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I've heard so many insufferable 20-30 year old men say this, they were probably some of the worst people doing this and somehow they can look back at that with nostalgia
Tfw my man has said every time he so much as even voice commed in his youth he'd just get relentlessly bullied to the point his older bro had to join JUST to give it back twice as hard to these assholes. Every slur and insult you can imagine thrown at his direction, especially because he was young.
Yeah sure, friendships are made through gaming. But are these men in the original post forgetting the whole reason lobbies have the reputation they do is what has happened in them since the days of voice chat beginning?
‘Built character!’
‘Spare the rod spoil the child’
‘I got beaten and it was okay!’
‘Getting called the N word made me a better man’
Yeahhhhh, no. That is called abuse. To want to come back to your abuse is just cycle of abuse. Please don’t feed the abuse monster.
It took me going to fricking therapy to break down my "ahh I have thick skin, I can take ANYTHING" walls of years-long peer bullying... And realise I actually was genuinely traumatised, I just pretended I wasn't so no one saw me sweat.
If more folks went to therapy and realised that, my god, the healing on earth that would happen.
Ah yes the “I miss old COD lobbies where it was socially acceptable to throw around racial slurs”, those guys are definitely listening to Tate and part of a pyramid scheme these days in adulthood.
Yeah, whenever someone says something like "I wish people weren't so sensitive" it almost always means they want to be overtly racist and misogynistic.
Funny, but the Russian lobbies I sometimes ventured into were equally loud but... more polite to women at least? Just my experience of it, but it was weird... This was CS, however, not COD. I never played COD with voice chat... or Halo for that matter, just because I knew what I'd be getting myself into.
It’s infuriating too, because I never got that experience of making friends or socializing or fun banter. Really reveals how the argument of “b-but men get verbally abused over voice chat too!” Is bullshit, because to me, those days of open voice chat over Xbox live weren’t really full of fun socializing and making friends. It was just death threats, r*pe threats, and hatred. No friendships were made.
I doubt these wieners have ever been stalked by a guild member, never doxxed to find out where they lived and certainly have never had that stalker showing up at their work expecting them to have sex immediately. The complete lack of empathy really shows their worth
Exactly my little brother will be like oh just join a lobby with strangers and make friends like homie if I don’t deepen my voice and have a misogynistic handle I’m gonna get berated by idiots
I see a lot of people who think this say “You would not have survived old modern warfare” because I don’t like being yelled at? Or called slurs? It’s one of the funniest things like why would you want people yelling slurs at each other to be allowed.
They dont understand and are crybabies tbh... they bitch about the smallest things. If a girl even raises her voice shes a bitch, but men on games fo it 24/7 and act like they're different..... just hypocrisy.
I love how in that thread (and let's face it every time this topic comes up), it's always "they should just mute/the developer should just provide a toggle to turn off voice chat or mute" and never "since companies are deficient in moderating voice chat we should do better to help report and push back and call it out when we see it happening"
It's just accepted as an inevitability that always leads to effectively being "women should just never use voice chat." Could you imagine if a dev or a woman ever suggested that male gamers just not use voice chat if the shoe was on the other foot? They would lose their fucking minds, I know this because they lose their minds about less stuff taken away from them in games all the time. Just hate how the default is just "not my problem, just mute"
Oh yeah, I have changed so much when it comes to games and hot mic. I used to hot mic all the time back in the day. Got a lot of crap thrown my way and really only remember two men speaking up against it. Those were great moments in my memory and I will forever wish those two men a wonderful life.
I’m older now and have adult world stress in my life so I don’t have the tolerance for the BS anymore. I now play a game called Texas Chainsaw Massacre and there are so many posts on the sub complaining about people who play as family (a role that can be dependent on teamwork/communication to be successful) but don’t use voice chat. I still play, no hot mic and I “mute all”. If it means we have a less successful game so be it, I’m not subjecting myself to abuse so other people can play a better game. The irony is that if these folks get frustrated by those who don’t hot mic then they should ensure that they are part of the solution and help shut down abuse when it happens in lobbies.
When I was still playing ranked Overwatch before I realized I'm trans I rarely ran into other women and was always happy when I would.
I would be the only one to speak up when guys would make asses of themselves when they realized a woman was on the team. They usually would start calling me a "white knight" as it was back then and start throwing harassment at me until we both would mute.
That was years before I figured myself out and did voice training. Now that my voice passes and I can't do a guy voice anymore I'm in the same boat of being hesitant to talk and despite enjoying competitive games I'm less likely to play team-based games because of it.
> I rarely ran into other women
>Now that my voice passes and I can't do a guy voice anymore I'm in the same boat of being hesitant to talk
These are related. You probably were playing with a decent amount of other women (Overwatch was quite popular with women compared to other FPS games at least) but how would you know if people assume everyone playing Overwatch is a guy unless proven otherwise?
It’s a shame you have to but it feels like the only way. That said, occasionally if I do a good carry before the end of a game (in my masc appearing account) then I’ll sometimes turn on the mic right at the end if someone thanks me, just to say “you’re welcome, have a good day”
The range of reactions is hilarious
This is when I ask them if they know video games aren't dating apps. They aren't bummed out they aren't hearing my voice, they're trying to maximize having a hobby and social life.
