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Blizzard has put together a ‘strike team’ to deal with Overwatch toxicity

Blizzard has put together a ‘strike team’ to deal with Overwatch toxicity

In an effort to deal with the wealth of negativity in the Overwatch community, Blizzard has formed a ‘strike team’.

That’s according to game director Jeff Kaplan who - speaking to Kotaku - said that the team was spending as much time dealing with toxicity as it is making new characters and maps.

“We’re not sitting here with our heads in the sand,” he said.

“You have concerns, and your concerns are now one of our top priorities. If that means the thing we’re gonna focus on as much as Moira and Blizzard World is toxicity, then we’re gonna do it.”

The aforementioned ‘strike team’ is called Risk, and is tasked with fighting hacking and cheating.

“We’re starting to action less toward silences and more toward suspensions,” he said. “If somebody’s doing bad behaviour, just silencing them can sometimes convince them to do things like throw matches and grief in other ways. If you keep exemplifying bad behaviour, we’re gonna have you leave the game [permanently].”

Toxicity in the Overwatch has been a real hot topic for Blizzard, with Kaplan having to speak out about the amount of time and effort it was putting into moderating its community while also trying to build the game

A former Riot employee has spoken up about negative elements of the League of Legends community

Despite the overwhelming amount of effort Blizzard is putting in to combat negativity in the Overwatch community, the team has still managed to create a new character and map for the game. These were announced at Blizzcon over the weekend

The firm also recently announced that Overwatch had surpassed 35m players since its May 2016 launch


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.