CALL of Duty has kicked hundreds of thousands of players to the curb as part of a months-long crackdown on toxic behaviour.
In a report released this week, publisher Activision detailed how it was stamping out hate speech and harassment on the first-person shooter.
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The big news is the banning of 350,000 accounts for “racist names or toxic behaviour” over the past 12 months.
Players were booted from Call of Duty: Warzone, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and Call of Duty: Mobile.
The mass-blocking was driven by player-submitted reports and an extensive review of Call of Duty’s player-name database, Activision said.
“We are committed to delivering a fun gameplay experience for all of our players,” the company wrote in its report on Wednesday.
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“There’s no place for toxic behaviour, 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.”
Additional measures deployed by Activision include new in-game filters to catch potentially offensive user-names, clan tags or profiles.
The company said it had also implemented new technology to filter out potentially offensive text chat.
Call of Duty cheating – what will get you banned?
Here’s what you need to know…
- There are plenty of ways to cheat on Call of Duty
- Perhaps the most common hack is an aimbot – a piece of software that aims and targets enemies automatically for you
- Activision also explicitly forbids the use of wallhacks, which modifies the properties of walls
- For instance, wallhacking software could allow you to see enemies through walls
- Typically using glitches to escape outside the normal bounds of the map is also considered to be cheating
- Generally it’s a case of using common sense: don’t do anything that gives you an advantage that wouldn’t have been intended by developers
- Also, cheating on a sophisticated game like Call of Duty can be difficult – so if you’re cheating, it’s unlikely to have been an accident
“There’s much more to be done, including increasing player reporting capabilities and moderation, as well as addressing voice chat to help combat toxicity,” Activision said.
“Our goal is to give players the tools needed to manage their own gameplay experience, combined with an enforcement approach that addresses hate speech, racism, sexism and harassment.”
The Call of Duty series is notorious for having one of the most toxic communities around.
Activision has begun to take proactive measures to combat rampant cheating, as well as the shocking abuse traded between players.
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It comes after a further 30,000 players were kicked off of Warzone by Call of Duty developer Raven Software earlier this month.
That took the total number of banned players to more than half a million, according to the US company.
It was part of a growing crackdown on Warzone cheaters, who cause chaos for legitimate gamers.
The situation is so bad at times that one pro gamer recently quit Call of Duty Warzone.
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Read our complete guide to Call of Duty 2021.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