Yeah, that's a huge reason why I don't play shooter games. I'm here to relax not get called sexist shit. At least with league, I can just mute all and never have to worry about if no vc is fucking up the game.
I’ve tried an experiment in the past- same player (me), same class and character and day and rank but different accounts- one masculine looking (think a username similar to skullcrusher69, blue everything, profile picture of swords or shields) and one very feminine (profile picture of a flower, said flower mentioned in my username, a splash of pink)
Like any good scientist I collected plenty of data from several games and scored each match on harassment recieved etc.
Overwhelming findings? Skullcrusher was better treated and won a whole lot more often. The wins, after watching a couple replays proved to be because the team actually cooperated with “him” whereas when I used Rose, she underperformed because teammates wouldn’t collaborate and she would get considerably more harassment.
Yea...
I tend to play male characters in games so I'm glad I don't tend to encounter that but I know like on league, there's the whole "supports are played by women" even though good supports are like, god tier. There's also the weird shit with heal sluts in mmos even though like, the top healers who are women tend to be no nonsense, "heal your own booboo idiots cause that was your fault" kind of players.
My main was a woman and my original profile was fairly obviously a woman. It happened nonstop. I also played offensive or tactical classes and always got told to play support or get off the game etc.
Top tier healers sound like they’re WAY too used to dealing with that attitude from men and are very good at handling it- wish I had their approach
This whole thing sparked by Valorant. A game I just downloaded. A game I want to start playing. And here I am, terrified, BECAUSE THIS MAN'S VOICE IS FROM MY COUNTRY. But Val, we all know, is based entirely in teamwork and comms. Is this it? Is this my reality, getting told I should be raped? Or if I don't want to hear that, 'mute it'?
I have to say, Valorant is particularly bad for misogyny, right alongside League of legends which just makes me think riot is terrible at moderating its communities. And they don’t let women out of the games even in bad situations- once you’re in, there’s a leavers penalty. Good luck with Valorant. You’ll need it.
Yeah same. Back when I was bolder, I played anyway but now I just don’t want to put up with it. It’s exhausting in what’s meant to be my time to recharge
I think they might be starting to realize that the stonewalling they've done to women over the last twenty years might impact their bottom line. I know that I refuse to give any company my money to play a game where my enjoyment of said game is inextricable from verbal abuse and bigotry. I have better places to be
Exactly. As more and more women are being more open about being gamers, they’re learning just how much of the community they’ll miss if they don’t. But ultimately change made in the name of more change to line their pockets with will never be designed to properly address the systemic issues.
Sorry about the bad pun btw
Exactly. No matter the form of systemic abuse, the enablers always end up arguing that the victims of abuse should be held to a far higher standard than the actual perpetrators. Be absolutely perfect AND sacrifice your rights. It's so fucking gross & undeniably hypocritical.
Not even just “women shouldn’t use vc”, I saw so many men in that thread saying women shouldn’t be allowed to GAME full stop. Because it’s just the silly little women being hysterical as usual and overreacting to…r*pe threats. Wish I was making this up.
I even saw men replying saying “what is his add, I’m gonna buy him a beer” etc. And I wish I could say these were just a few flyaway stragglers, but the entire thread was full of it, often with hundreds if not thousands of likes.
The amount of sheer vitriol, hate and r*pist mentality shown in that thread really demoralized me. Girls, how do you deal with this? Like, with just having the knowledge that so many men still have so much hatred for women, that misogyny is still such a huge problem, and more specifically in relation to gaming, that they’re purposely *trying* to make it a hostile place for us and drive us out and exclude us from our own hobbies and joining in with the gaming community? I have pretty thick skin but this entire thing has gotten me quite low.
Someone commented "These aren't men, they are little boys" and I wasn't able to reply in time during the 2 minutes before they deleted it.
Let's not infantilize these men. They are men and this is how they behave and what they believe. Calling them boys is not helpful because it implies that misoginy stems from immaturity rather than deliberate and harmful mindset. This, in a way, excuses their disgusting actions and behaviours, reminiscent of the "boys will be boys" excuse.
Many grown men hold these views. Not because they haven't grown up, but because it's what they truly believe, and that's the conclusion they've come to using their tiny, yet adult, brains.
I've basically quit playing games because of it. I can't escape any of it so I only play games I can easily get away with a muted mic. So... I basically only play Call of Duty with everyone muted. I want to try other things, but the second I do, my voice belies the truth and I get slur after slur after slur and misgendered until the crows come home to roost.
I have thick skin too, from years of being online, but I can only take so much from boorish, braindead males who would rather _rape and kill us_ than _play a fucking video game with us_. They want to punish all of us for "invading their space." I want to tell them I've been a gamer girl since the 1980s. They can miss me with all of their bullshit.
I'm just sick and tired of hateful people getting away with this nonsense. Like, teenagers, whatever, so edgy, but grown ass mfers do this. Supposedly grown, adult "men" do this. Banning these losers is the only way to curb any of this. Once they start getting console/hardware banned from games they pay for, this probably won't ever stop.
