Blizzard bans 250,000 Overwatch 2 cheaters, says its AI that analyses voice chat is warning naughty players and can often 'correct negative behaviour immediately'
Blizzard bans 250,000 Overwatch 2 cheaters, says its AI that analyses voice chat is warning naughty players and can often 'correct negative behaviour immediately'
It's also been identifying accounts that notably group with cheaters, and has banned thousands of these.
Blizzard bans 250,000 Overwatch 2 cheaters, says its AI that analyses voice chat is warning naughty players and can often 'correct negative behaviour immediately'::Overwatch 2 has not been having a good time of it in 2023. May brought the unwelcome news that Blizzard's original plans for the game's post-launch support were being changed, mainly the pro
Damn that’s like 120% of the active playerbase
There were 250,000 “people” still playing overwatch 2?
According to steam charts, it averages about 26,000 players per day on steam, not that many but I imagine across all platforms it probably has 250,000 players that play semi regularly. Granted by those assumptions they just banned the whole player base
Any game that monitors voice chats is a hell no
Why though? What expectation of privacy do you have for a moderated public platform? Why is this substantially different than ingame chat logs? How could they moderate voice chat otherwise?
In the context of online games specifically, harrasment over voice chat is an enormous problem, and it drives players away from VC (decreasing their ability to communicate with a team in a team game), or drives players away from the game entirely.
If it works even just /decently/ well and has a functional appeal process, this is an unqualified win. We need to start filtering out the harassment endemic to the broader gaming community.
Its not black and white.
Here's a thought experiment: since streets are public places, would you be willing to wear a lapel mic every time you leave your house that records everything you say in public and gives access to every megacorporation and government?
Does that make you feel kind of weird? Well this is the same situation. Just because its a public place, doesn't mean things can't still feel invasive.
Agreed to a point. I think the ideal system would be to locally store voice chats. If you report someone on your team for being toxic, then they're sent over for review but made anonymous (like "Blue Player 1" and "Red Player 3" instead of "xXxGunKiller69xXx" and "Purple Dream Flute"). If whatever system used to review the chats (preferably humans, but it'll probably be AI) determines that there was an actionable offense, the match identifier is pulled up and then and only then individual player names get seen so actions can be taken, otherwise it's fully deleted.
That's about the best system I can think of to balance privacy with the banning of toxic players. You could use this same system for text interactions as well. While I would love for 100% of my data in mp games to be private, it isn't possible to do that and not be surrounded by toxic assholes 24/7 afaik. And I'm personally fine giving up a bit of privacy if it means not being surrounded by assholes every match.
Now, the big issue is that gaming companies just want to record everything you say to sell it off for data collection, but that's more to do with the fact that capitalism encourages companies to have 0 ethics
Isn’t that why everyone uses Discord.
Because they want their voice chats to be monitored?
Meanwhile they won't ban obvious StarCraft 2 cheaters. There's a guy on the ladder that admits to it, anyone can look at his history and see that he doesn't ever get a loss, just ties. And he maphacks on top of this.
StarCraft 2 is not making any money so no incentive to fix it.
Sad but true. They have a community balance team and the maps come from the community as well. How about community mods if they won't moderate their own shit?
Big-Blizzard is watching you!
Maybe this would be a great addition to their HR or management department.