Overwatch Developer Update Addresses Player Toxicity

Toxicity has been a pretty big problem in Blizzard Entertainment’s Overwatch since release. It’s only been magnified in recent months due to the belief that the Report system did nothing. The development team finally made changes to the way it handed out bans and suspensions while promising to be harsher on repeat offenders, especially in Competitive Play.

In a new developer update however, director Jeff Kaplan sought to address the issue some more. He noted that the Report system is now live on consoles. Along with an email notification system to inform players about action being taken based on their reports, Kaplan also said it would look into in-game notifications for the same. It was revealed that some 340,000 out of 480,000 accounts had action taken against them based on reports.

Oddly enough, Kaplan also talked about how development resources that could be used for features like Replays and Match History were instead being used to deal with toxicity. One would think that there are developers dedicated to this task alone but that’s another issue altogether. He believes it’s the responsibility of the players as well as the community to help fix it.

It’s an interesting watch all the same so check it out below. What are your thoughts on toxicity in Overwatch? Let us know below.