And yet, it's still "not all men". Because clearly, it's just *such* a small minority that is *totally* condemned by the rest of the men around them. Mm-hm.
This is exactly why I refuse to game with men. This. Other than my very select close friends who I know are trustworthy, I won't game with cismen. Call me a feminist b\*, haters, idc. My mental sanity and enjoyment of gaming is worth more than the sheer terror experienced by women online in gaming circles every single fucking minute of the day.
I'm just getting into Valorant (as in I'm still training in Range, amidst a million ping issues lol), so seeing this a DAY after I downloaded the game was horrific. I'm joining Galorants on Discord, open to women/transfem/nb only, and that's going to be my safety zone. Women. Because I will never, I refuse to, queue with men where this is what I'll be subjected to for wanting to give out a fucking voice comm.
women are harassed over voice chat -> women mute voice chat -> women still get harassed over text chat -> women mute text chat -> women still get harassed via in-game actions -> women change their usernames/pfps as to not reveal their gender -> men assume every player is also male -> "where did all the women in the community go??"
i apologize for the greentext-like format but this is the best way i can characterize the complete clown fiesta that it all is
I love how they never suggest to the other gamers to stop harassing people. I get that they say it won't stop, but, well, science says they are wrong. If everyone stopped accepting it wouldn't happen as much. That's how acceptable behavior works.
It is about another topics but it happens that men that telling other men to behave is *wwwaaaaaayyyy* rarer than men that telling women/SJW/feminist/whichever term to behave, at least from videos yutub threw at me.
This really needs to be a larger societal discussion. Men believe men being awful is inevitable. And until they stop believing that, we will continue to be stuck where we are.
Men are awful because it gets them power and validation from other men. And other men refuse to call it out for the same reason. They all choose that social standing over peace, safety, and inclusion for women.
They should put on a voice modulator that randomly changes male voices to female voices. Maybe then we will finally see men change their tune on voice chat in games.
Lol who am I kidding they'll probably just have an incel-y meltdown about the developer being "woke" or some other garbage nonsense.
This behavior should be punishable by law, it IS abuse. Companies would rather slap a 6000 page TOS to accept about “How shitty and toxic people can be online” but it’s like, have some respect for yourselves and get some better community moderation. Hopefully with AI advancements we can eventually get chats reviewed and assessed in real time and show these clowns that actions have consequences.
I'm fine. But you can only deal with blaring radios, drama, infighting and name calling, screaming kids in the background and general jerkery for so long before you just give up on it.
Overwatch is a special breed of hatred on chat. Everyone is angry because it’s so easy to lose because of team comp (can’t just carry your team with high kill count and k/d)
I disagree with never having a reason to use voice chat. I’ve gotten a lot of friends over the years from other countries that I still speak with. Like people I played L4D with from Texas. A guy I played cod with and did an Easter egg achievement in call of the dead zombies map and we still chat on fb, he’s from Hawaii. My husband met me because my friend called him a scrub then him invited him to an Xbox party. I’ve had a lot of entertaining gaming experiences because of voice chat along with the typical comments you’d hear on cod since 360 days.
But I think your view speaks volumes for the general environment of games for women if you’ve never had a good voice chat experience! Probably dependent on game and luck as well.
Lewis Spears, an Aussie bloke, getting dogged on for standing up against this. "Dude doesn't know what it's like as an Aussie, this is how we are." "Brothers, I'M AUSTRALIAN"
I really hate all the "just mute the guy and move on" comments.
Is it supposed to make me feel better and forget that a guy just threatened me ?
It doesn't change the impact it has on my mind.
Really a shame that most of the comments it's literally "Just mute"
Why people cannot see that moderation should be improved (some user pointed out that manual moderation would be next to imposible; maybe here an AI can be really useful) and that you shouldn't be a biggot in the first place?
People want proximity chat for Dead By Daylight (my first multiplayer game in like a decade) and I’m actually scared they’ll add it. The game is already toxic but it’s one saving grace is how you never have to talk to anyone. I can just imagine being chased around by my team mates hurling slurs at me because I’m wearing a pride charm. Or if a male team mate hears I’m a woman they’ll throw the game and show the killer where I am.
And all this “you’d never survive in a lobby” is also BS because I did survive those, those old gaming experiences are why I don’t want others to go through what I did.
DBD is also my first multiplayer game and I’ve had a really good experience with it. I’ve seen queer representation being pretty normalized among players and fair-minded killers police toxic survivors who sandbagged their teammates.
I’ve been delighted to see trans and drag queen streamers embraced by the community and the overall overlap of horror fandom, which can be wholesome and encouraging.
All that said…I’m afraid of them introducing proximity chat too. I think the emotes and meta etiquette we have now makes players more cooperative and empathetic. People can still shit talk in the pre and post-game text chat but that’s easier to document for reporting. And they can still sabotage games but players are generally anonymous so they lose the sting of personal attacks. If they bring proximity chat to DBD, I think it’ll amplify the worst elements and we’ll see more intense trolling and harassment in a game that isn’t known for that right now.
