Blizzard Blames Overwatch Player Toxicity for Slow Map and Hero Updates

It was rather baffling when Blizzard, a company normally known for not taking half-measures, released Overwatch for PC and console but had no system for reporting problem players on the latter system. At the time, it was considered something of an oversight, but Blizzard didn't agree to take measures to fix it until players raised a fuss. And that begged the question... why?

Well, it appears that maybe Blizzard has a very skewed opinion of how well-behaved players are, and perhaps they had faith that the only reason you'd report anyone on the PC was in the event they were cheating, something that's a far smaller problem on consoles. That might seem like a leap of logic, but, if you watch this video released by them announcing the newly-added player report system to consoles, you might see what I mean.



A bit different from the stuff we usually get from Overwatch, right? Especially the whole thing about diverting manpower from new maps and heroes in order to combat toxicity thing he mentioned... almost as if he had no idea that would be a problem. In fact, the main thrust of the video seemed to be a plea for players to just start behaving so his team could stop having to worry about making the game a less toxic environment. Which, well... you know as well as I do how well that's gonna work.

But really, when you're making a highly competitive game like Overwatch, what else would you expect? These multiplayer games cause emotions to flare, and 9 times out of 10 those emotions are our worst ones. That's why League of Legends has such a huge toxicity problem that Riot Games, the developer, is constantly struggling to rectify. That's why PewDiePie had to apologize, again, for blurting out the N-word during a heated match of Battlegrounds. 

Blizzard had no excuse not to anticipate this. And they can't expect the community to just 'get better'. If anything, as it grows, it'll get worse.

The video promised Blizzard has more plans to help combat bad behavior but gave very little idea of what it might be. We'll just have to wait and see, I suppose.