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Ubisoft is cracking down on "Toxic Players" in the game "Rainbow Six: Siege". I was somewhat surprised to see that they hadn't implemented a mute option to begin with as well.
Players will also soon have the ability to mute either or both of the text and voice chat for other players in their matches, giving more "direct control over communication channels."
I left the world of FPS Multiplayer games nearly 10 years ago, because of the toxic environment. Then again, that may have mostly just been staying away from certain games (Call of Duty) that appealed to the demographic (10 year old kids who can more or less say whatever they feel like) I didn't want to associate with. It's one thing to have the occasional being "cursed at" by a teenager / adult, because something went belly up for them. It's another to have a string of profanity that you've never heard the like being uttered by a 10 year old kid as a standard part of the game.
Apparently their parents don't know where they are / what they're doing, don't believe in parenting, don't think that verbal abuse is a thing, or some various mixture thereof. I'm not generally in favor of censorship, but at some point someone needs to step-in. At one point that was the parents, but that doesn't seem to be happening nearly as much as it used to.
The core of the changes centers around players using "racial or homophobic slurs, or hate speech," defined by the game's Code of Conduct as language that's "illegal, dangerous, threatening, abusive, obscene, vulgar, defamatory, hateful, racist, sexist, ethically offensive, or constituting harassment."
TL;DR
Game company banning toxic players. It's about time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @01:39PM (8 children)
Talking about toxic players, but they are only interested in censorship. If they really wanted to get rid of toxic players, they should start with the ones who keep shooting people.
(Score: 5, Informative) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday April 12 2018, @01:56PM (7 children)
Censorship? Bullshit. Censorship is government interference in free speech in the public domain.
This isn't a government program, and video game chat isn't public domain. You let me know when Ubisoft partners with the Department of Homeland Security to block people from talking on street corners.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by theluggage on Thursday April 12 2018, @02:35PM (4 children)
Aren't multiplayer video games and other social media the "street corners" of the 21st century?
I totally get the suspicion of Government... what I don't get is the idea that while government is inherently malign, private industry (although far less accountable than government) is Peace, Motherhood and Apple Pie and doesn't have any power to abuse. Presumably, if they do, the Invisible Hand of the market will come and fix things...
Meanwhile, are you sure that this new eagerness by firms like Ubisoft to clean up their act isn't influenced by the threat of government censorship (or, at least, the sort of CEOs fun day out in DC that Mr Zuckerberg recently enjoyed) if they don't? I mean, certain politicians would have us believe that school shootings are all down to video games (rather than kids having access to assault rifles) and that everything from stabbings in London to cynical dog-whistle blowers winning elections is because social media.
Must say though, I did like the good old days when a good offline, single-player experience was a game-design priority and what you did in Quake stayed in Quake, or at least stayed between a couple of actual friends who'd lugged their PCs round to your place.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @05:19PM
That is quite a stretch. FB is under scrutiny for violating public trust and privacy, this in no way compares to bad language in games. I can see the tenuous connection, but gaming companies have been implementing such measures for a very long time because it is good PR. The only true connection I can imagine is that Ubisoft noticed the growing trend for tech companies to get in trouble, the Wild West of software is gone. So what do they do? Listen to their users and improve their platform. So more of preemptive measures to avoid a bad news article from a journalist who goes "undercover" and records such player harassment. No company wants their name in the same article with the phrases the worst players use.
All that said, I also would like a return to more private game play. Single player and private servers. I recommend Subnautica as a great single player and pretty novel game experience.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 12 2018, @05:46PM (1 child)
Aren't multiplayer video games and other social media the "street corners" of the 21st century?
Not if they're hosted on private servers...
Or should I not be allowed to impose my own rules on my own hardware?
(Score: 2) by theluggage on Friday April 13 2018, @11:40AM
Well, there's "private" as in your bedroom and then there's "private" as in a shopping mall car park... The whole Internet is "private" in the second sense (yes, somebody owns the servers and wires carrying your TOR traffic). If the owners of the infrastructure all decide that they're going to "censor" - whether its due to pressure-short-of-legislation from the government, pressure from the so-called "moral majority", fear of lawsuits for cyberbullying etc. (which are expensive and bad publicity even if they're thrown out of court), complying with overseas laws because you want their money, or just because they've decided that the kids market is profitable... then there won't be any street corners left.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday April 12 2018, @06:44PM
I'm not a free market fan. I expect Ubisoft to do lots of things gamers don't like when they think the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. I just think it's misleading or at best uninformed to label those acts as censorship.
I think a comparison between multiplayer games and social media on one side and street corners doesn't work because in the digital world you have infinite street corners. Ubisoft or Facebook or Soylentnews don't have to allow any particular topic - if they ban Antifa or KKK topics, those groups can communicate elsewhere or create their own dedicated discussion site.
I suppose it's possible Ubisoft leaders were motivated by the current attention to social media, but I suspect it's just business sense. I'm sure there is a demographic of multiplayer customers that love to scream and insult and troll other players, and Ubisoft makes some profit by catering to what they want. "I was going to play this Bioware game, but in this Ubisoft game I can scream insults non-stop at real human beings. I'll go with Ubisoft." But I'm also sure there's a larger demographic of multiplayer customers that would prefer the ability to mute, ban, or otherwise not deal with people who prefer that play style. "That's the fifth round today with some ten year old calling me a pig-fucker when I killed him. It's getting old, I'm going to go play PvZ: GW2." Ubisoft probably did a cost-benefit analysis and realized they were losing more money catering to the jerks than they were gaining by being a jerk paradise, so they're tweaking the game.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 12 2018, @07:15PM (1 child)
Bullshit. [wikipedia.org] The term "censorship" has been used to describe corporate suppression of free speech for well over a decade, including by organizations such as the EFF. You might want to update your understanding of the term, because there are multiple ways of using it.
Corporate censorship doesn't violate the first amendment, but that doesn't mean it isn't censorship. Your comment is not informative; it's just incorrect.
(Score: 2) by bobthecimmerian on Friday April 13 2018, @06:09PM
Interesting. I honestly wasn't aware of the term being used in that context.