We’ve been there. You’re dashing long-A on Dust, asking for smoke cowl, however the response is deadlier than any digital gunshot. A high-pitched wail ruptures your headset, puncturing eardrums and shattering glass. Your monitor’s ruined. When the mud settles and the ringing stops, the comms are wild with name-calling, homophobic slurs and swears that’d make a sailor blush. But mic screamers beware. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is about to take motion towards abusive communications by mechanically muting troublesome teammates.
Valve detailed the modifications in a weblog submit titled Squelching The Noise (gross). CS:GO gamers have already got the facility to mute all gamers, however the crew feels it’s at present too broad an possibility. That you may, in truth, truly wish to talk together with your crew every so often makes it all of the extra irritating that some strangers are utilizing their microphones to carry out ear-crime.
You might have seen which you can now report gamers for “Abusive Communications or Profile”. If somebody receives too many of those studies, they’ll be muted for all different gamers by default – teammates can select to unmute them if they want, however their cries will fall silent on everybody else. Besides textual content and voice chat, gamers may report profiles as abusive, squashing their icon from the in-game roster.
This auto-mute lasts till the account features a certain quantity of XP. You can’t journey this one out on one other account ’til the timer passes. Valve hope this report-based system will assist the neighborhood regulate itself. Reports will probably be weighted in direction of gamers with longer playtime who report less-frequently, hopefully avoiding mass-squelching from bots or aggrieved sub-communities.
But that’s a heavy reliance on CS:GO gamers to not abuse the platform for their very own ends. For instance, YouTuber 3kliksphilip suspects conditions like a international speaker being reported as abusive only for saying hiya of their native tongue, or a participant being penalised for a malfunctioning microphone.
I suppose we’ll have to attend and see what kind of abuse threshold warrants a squelching. Gross.