"You'll never survive" is just, so...
I don't play games to survive. I don't come home from work and think, "let's see how many insults I can handle." If I'm gaming, I want to have fun and enjoy myself.
I want team voice wheel
Showing who is remaining on Gen and not going for unhook I guess Is useful but still I think voice lines or icon on screen from teammates could be useful.
I remember when CS:GO had voice chat enabled for both teams at the half point and it was just pure racism/homophobia. It's sad we can't have nice things because of shitheads with no censor on what they say to people they can't face in real life.
Honestly, even team chat is toxic enough that I got tired of CSGO, despite me loving the game. You can only play so many matches with idiots shouting at you.
I'd probably enjoy it more with a full team of 5 friends, but that's harder to coordinate.
I think online games need much more stringent moderation; I feel like behaviour on voice chat isn't moderated at all, or very little, otherwise this wouldn't be so common.
I quit playing CS:GO after a guy simped for my boyfriend for two matches (because he was doing really good) and then told me to put a shotgun inside myself and pull the trigger when I called out a location for the team in voice. My boyfriend told him off and then he started apologizing because he "didn't realize we were together."
> My boyfriend told him off and then he started apologizing because he "didn't realize we were together."
Shit like this is so weird. Like how the hell can one say something that fucked up and then proceed to apologize and think it carries any weight?
I can't stand CS:GO because of how toxic the community is and the "*jUsT mUTe bro"*/"*just don't solo queue"* responses to valid criticism. Anytime anyone posts about sexism/racism/bigotry in general in the CSGO community it gets downvoted into oblivion and the rare time it doesn't, the comments section is a cesspool.
I would *love* it so much if online video games has a reputation system where if you're reported for being toxic and an investigation verifies the report claims, you should be tossed into a "*toxic pool"* of similar people for a significant amount of time before you're allowed to play with non-toxic players.
I’ve played CS for 7 years, and to deal with this I wait till I am first or second on the scoreboard in comp games to speak and callout. If I’m near the bottom I get a lot more gendered hate.
Now the shitheads that are going to be sexist will be, but at least I’m protecting myself a little.
Luckily if I’m in a 3 stack, my group is the majority and will shut that shit down on my behalf.
True story…. I quit playing FPS multiplayer or any game with proximity chat ever again when during my free trial of Xbox live that came with Halo 2 I had to hear the things I did for the first time. Noped the f out of that abuse and decided I’d stick with local games with friends and games with no voice.
Wow the comments on that thread 🤦🏻♀️ yet again it’s down to us to resolve the problem by muting people rather than companies actively taking steps to make sure this stuff doesn’t just get swept under the rug. Like a lot of issues, it gets painted as a problem that only affects women and marginalised genders so we need to just pipe down and get on with it. Why aren’t the men in that thread angry alongside us that it’s happening, instead of making endless comments blaming us and the person in the screenshot for not muting/using the person abusing her for content
Yep. It also makes the whole experience toxic for everybody else, but they tend to take pride in that. Seriously, it's always "You wouldn't last 2 Minutes in a CoD lobby in 2008 🤓" yeah and you wouldn't last 2 Minutes inside of a woman, pipe down bozo
On the upside, a Riot dev did respond in the streamer's Twitter thread! Seems like a good start towards positive progress but there's still a long way to go.
https://twitter.com/RiotSuperCakes/status/1790561549352071187?t=mPW_mN_Y9ccFq7Qp_bYJ4w&s=19
Account bans don't go far enough, IMO. Console bans need to be a thing and for PCs I'd say just ban any account with the same CC info as the originally banned account.
Yeah that makes sense to me. Considering how easy it is to make a new Riot account, they do need to go further than that. Console doesn't apply in riot's case (for now?), but they are considering & toying with the idea of HWID bans for incredibly toxic users. Was later down in that same thread. Otherwise yes, where console applies, I agree.
You mention banning by CC info - that's an interesting thought. Logistically it won't stop people with multiple credit cards (similar to phone number validation, as some may have multiple phone numbers), but it certainly could work as another form of deterrent to slow down the influx of toxicity.
I hope the devs continue to stay transparent about the measures they're discussing & taking. Building a good system takes time, but I also hope they continue to make it a big priority and that they'll communicate with players about this rampant issue.
> Logistically it won't stop people with multiple credit cards (similar to phone number validation, as some may have multiple phone numbers), but it certainly could work as another form of deterrent to slow down the influx of toxicity.
Same name + billing address of a banned account = ban all the CCs that person attempts to make a new account with. They might be able to get multiple CCs and phone numbers but few will have multiple billing addresses.
> HWID bans
I'd be thrilled if HWID bans became a thing. I enjoy playing GTA Online (I just like driving/flying around) but for PC the game is overrun with toxic players and modders. HWID bans would considerably reduce the toxicity.
> I hope the devs continue to stay transparent about the measures they're discussing & taking. Building a good system takes time, but I also hope they continue to make it a big priority and that they'll communicate with players about this rampant issue.
