Toxicity is a problem in almost every online game, but it’s especially a problem for Call of Duty, a franchise that is not only the poster child for military first-person shooters but also for toxic masculinity. Sadly, the two sort of go hand-in-hand, but Activision is trying to break that stigma with its anti-toxicity initiative, and today we get to see how they’re doing.
“We are committed to delivering a fun gameplay experience for all of our players,” Activision wrote on its blog providing an anti-toxicity update. “There’s no place for toxic behavior, hate speech or harassment of any kind in our games or our society. We are focused on making positive steps forward, and together celebrating the best fans in the world.”
Across all the current Call Of Duty games, including Warzone, Black Ops Cold War, Modern Warfare, and Call of Duty: Mobile, over 350,000 accounts have been banned over the past 12 months. Those bans included accounts with racist names after an “extensive review of our player-name database” as well as accounts that exhibited toxic behavior according to player-submitted reports.
Activision also revealed that the Call of Duty franchise has received a number of new anti-toxicity features over the past year, including a new in-game filter to catch offensive names, clan tags, and profiles, a new chat filter to remove offensive text chat, and filters being rolled out across 11 languages.
“There’s much more to be done,” adds Activision, which plans to expand its anti-toxicity programs with greater player reporting capabilities and moderation as well as technology to combat voice chat toxicity–something that Intel has been working on for a little while now and might have a product that Activision could use.
The ’80s Action Hero event is still going on in Black Ops Cold War, although the price for purchasing both John McClane and Rambo seems a bit much even for these two iconic characters. Black Ops 2’s Hijacked map might also be returning to Black Ops Cold War in Season 4, according to a new rumor.
