is very little evidence of it online because Blizzard almost never publicizes their disciplinary actions…and those who wish to believe it never occurs unfortunately take this as proof that it never occurs, when it isnt proof at all
Players filing false reports leave behind a forensic digital crime scene since all activity is being captured on the server end. These reports are pretty much permanent until purged by Blizzard’s server clean up procedures, so a false-reporting player could be punished weeks or months after their pattern of digital harassment is discovered.
Your only example is a streamer. Blizzard has outright said they regularly monitor streamers.
You are not able to provide proof of it happening under normal circumstances, only a circumstance where a streamer is holding up a sign to Blizzard that says “Ban me! I’m breaking the rules!”
Blizzard captures all OW2 game and report data, so it would be short sighted to assume that they do not audit their app logs for deliberate user abuse and other abnormalities.
With account creation being free, no OW2 game ban is really permanent. Blizz does not even do hardware bans since such measures can be circumvented with the right software. The only items lost with an account ban is digital cosmetics.
they can probably implement this based on percentage of a player’s reports that is corroborated by other reports. i.e. if a a player submits 100 reports but only 2 of the people reported are also reported by other players, then its highly likely that the rest of these are false reports and that this player has a habit of falsely reporting other players. i wouldn’t be surprised if reporters are also weighted based on additional information that they provide i.e. writing out additional supporting details in their report.
i’d assume that the rules for this are more on the forgiving side just because it is very possible for someone to make lots of reports that don’t have consensus for a variety of reasons other than malicious intent (e.g. this person has a stricter idea of what counts as a reportable offense than the average player, this person just plays more than the average player, mistaking someone having a good aim day or in the wrong rank as a cheater etc.) but i’m guessing there’s also some sort of system for catching obvious trolling (like writing something blatantly false or malicious in the written section like “was being stupid” “threw my game by going mercy”)
it’s probably best for the reliability of the reporting system for us not to know the exact particulars so that it can’t be gamed, but these are just my guesses for some of the things they might have in place to address false reports
I heard that after the 1st XIM ban wave, a XIM patch was released that quickly defeated Blizz XIM detection. That would explain why XIM bans are not being enforced. The hackers always have the advantage in the current environment. As for false reporting, there just isn’t enough public info to make any reliable conclusions.
I just stay clear of the mess and play when I can. No need to add unnecessary stress in one’s life
I would honestly be shocked if any meaningful number of false reports were ever actioned against the reporter. Like shocked if 1% of false reports were ever even detected
Just a guess, but Blizz likely doesn’t pursue false reporters unless they are public and blatant about abusing the report system. Of course, we do not know how long Blizz retains their report records, and AI models are constantly getting better at auditing large data sets, so we can only wait and see if anything happens.
