Current Events > Blizzard built a "strike team" to put an end to Overwatch cheaters

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These days, its hard to talk about Overwatch without mentioning its ongoing struggles with sexism, racism, griefing, match throwing, and worse. At BlizzCon, game director Jeff Kaplan told Kotaku that fighting toxicity is now more of a priority than ever, to the point that Blizzard has formed a strike team to do so.

In recent months, the Overwatch team has taken flack for perceived foot-dragging in its efforts to stop players from treating each other like garbage. Not only did common-sense features like detailed report categories, notifications when Blizzards taken action against somebody youve reported, and reporting on consoles take multiple months too many to make it into the game, but Kaplan recently put out a strangely defensive video in which he explained that playing whack-a-mole with the games more toxic elements takes away from time the team could be spending on new content and features. Despite all that, Kaplan told me that turning the tide in the fight against toxicity is just as important as adding new characters and levels to the popular team shooter.

Were not sitting here with our heads in the sand, said Kaplan. You have concerns, and your concerns are now one of our top priorities. If that means the thing were gonna focus on as much as Moira and Blizzard World is toxicity, then were gonna do it.

Blizzard has created an anti-toxicity strike team made up of game designers, support staff, analytics people, and a special group called Risk that fights cheating and hacking, Kaplan said. The team is currently devising a series of short, medium, and long-term plans to make Overwatchs community better. While Kaplan said he could not go into too much detail on what exactly the team is doing for fear that this would give griefers more information to game the system more effectively, he offered a couple examples.

In light of criticisms that reported players get off easy, often facing only chat silences and brief suspensions before returning to play, Kaplan said the plan is to err on the side of stricter moderation going forward.

Were starting to action less toward silences and more toward suspensions, he said. If somebodys doing bad behavior, just silencing them can sometimes convince them to do things like throw matches and grief in other ways. If you keep exemplifying bad behavior, were gonna have you leave the game [permanently].
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Apocalyptic posted...

These days, its hard to talk about Overwatch without mentioning its ongoing struggles with sexism, racism

No it isnt

They should have game designers doing something more productive like making some heroes not shitty

Or maybe this will keep them from shitting it up who knows
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He also pointed to a notification system thatll tell players when somebody theyve reported has been hit with some kind of action. Currently, Kaplan said, between 20 and 30,000 test players receive notifications via email, but it wont be long before notifications start showing up for all players in-game (as opposed to via email). The goal, he explained, is to make it clear that reporting does something and, to the reported, that their actions have tangible consequences.

In the longer term, the strike team is also looking at machine learning as a possible complement to other elements of its anti-toxicity apparatus. At the moment, Blizzard is trying it out in the chats of both Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm, using it to determine words and phrases frequently associated with toxicity. Kaplan says similarly toxic sentiments are aired in both games chats.

It remains disheartening, however, that things ever managed to get this bad in the first place. Kaplan said that he wished the team had put more of a focus on heading these issues off at the pass early on, but stressed that he did not feel the team was simply being lackadaisical or negligent when it failed to implement features like console reporting functionality in Overwatchs early days.

Its kind of like The road to hell is paved with best intentions, he said. Console reporting was a big point of discussion early on, he said, but the team decided against it because, at the time, it would have required all console Overwatch players to also create Battle.net accounts, a small but annoying barrier to entry. But, I noted, that simply meant that the Overwatch team had dodged a bullet, only to get hit by a truck later on.

Thats where were at now, Kaplan replied with a sigh. Best intentions, indeed. Kaplan feels like the team is on the right track now, though, and he wants people to know that this is not a problem theyre tackling reluctantly.

People are fired up about this issue, Kaplan said. He used as an example a particular server programmer on the team who has recently become laser-focused on using the fact that he knows the code better than just about anybody else to deal with toxicity. Nobody had to direct him on that, Kaplan said. Theres a lot of passion on the team to tackle that right now.

Hm...
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Good. Hopefully they also do something about shitty healers that don't do their job.
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And this is why overwatch is number one!
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Id say make the teams bigger. Its so small right now that one pissed off player or troll holds the entire team for ransom.

Make the teams bigger so that any single player doesnt have that much power.
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Spooking posted...

I'm glad I stopped playing Blizzard games. Sounds like they gathered all the toxic players.

I really haven't experienced it being a problem
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Nomadic View posted...

Id say make the teams bigger. Its so small right now that one pissed off player or troll holds the entire team for ransom.

Make the teams bigger so that any single player doesnt have that much power.

Yup battlefield has no griefers
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I'm so confused....what the Hell is going on? Are they fighting cheaters or people calling other people names and hurting their feelings?
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Can they even compete with the Strike Force
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Players treating each other like garbage is literally the staple of online gaming. They can't take that away from us!
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ZCheveyo posted...

I'm so confused....what the Hell is going on? Are they fighting cheaters or people calling other people names and hurting their feelings?

Both I think
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I was imagining it as a group of players with admin/debug menus that could instaban people they match up against.
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NeonOctopus posted...

Players treating each other like garbage is literally the staple of online gaming. They can't take that away from us!

Toxicity is also the perfect way to turn off any new players. Blizzard wants to expand their playerbase because that's how you make money, not just let it stagnate at its current size.
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Apocalyptic posted...

ZCheveyo posted...

I'm so confused....what the Hell is going on? Are they fighting cheaters or people calling other people names and hurting their feelings?

Both I think

Yeah because Blizzard has the secret that the rest of the internet hasn't, to mysteriously disappear trolls and shitty players forever. This will just encourage trouble, not that I care about this shitty game.
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Overcuck
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NibeIungsnarf posted...

Apocalyptic posted...

These days, its hard to talk about Overwatch without mentioning its ongoing struggles with sexism, racism

No it isnt

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SGT_Conti posted...

NeonOctopus posted...

Players treating each other like garbage is literally the staple of online gaming. They can't take that away from us!

Toxicity is also the perfect way to turn off any new players. Blizzard wants to expand their playerbase because that's how you make money, not just let it stagnate at its current size.

But toxic players are hilarious smfh
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