Blizzard Entertainment has announced in an official statement that they will now increase it’s penalties for Overwatch in order to relieve poor behavior and toxicity within the community. Starting today the penalties will be much more aggressive, although the developer did not go into detail on how these new punishments will work. It is presumed that the new penalties will be mostly the same but longer and more immediate than before.
Whatever the case, they did make it clear that they will be much harsher than the previous ones. The developer also promises to include “scaling competitive season bans” and punishments within the next few months for those for anyone who takes advantage of the in game reporting feature.
“We believe that our in-game reporting and player penalty system is one of our most important features, and it’s something we want to invest in significantly over the next year. To this end, effective immediately, we will be issuing increased penalties to players in response to verified reports of bad behavior,” the statement reads.
“In Overwatch, that means anything from abusive chat, harassment, in-game spam, match inactivity (being intentionally AFK), and grieving. If you see someone engaging in any of these types of behaviors, report them. Players in violation will be silenced, suspended, or even banned from the game as a result.”
Also, in the official statement Blizzard said that they are committed to bringing a reporting system to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It looks like the developers are looking to stay true to Blizzard’s core value “Play nice; play fair.”