Blizzard boast of player abuse reduction in Overwatch

Instances of dillholes jerking up Overwatch multiplayer matches with abusive chat have dropped by around a quarter since Blizzard added player endorsement and 'looking for group' systems last month, according to numbers shared by game director Jeff Kaplan. As social engineering in this cyberhell goes, that seems a fair result. Blizzard still haven't replied to my suggestion that they partner with gaming chair manufacturers on a line which include pop-out misters to spray players with water if they misbehave and a sweetie dispenser for when they're good, but this is a start.

Kaplan blasted stats from the American and Korean servers in a forum post on Friday:

The % of Competitive Matches that Contain Abusive Chat is down:

26.4% in the Americas
16.4% in KR

The % of Daily Players being Abusive is down:

28.8% in the Americas
21.6% in KR

Presumably he didn't offer European numbers because we're so polite that Blizzard do not have enough data to work with.

Numbers are of course how Satan rewrote his dark incantations to trick us all into repeating them, and we should always be wary of over-reaching when analysing these majicks, but those initial results do seem promising.

Our Matt looked at endorsements last week, welcoming a reduction in abuse but feeling a little concern that players might now be insincere in their praise - and they might misread his earnest compliments as insincere endorsement-seeking. As a grizzled Internaut myself, what other players think of me means so little that I hadn't even considered this as a negative side-effect, but I see where he's coming from. Hold tight; you're in for a wild cyberride.

"And we'll keep working on iterating on these features to make them better as well as exploring other systems to improve the gameplay environment," Kaplan added. Call me about the chairs, Jeff.