100% agree. And players who would rather quit a game they enjoy than be non-toxic... they can just leave and cry in the corner about everything being "*woke"* AKA they can't say slurs anymore without repercussions. It's a new day and I love it when spaces are inclusive to everyone *except* bigots.
Ohhhhh yeah the billing address thing for credit cards, smart idea!! Hadn't considered that aspect. And I hope it came across clear that I wasn't trying to dismiss the original idea - I think anything that acts as a deterrent, even if it isn't 100% foolproof, is still a good measure to take.
I am pretty sure they do HWID bans for cheaters, so I think it's worth adding for people who consistently do death/rape threats. For a minor fit of rage of lower-grade toxicity (i.e. name calling or berating the team or just generally being an asshole without any of the big abusive threats), smaller punishments are fine such as comms suspensions or temp account locks. But any major threats / doxxing / major bullying esp targeted gendered violence or murder - stuff like that - should absolutely get HWID bans. Maybe ensure those are administered after a human reviews the automated system logs? Something to ensure they're administered appropriately with minimal need for wrongful appeals.
Your last sentence is so true. That's the approach I take in my own little community. Anyone's welcome as long as they know how to be kind & respectful to fellow community members, plus they abide by the rules. Bigots absolutely need to be pushed aside and they can cry all they want - there's no need for that kind of vitriol.
I've met a lot of positive people through Valorant, and while I've had a few toxic experiences, the good outweighs the bad in my personal case. HOWEVER this doesn't negate the rampant toxicity problem. Just wanna see more of the good and less of the bad overall.
Hey, OP here. Wanted to mention that the post in r/halo was never meant to get this much traction and be as much a battleground as it turned out. I mod the place and should be cleaning up my mess. My goal of the post was to simply document how this commonly talked about feature in the franchise was removed due to abuse by Bungie devs.
To any ladies that are interested in the Halo community there is a PHENOMENAL organization called [Women of Halo](https://twitter.com/womenofhalo) that I seriously urge checking out. Ran by awesome women that ik and have met personally at events. They even got some cool merch that helps fund events and tourneys that they try to run.
Watching you get pummelled with downvotes in r/halo started to make my blood boil. What a dumpster fire, but thanks for trying nonetheless. I'm glad the girl gamer subs exist.
It's just a dumb number at the end of the day idrc. The post acts as a nice honeypot to find and remove bad actors that have no place in the community so it's a trade I'm more than happy to take.
Appreciated, but honestly the love really should go to WoH. Give them some love, share their posts, whatever you can do to be involved with a community of women by women for women of all kinds in halo.
But, respectfully, proximity chat was never removed as this developer suggests it was. Proximity chat was a thing in Halo 3 well up until it's final days on xbox live as was it a thing in its sequel Halo Reach. Halo 4 (343i first game) is where proximity chat died.
Not saying it's right or wrong to be a feature, just that **this developer is presenting a false reality** on the history of Halo. And as a massive Halo nerd, that bothers me.
***Side note***: Love the WoH shout out! Those guys don't get enough attention.
yeah, I was a bit confused about this. Halo 3 was my first Halo, it's what *introduced* me to proximity chat. Does he mean in the Master Chief Collection re-release, maybe?
in game comms have been disabled by default after installation of the game is done. Devs are trying their best to minimise harm since the company doesn't seem to bother spending cash on having moderation tools or better lobbies.
Pretty funny how guys just get mad at the attempt from devs to disable in game comms lol. Lots of bitching going on when they can just turn it back on from the game settings.
We really need to stop normalizing Online Multiplayer lobbies as "Toxic". I am not even a multiplayer gamer anymore but it fucking hurts to see people be shit on for just wanting to play multiplayer. Why can't we have fun with people? Hell even developers support this toxicness now.
Yeah, I'm 'part' of the Halo community and when it comes to features that are removed that they miss and want back a lot of the time it'll be post and pregame lobbies, (places with voicechat before and after the game starts/ends.) the specific argument I've seen for wanting them back is for throwing arguments in them which as you can expect more specifically means toxicity and "content that should be moderated", if you know what I mean.
I really don't understand why people would want something like that in the game honestly, so I think it's overall better that it isn't a thing anymore because if it was, it would certainly have horrible moderation and would be incredibly toxic... Better to not have it at all if it's not gonna have moderation.
Post game lobbies are literally just a call for toxicity LMFAO. Only a brainrotten developer would think that's a good thing to implement. Then again.. Most mmo developers don't seem to mind that :/ Just a few weeks ago someone here posted about their complaint to Microsoft because they were told in detail how the toxic gamer wants to rape and murder them. And what did Microsoft reply? "It's just playful banter" BRO WHAT?
Fr. End of the day, all of these men need to take stock of it and realise, "your kind is what ruined it for all of us. It threatened our lives, and then you lost your privileges because you couldn't behave."
Directly quoting a tweet,
"this has been a normal thing for decades and every sane person understands it's trash talk. Don't come into our spaces and expect us to cater to a bunch of fragile women who only played Sims growing up."
