Now if only they didn't use kernel level anticheat and got it working on Linux, cause I ain't going back to Windows for one game
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People do need thicker skin though. So much internet drama is magnified beyond reason by people who can't just ignore assholes. That's not excusing the fact that they're being assholes. Obviously if they would stop being assholes that would be the ideal solution. However, we all know that will never happen. No amount of legislation, moderation, or punishment will ever remove that tendency from people. It is fundamental human nature. Stop fighting a losing battle. Learn how to block people and move on with your life. If you stop engaging they'll get bored and leave you alone. They thrive on your reaction so stop giving them one.
At the end of the day it's your job to protect yourself in all aspects of life, including online. Stop trying to outsource it to software developers. They gave you all the tools you need decades ago.
I cannot get behind the sentiment of "online communication is awful so we shouldn't even attempt to do anything about it." Yeah at some point you have to learn to shake it off to protect yourself, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't make any effort to moderate online spaces as well. Don't give assholes quarter in your game if you want to retain your community.
You can't remove the suck from people, but you can remove the people from your community.
I didn't say no attempts should be made to improve things. In fact in one of my comments I explicitly said the opposite. I'm saying people need to be both realistic in their expectations of what any moderation policy can achieve and proactive in the pursuit of their own online safety. Moderators will never be able to fully eliminate this problem because it is an inherent part of the behavior of a subset of humanity and humans are involved in the activities where this harassment takes place.
If you expect every person you meet, online or in person, to respect the rules you are going to be disappointed. By all means, make suggestions for improvement. But understand any solution will be imperfect and accept your role in dealing with those imperfections. To put the sentiment in a more succint form, get thicker skin.
Moderators will never be able to fully eliminate this problem because it is an inherent part of the behavior of a subset of humanity and humans are involved in the activities where this harassment takes place
I'm not suggesting they can, I don't think anyone is.
If you expect every person you meet, online or in person, to respect the rules you are going to be disappointed
I don't, but I expect if someone starts yelling rape threats at a restaurant that they'll be kicked out, rather than the waiter saying "well why didn't you just move to another table?" The rules are there for a reason, there should be consequences if they are broken.
I think both of you are in more agreement than opposition.
I understand the comparison but you can't exactly mute people with minimal effort in real life. Additionally, the threat of rape in person is significantly different than anonymously online from a legal perspective because the person making the threat knows who and where the target is at the moment the threat is made.
At a high level I don't disagree with most of what you're saying. The point I'm making is that there's a pretty large gap between "something should be done about online harassment" and "this is our plan for stopping online harassment". Most calls for action appeal to the first without much concern for the second, and the solution is the difficult part, not identifying the problem.
I'm confused, isn't the article talking about the solution?
It does talk about some steps they're taking right at the beginning. I missed those initially because on mobile it looks like an ad before the actual article starts so I skimmed over it.
Did you click through to the actual clip?
It's not that I entirely disagree, but it's not a black-vs-white thing. Some ribbing is understandable, after all it's a competitive environment. But the explicitly misogynist, hateful, threatening and illegal needs to be harshly dealt with, to make players understand that it's an absolutely 0 tolerance police and you will fuck yourself up if you try.
No player should have to go through having to shrug off rape threats.
Learn how to block people and move on with your life.
That's what we want the game makers to do, yes.
nature. Stop fighting a losing battle. Learn how to block people and move on with your life. If you stop engaging they’ll get bored and leave you alone. They thrive on your reaction so stop giving them one.
The problem for developers is that the easiest way to stop engaging is to not play their games. They care about moderation because they want people to continue to play their game.
I don't know that that's true. Some games may be worse than others but I don't think there are any specific games, or for that matter places online in general, where some form of harassment is not an issue. If you want to avoid it entirely then you need to avoid people entirely and that's not really a teneble solution.
I only play online games with friends because I don't feel like dealing with fuckheads in my spare time. That does mean there are a lot of games which are probably cool but I won't play because they are meant to be played in lobbies.
There have been players who got blocked by everyone because of skills and were then unable to engage in matchmaking. I think just banning assholes is absolutely the best solution.
Sure, but who decides who the assholes are? What standard of proof do they use? What happens to people who almost meet that definition but don't quite? Some cases are pretty straightforward but many have too much grey area for a simple concept like 'ban all the assholes' to hold up without a huge amount of effort that often can't be provided effectively.
