Overwatch Dev Blames Toxic Players Behaviour For Slow Development

Overwatch Gamer Director Jeff Kaplan has released a new video to address the rise of toxicity and bad behavior in the game. the PC version of the game already has a reporting system and now the disciplinary action is also available on Consoles. so consoles players can now hope to get a less toxic environment if the system works.

Kaplan further said that team will be rolling a small pilot experiment which will add notification feature in report system and it will alert players with a feedback whenever they report other players for Toxic behavior. So basically he is saying that the report system will not just be a feature for display but will carry action with it.

You can watch the over 7 Minute video below where he explains the system and what players can expect in future.

Further, into the video, he explains that report system does carry out strict actions. he reveals that the team has taken disciplinary actions against 480,000 accounts out of which actions against 340,000 were taken through the help of reporting system.

He also firmly makes it a point that Overwatch will not tolerate any type of mean and bad behavior and they will make sure that the players who are toxic will not be a part of the community.

“Our highest level philosophy is: if you are a bad person doing bad things in Overwatch, we don’t want you in Overwatch. We don’t want to create areas for you where just the bad people are in Overwatch we just don’t want those bad people in Overwatch.

“Overwatch should be an inclusive game space it’s an inclusive, aspirational universe. And the gameplay experience should match what Overwatch is hoping to achieve.”

Lastly, he says that because the team has been policing the community and taking action against toxic players the development has slowed down.

“We want to make new maps, we want to make new heroes, we want to make animated shorts. That’s where our passion is, but we’ve been put into this weird position where we’re spending a tremendous amount of time and resources punishing people and trying to make people behave better.

“The bad behavior is not just ruining the for one another but the behavior is actually making the game progress in terms of development at a much slower rate.”

Well, there are no details about how the report system works but he did say that there will be notifications about whats happening with your reports but not everything will be visible like the changes and what type of punishment the reported player will be receiving.

Honestly, i don’t think it will decrease the toxicity in the game because as gamers we all know that the report system is not just used against toxic behavior but also against players who don’t play well or simply pick characters which are the team does not want in a match.

So the question arises does playing a character of your choice against the team’s wish count as a toxic behavior? does trolling other players count as toxic? does just using the F word count as toxic?

Anyways that’s just by my views but I would also say that we should wait to see the result of the report system before making any fixed judgment.