Toxic Overwatch players will now be banned quicker in Blizzard crackdown

Blizzard are cracking down even harder on toxic Overwatch players, pledging to the community they will be imposing harsher punishments, as well as implementing more tools to help curb abusive chat.

Blizzard has struggled with trying to crack down on toxicity in Overwatch historically. However, over the last few years, they’ve implemented more systems to try and curb its effects.

They’ve added communication bans for toxic teammates, enforced an endorsement system that gives players rewards for being well-mannered, and more.

However, they’re taking the next step in their journey to stop toxicity, drastically increasing punishments for first-time and repeat offenders.

“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,” Overwatch devs stated on September 23.

This means that players who are found to be toxic on multiple occasions will likely lose their accounts much quicker than previously.

They are also testing out a new profanity filter to help block out more abusive language. “In order to give players more control over the types of the language they see and the situations in which they appear, we’re making some updates to the profanity filter,” they added.

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Instead of there being an on or off setting, there’s now three choices: Friendly, Mature, and Unfiltered. These choices will also be applied differently in different chats, from general chat to party chat.

While they are bolstering their automatic processes, they have also urged players to continue using the in-game report function to effectively stop toxic players.

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“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.”