Much has been made about Blizzard and its fight to battle toxicity within the Overwatch community recently. After reports of almost half a million Overwatch players being disciplined, coupling with the fact that it's slowing down actual development on the game, Blizzard has announced the changes that will be rolling out in the next patch. One of them revolves around players on Xbox Live and the platform's reputation system.
According to the Patch Notes, Xbox Live players with a reputation of "Avoid Me" will not be able to use voice chat with the game, though will remain in the same player pool as normal.
This is just the latest in a string of player behavior management strategies that Blizzard has implemented recently, the most notable being the Report Player feature that came out with Patch 1.14. A Report Player feature can, unfortunately, be easily abused by petty and dishonest players, so if anything the Xbox Live player reputation feature seems to be the framework for the best possible solution.
Don't let the a-holes and biotches get a single word in.
Overwatch is available now on PC, Xbox One, and PS4.
