Overwatch Adds New Penalties to Being a Jerk

Raise a glass and say a prayer to any developer making a multiplayer game who wants to make it a welcoming, toxic-free place, for theirs is the task that never ends. It's not hard to see why game developers like Blizzard want to keep the hate off their game: even one person being a trolling jerk can ruin an entire match for everyone, and it makes some people just unwilling to continue playing. On the other hand, it's not hard to see why so many people troll on multiplayer games: for some, the tryhards are easy targets and just goofing off is an easy way to get a reaction, but for most trolls, it simply amounts to losing not being very fun. And since every round has to have losers in a competitive game, in every game of Overwatch (or any other game like it), half the players aren't enjoying themselves.

That can lead to some pretty bad behavior.

Blizzard, however, is all set to try to tackle the problem again, this time with the stick rather than the carrot. They've just announced their plans to add a new-and-improved player report system, and more importantly, vowed to increase the penalties faced by peeps who decide to try to troll their way through a tough loss.

To elaborate, community manager Lylirra posted on the forums about the issue:

We believe that our in-game reporting and player penalty system is one of our most important features, and it’s something we want to invest in significantly over the next year. To this end, effective immediately, we will be issuing increased penalties to players in response to verified reports of bad behavior. In Overwatch, that means anything from abusive chat, harassment, in-game spam, match inactivity (being intentionally AFK), and griefing. If you see someone engaging in any of these types of behaviors, report them. Players in violation will be silenced, suspended, or even banned from the game as a result.

They also mention that in future months they'll add even more ways to punish folks who are acting out, with scaling competitive season bans, a notification system that will alert you when a player you’ve reported is penalized, and ways to aggressively penalize players who attempt to abuse the in-game reporting tool.

Sounds like they're done messing around. As always. But it's easy to take a firm stance when you've got the hottest game of the year at your back.

Let's see if it even makes a dent, shall we?