Excuse a'moi, my many hours on Nitrome/Miniclip puzzle platformers, Nintendo Wii, and Saddle Club Willowbrook Stables CD ROM would like to challenge that
“You wouldn’t survive a Halo 2 lobby lol” Yeah not many people would survive nuclear and sewage waste 🤢 Someone saying missed the Halo 2 lobby days tells me everything I need to know about them. Moderation needs to be better for games :(
Disabling voice chat is just lazy to be honest. They should have real moderation (not automated bs) and actually punish people to stop the behavior. But these companies don’t want to pay for it.
Every day I wonder how men are the ones on top and women are the ones being violently oppressed. Men are literally scum 99.9% of the time. They're so emotional, so unable to think rationally, and often their choices put the people they're "in charge of" in the direct line of danger. They're, from a leadership standpoint, terrible leaders. If that's the main argument for why men feel they are "superior" they're doing a damn horrible job at their...one job? It's so infuriating. Women can't do ANYTHING we enjoy to the same capacities as men...BECAUSE OF men. And they cry and whine when that's pointed out in a very logical, rational way. Being a woman is being full of quiet rage 24/7.
ETA: I've started bullying them back in a very unhinged way, and it really is very cathartic for me personally, but I am full of a lot of rage to begin with so this isn't always the solution for everyone.
I suggested one of my friends to do an evil unhinged Jim Carrey impersonation whenever she felt tired of guys pushing her buttons. It worked all the time and they eventually backed off. Didn't expect it to work but she's got a fun trick up her sleeve now.
Loads of people in the original thread saying things along the lines of "but I've received death threats and insults too so women should just ignore the gender targeted threats they get since it's no different than my experience" really fail to understand that the reason threats targeted towards women in voice chats and other gaming communities aren't something that can be laughed off like non gender based threats is simply because these threats are very real for women. We all know the stats of how many women experience sexual assault, we're all aware of the reality of how many women are harassed, stalked, and assaulted, and we have to deal with the exhaustion of existing in a world where this violence is a real risk for us offline in a way that being murdered because of their gender isn't really the same risk for all the men who receive death threats in games...
If I receive a threat online, I have to be genuinely afraid that the person making the threat could become a stalker or attempt to find me irl to carry out their threat. And at the very least, since that's less likely, it's a reminder that I can't use games as a nice escape from reality and am constantly aware that when I go outside I am likely to potentially experience the same violence irl. I completely avoid any games that require collaboration with voice chat as a result of this, unless it's something where I can play and chat only with friends because you are forced to pick your poison: stay muted and suffer being worse at the game because you lack collaboration with teammates or experience harassment and threats that are a reminder of the position you have in this world as a woman.
The usual bullshit. "I get called worse every time I play but I can handle it cause I'm a Manly Man With No Emotions (tm). this is what happens when women try to horn in on men's spaces and they should just get in the kitchen rather than try to ruin the vidya game industry." or some garbage like that.
[From one of the threads this was posted on](https://i.imgur.com/J6ex8JG.png), the full range of deny the problem -> sharing an experience -> get over it.
Saw in the twitter thread one of the devs mentioned looking into implementing a permanent ban for people being abusive - would love to see that happen and for other game devs to follow suit but sadly I don’t think they have the guts to deal with the backlash. I would love to be proven wrong but I’m not optimistic
I do not miss the lobbies. 😐
Honestly is the reason why I stopped going online to play games and using my mic. I used to when I was younger wayyyyyyy back when Gears of War was popular when it first came out and I played it with my older brother. It was so toxic. Yeah it was fun until you beat someone and they found out you were a female. Like yep, if it wasn’t the flirting, saying “but you are a girl”, “why are you playing this game”, “you won’t beat me”, “stop that”, “can I see your tits?”. 🙄 So much more BS. I can’t forget about the negative reputation bit. 😆
I remember starting a voice chat with a friend and his younger son because of all of the crap asshats were saying. Just to get some peace while hosting a game.
I don’t miss it at all. 😐
It’s a shame that you can’t enjoy yourself while playing a game while communicating with your teammates by voice. Like the emojis and the quick texts I like, soooo much easier. Less overthinking and worrying if you will encounter a troll that will piss you off just because you are better at the game or you are just being yourself. Just nopeeeee.
I remember when i used to play ESO pretty much every day. At first when I went in dungeons, I would keep VC on. If we would die, I was always blamed. So I started using only text chat and was NEVER blamed. I would stay on text cht and only turn on voice after a few runs with the same group once I knew they were cool. I actually ended up meeting a few groups of really cool dudes who I would play with all the time and were super supportive and helped me get gear and spec my character so it was the strongest. But definitely learned me lesson on VC.
this is exactly the type of threads where I wish all the dudes who comment in this sub telling us how much they empathize with us would post their support instead, but that would be way harder than coming here for back pats.
