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Valve lays out plans to tackle Dota 2 toxicity

Valve lays out plans to tackle Dota 2 toxicity

PC games giant Valve is planning on clamping down on toxicity in its MOBA Dota 2.

As spotted by PCGamesN, the company said in a blog post that it would be employing an 'Overwatch' system like it has introduced to its online shooter, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO). This allows the community to self-regulate, with members of the playerbase able to check suspicious instances in the game via a replay review system.

"Another area we’ve been doing work on recently is player behaviour and toxicity," Valve wrote.

"Some of that has been work we’ve been doing recently in public without patch notes, while some is upcoming stuff that is still in development."

The company continued: "In terms of toxicity and game ruining behaviours from players, we are working on a new Overwatch style system, similar in some ways to that of CS:GO. We aren’t ready to share more information about this yet, but we will as soon as we are able. We are hoping to get this in the game as soon as possible."

Valve recently rolled out a chat filter system that it had built for its own games, including Dota 2 and CS:GO – as well as Bungie's Destiny 2 – to all Steam users. Last year, the developer introduced harsher ban penalties for Dota 2 players who were being toxic in its MOBA.


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.