Evidence is key and that can be difficult to get. Additionally, players often edit clips to get the reaction they want from moderators or the community as a whole. The video in the linked article could potentially be a great example of this. The streamer obviously wants you to think they were attacked unprovoked but is that really what happened? We have no context for what led to the recorded exchange. Did the streamer refer to him using a racial slur for failing to hold what they thought was the proper position during the round immediately before the video begins? That doesn't excuse what the player said in response but it does change the context significantly. If you ban the rape guy and then he releases a video showing the streamer saying even more outrageous things do you reverse the ban, ban them both, or give them both a warning not to be dicks in the future? This is not an isolated incident either. Multiple situations just like this happen every day on platforms with any significant number of users. How do you give each one the time it requires to be resolved correctly? Will you have any players left if you ban everyone who offends someone else?
The point is, policing people's behavior is very challenging. There are tons of ways to abuse any system you can design unless you record literally everything your users do and that comes with it's own set of moral and logistical issues. The simplest and most universally applicable solution is to enable users to block other players themselves. Making that impact matchmaking is kind of dumb in my opinion as it just opens up the potential for abuse as you noted. Set up a few very simple ground rules and then let players sort out who they want to be able to communicate with based on how they treat them. That's the only solution I can see that is realistic and sustainable but it requires users to take an active role in maintaining the community, which they should be doing anyway if they want it to be the kind of place you're describing.
You don't know what is true? That people can't stop playing a game? That developers care about players quitting their game? It's trivially easy to play video games and avoid trolls. There are single player games. You can play only with friends or family. You can play live service with lots of solo-oriented content and mute the chat. It's not a hyperbolic choice between playing video games or avoiding all social interaction in life period - that's a very "terminally online" kind of perspective. Normal people reduce toxic interactions where they can, they don't think, "Welp, I either put up with constant bigotry and rape threats in this totally optional entertainment or I have to move out to a shack in the woods."
For most people gaming is a social activity. The popularity and prevalence of multiplayer games vs single player games bears this out. Playing single player games is not a viable solution to avoiding harassment for people who are interested in the social and/or multiplayer aspects of gaming. Muting people who are dicks is a viable solution and that's exactly what I've been advocating for in this discussion. Many others seem to think they shouldn't need to be involved in the process and game devs or other communication platforms should do all the work for them. I don't think that's a realistic suggestion.
What is your source on multiplayer games being more popular and prevalent than single player? Because a cursory search only turns up the opposite preference. You're ignoring the parts of my argument that don't suit you as well, like playing only with friends, so I don't think you're really being an honest interlocutor. That leads me to believe you are probably a player that bullies other players, which is why you're so strongly anti-moderation.
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https://www.statista.com/statistics/259577/us-single-player-vs-multiplayer-frequency-among-gamers "According to an October 2022 survey of PC and console gamers in the United States, over half of respondents stated that they spent about 75 to 100 percent of their gaming time playing alone."
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https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/single-player-vs-multiplayer-a-generational-changing-of-the-guards-or-a-bifurcation-of-gamer-behaviours "57% of gamers prefer single-player over multiplayer games, compared to 22% who prefer multiplayer games. While the overall preference for the single player mode holds true across all age segments, the degree to which the single player mode is preferred differs significantly with age."
Given the choice between an online community with assholes being moderated away and an online community without asshole moderation, I'm going to choose the one where assholes get warned, muted, and banned.
My favourite subreddit had a rule, "Be Civil". I much preferred that sub over ones that didn't have that rule (or one like it). Too many people don't know how to behave in public forums, and those people make the internet a lot less pleasant. See Facebook and Instagram comments if you'd like some examples.
I don't play many online games, except with friends exclusively, or where there is no chat (especially voice chat). If there were games that had moderated communities that banned assholes, then I'd be more likely to venture into that world...and maybe I'd even start turning on my mic.
It seems like a toxic community surrounds Riot's games worse than they do other games.
Yeah the common factor in all their games having fucked up communities is them.
Maybe focus on banning cheaters rather than having a pissing contest with some dude
I've been playing games online for 20 years and never before have I seen this level of passive-aggressive douchebaggery. Rules limiting what you can say must have some influence on this trend. I just mute my mic and chat in pug matches now.
Riot Games is incredibly good at generating asshole players and incredibly bad at doing anything about them. I've never had players on my own team intentionally try to throw the game as hard as i had in Riot's games. It's not only the low level players, either.
It would be even better if they commited to not installing rootkits on your PC.
but can they commit to not putting rootkits on your pc?