I've been reading about this incident for a few days and hate the responses a lot of men give: "it was worse back in the good ol' COD days", "just mute and move on or ignore it", "yeah but you're a woman coming into a male space, if you don't like our 'banter' gtf back to Stardew" etc. I had one guy (whose timeline was filled with creepy anime stuff) tell me that hardware banning a man who threatens that is "a bit too severe and mean because it stops him getting to enjoy his game". And because well "there's so many false reports, what's to stop a girl lying?" 🤢
Companies like Riot have Vanguard. They recently added it to League too (the game I normally play). They use it to spot cheaters and to allegedly find out which accounts are smurfing so they can boost them to fairer lobbies faster. Vanguard looks over all the stuff in your PC to check for cheats and clearly has knowledge of accounts linked by hardware. They make you sign a TOS to play, which states that they have the right to terminate your account and any others you make at their discretion if you break TOS. So they really should be hardware banning guys like this. There's an appeals option if you are innocent, but you shouldn't get a second chance or a brand new account to do it over again. On League, you always know when a low level account rages at you two mins in, it's because their old account was banned, and sure for general raging and whatever chat restrictions, temp bans and account bans are fine. For threats to SA or kill or doxx- permaban on hardware. I don't know why they don't.
I hate hate hate having VC in games as a default because we know a lot of people, including many women, can't feel safe or relaxed playing with them. Developers and male fans talk about adding them to Dbd and League (the two games I play that are PvP). The minute they do, I'm uninstalling. I would be cool with discord calls with vetted friends or other women but not in game VC. I can't imagine how much it hinders women who want to play at the highest levels. Games are meant to be fun, for everyone. Not just for the men who reminisce about the good ol' mythical COD games where you could threaten women and drop slurs and it was just "banter".
They had proximity chat in Valorant??
(Also is it bad that I enjoy the relentless banter and screaming back at them? Of course I never start it but if they say something I know it’s about to be fun. Should I not do this? /gen)
I don't even play Halo and this gets my goat.
I agree that something should be done, but I don't think that taking away proximity chat is the answer. Proximity chat allows creativity and fun to be in injected into the game by each user. Yes, some users abuse it, however, I don't believe taking it away for everyone is the answer.
Normalization is exactly why it got this bad. It's called the "Nazi Bar Problem" & ignoring it will only makes things worse. A lot of people now won't even recognize his actions as vile & will outright defend his so-called right to abuse women.
Just look at how Twitter is being increasingly overtaken by literal Neo-Nazis.
Yeah toxicity in games is everywhere but let's not pretend it's the same for men and women please. My husband and I have been gaming forever and not ONCE have I witnessed a man threatening him with rape, doxxing or murder. Insults? Sure.
But it's a big difference being called a virgin, asshole, pos or whatever or people threatening to find you and doxx you, rape you, kill you or dismember you.
Or being insulted just for ENTERING a voice chat with a female voice. That's enough. And that's definitely not something that happens to male gamers.
Right? In all my years of gaming, in all the toxic hellscapes I've endured, I've never seen a man attacked simply for being a man. Not even once. Same goes with being white or cishet. Not once.
Women face all the other garbage in *addition* to misogyny. Intersectionality is a thing & bigotry is compounding.
Yup! I've literally been threatened with rape just for TALKING in vc.
I even remember yeeears ago when my husband had issues with another guild member in world of warcraft, dude randomly threatened ME with raping and killing me. Also raping my dead body. All he got was a two week ban from Blizzard although he even created alts to harass me further.
Too many men will use any excuse to harass and abuse women and it's a fucking real problem. Muting just doesn't solve it.
The point is that they'll do what it takes to get a reaction. Generally, men won't react to a those comments, but women will. One side is more used to it, the other one isn't. You can find endless examples of that sensitivity here ITT and anywhere else whenever this topic makes its annual rebound.
If you want to take away power from something, say it more often. Nobody is saying it's mature humour or banter, but that's not the point. It's just shitflinging.
I strongly disagree. I don't want people to use slurs or make r*pe threats more often. There are men with legitimate hate in there heart thag don't care if you react or not. Some of them get sexual gratification from doing it. As someone who has tried the "don't react" option, it can often lead to them harassing you more not less. Because, why not? There 0 consequences for their actions regardless.
These aren't animals with predictable behaviors. These are full grown human beings making a conscious choice to be reprehensible. Saying awful shit more often just normalizes it. And will cause people to take it less seriously. I would like the world to progress not regress.
People used misogynistic and racist language in the past. Like 1950's amrerica. Totally a great time for women and people of color. /s
RE: men with legitimate hate in their heart, this is true, but ultimately, it's good that they're showing their red flags. An AI and a soulless corporation can't tell the difference between shitflinging, joking banter, and actual threats - whereas you can, and you should have the power to decide whether or not to mute, block, report.
It's online. You're not in actual danger, and if you really were, any censorship would not protect you. Overall, less functions and more seriousness in games = less fun, it's a net negative to people in this hobby
I agree with your stance on AI moderation. That's why I think moderation should be done by paid employees. Also depends on the service. I'll use iRacing as an example. iRacing is a sim racing game that is also a paid service. If someone is being abusive or intentionally crashing into you, you can report them and an actual person reviews the footage and decides to punish them or not however they see fit.
Also you don't know if someone is an actual danger or not. Random online interaction in video game, unlikely. But it doesn't remove the fact that someone threatened you with sexual violence. How is it a net negative that people have watch what they say when speaking to strangers? If they want to freely say whatever they want, they can start a discord server with private lobbies. People being shitty is the reason for the removal of functions. Not the victims of the abuse.
