Overwatch’s builders have been more and more proactive in trying to curb the tide of toxicity rising locally, with the bans have been getting a lot sooner and much fiercer. The newest “I was banned for no reason” story has led to a fairly fascinating revelation on the forms of abuse Blizzard are cracking down on, because it appears they’re keen to silence these overusing voice strains.
Find out what’s next for Overwatch.
A PlayStation four participant took to the Blizzard boards to touch upon their third silence ban, regardless of not utilizing a microphone. As is usually the case, a Blizzard dev stepped in to supply some schadenfreudic clarification, this time courtesy of Scott Mercer. “Based on the player comments accompanying the various reports,” mentioned Mercer, “it seems even without a microphone you’ve been spamming voice lines, throwing, not helping, exhibiting poor sportsmanship, killing yourself, etc.”
The pertinent element there’s the “spamming voice lines,” which you will not have considered an actionable offense up to now. After some confusion on the a part of the participant base, Mercer cited the abusive chat descriptor on the report participant type: “Any form of hateful, discriminatory, obscene, or disruptive communications. Threatening or harassing another player on either team is also unacceptable, regardless of the words used.”
“So YES,” concludes Mercer, “if you spam character voice lines in a way that is either disruptive or would be considered harassment, then you could be actioned.”
The specifics of these actions are essentially obscure given the number of contexts they’ll come up in, however on this specific occasion they imply silence bans.
I’d suspect this kind of motion would apply extra to some type of voice use that will be a bit extra focused than goofing round in pre-match shenanigans. Still, assume twice earlier than “cheers, love”-ing your self in all places.
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