Toxicity, Racism and why I'm leaving the game

[Kaedi-11739]

@Noble-11989

I come back today and see that not one of them has been banned. With copious amounts of evidence given in detailed reports. I don’t trust the team behind banning people for obviously toxic behavior and cant in good faith keep supporting the game. Which is a shame because I was looking forward to OWL. But I have to stick to my guns and not support a game whos devs tolerate that kind of behavior.

First off it is important to remember that Abusive Chat of that nature is unacceptable and Blizzard does not tolerate it. It should be noted that voice chat is not immediately actioned upon the offense, and often through consistent disruptive behavior will they be actioned. If the people are willing to dive down to such behavior instantly, that is a very likely sign they will get trouble soon enough. So you may receive notifications in time, but waiting only a day is often unrealistic due to the numerous reports Blizzard’s receives.

Blizzard is taking significant increases to stop abusive chat. Community Manager Molly Fender, recently made a post about this:

@Molly

Updated Penalties for Inappropriate Language in Overwatch

While using a profanity filter can help you control when you see offensive language, we’re also committed to constantly improving our methods of combatting this issue at its source. In the short term, we will be imposing harsher penalties against players found to be using offensive, hateful, or other similar language that violates our Code of Conduct , including longer periods of silence, longer suspensions, and permanently banning players after fewer repeat offenses.

In the near term, we’re also considering some changes to our internal processes that we hope will result in meaningful improvements to the effectiveness of our preliminary detection methods and the speed at which players found to be violating the Code of Conduct are investigated and actioned. As always, we appreciate your support and vigilance as we continue to work toward addressing these challenging and important issues—the best tool we have is your reports and feedback, and we look forward to sharing more in the future.

UPDATE (Oct 12):

In addition to the improved profanity filter and updated penalties for inappropriate language, we’ve also performed a manual action wave against some of the worst offenders of toxic language in Overwatch. This action will take effect with updates to profanity filter and penalties in the next live game patch.

I understand if you don’t want to play the game right now, but hopefully this shows what is being done to make all of Blizzard’s games a welcoming community for all honest players.