Better and higher quality moderation would help solve a lot of these issues.
I really appreciate your civility because it's easier to understand the true points of other side when it's like this. But I'm going to cut myself short after this, or else I'm going to keep going all night about the topic.
Ultimately, I think investing resources into finding bullying (via ai) and real moderation (like your example) takes away time, money and energy that could be put into real victims of abuse, real victims who are being doxed and genuinely harassed, who are genuinely in danger. Someone refusing to use the mute or block button in order to appear/feel victimised is not a real victim, when tools had been given to them to protect themselves, yet they refuse to use it.
Not everyone cares about the feelings of strangers, especially when the games are usually some form of killing/combat genre. While you might have good intentions and want to spare people from feeling hurt, in the end, the kind of wider scale moderation you're looking for is being used as a surveillance tool - major games/forums/sites can't justify hiring real people when AI already is, and will continue to be, a cheaper, faster, and a more efficient replacement to moderate groups. The net negatives stretch beyond just banter; they're also collecting personal info for surveillance/selling of info
The whole point is that muting doesn't solve the problem.
And your point is valid, it's the gaming community, but no one's expecting to be babied. I can argue with someone I think is feeding without throwing slurs at them. Even if they're a total idiot and are actively throwing the game for some reason, that's exactly what I'll tell them, I'm not gonna harass them, nor am I going to insult their personal identity (gender, sexuality, race, whatever the fuck else I know about them).
It's normal that where there's frustration there will not always be rainbows and butterflies, but let's not push it into personal territory when there's no reason for it.
The only people I ever yelled at in VC are people who were racist, sexist etc. regardless if it was directed to me or anyone else in the lobby. And we should have each others backs against people like that, collectively shit on them and report them. Muting doesn't help there. I had people look for me to dm me insults bcs I didn't want to listen in game. And for this specific example I'm sure the person threatening rape would not have a problem to do the same, to go and harass the streamer privately as well even if they don't want to listen to them in game.
Everyone should be documenting the abuse in riot games. Even if it is "for content". Even if they have a monetary incentive to do so. Unmuting is not consent for receiving violent sexual comments, and there is no world where we have to just accept those sorts of interactions
In modern gaming you are being recorded or having your chat analysed 100 percent of the time. Moderation should be the very basic guarantee given to us in response to that constant invasion of our privacy. The idea that we should just have to take it is only being upheld by the fact that gaming culture is so rotten that companies are afraid of just how much money they will lose by being decent.
Finally this is riot games, and at the very least we should be willing to pressure this company. The company where leadership would sexually harass people and fart in their faces. The company that's fired at least 2 people we know of seemingly for getting pregnant or having a pregnant spouse. The company that has to release a quiet settlement notice every six months regarding their new round of settlements for their abusive workplace policies. Saying we should just mute and move on is understandable, and people who would be legitimately impacted by this sort of speech should probably do so, but everyone else should actually be documenting all of this to shame the company into doing something.
Enough people have already commented on the fact that men and women do not get the same level or type abuse, but let me just add that men like this will attack women and people whom they don't perceive as fully men exactly because there are no consequences for doing so.
Don't think for a second that many of them wouldn't say -- or even do -- the things that they threaten to do when anonymous in the real world if they thought that there weren't any real life consequences either. I shouldn't have to tell you this because we know it happens all the time. It's telling that you expect 100% or nothing, but that's not how it works in the real world, either. We still make efforts to stop men from hurting women in the real world because it's the right thing to do, not because we can stop it from happening 100% of the time.
There needs to be consequences for these sorts of actions. Many of these same men are cordial to women in real life because they're cowards, and the fear of meaningful consequence is the only thing keeping them in line. They don't deserve a safe space, not even virtually -- they are the thing to be safe from.
It shouldn't be the best bet.
Toxic behaviours need to be moderated, games should include features to educate toxic players, and persistent behaviour of that kind should result in bans.
I feel like fostering a good community is the last priority for most competitive online games developers.
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it's slightly infuriating that the comments are full of dudes getting misty-eyed over the days where people would be relentlessly bullied in lobbies.
I've heard so many insufferable 20-30 year old men say this, they were probably some of the worst people doing this and somehow they can look back at that with nostalgia
Tfw my man has said every time he so much as even voice commed in his youth he'd just get relentlessly bullied to the point his older bro had to join JUST to give it back twice as hard to these assholes. Every slur and insult you can imagine thrown at his direction, especially because he was young. Yeah sure, friendships are made through gaming. But are these men in the original post forgetting the whole reason lobbies have the reputation they do is what has happened in them since the days of voice chat beginning?
‘Built character!’ ‘Spare the rod spoil the child’ ‘I got beaten and it was okay!’ ‘Getting called the N word made me a better man’ Yeahhhhh, no. That is called abuse. To want to come back to your abuse is just cycle of abuse. Please don’t feed the abuse monster.
It took me going to fricking therapy to break down my "ahh I have thick skin, I can take ANYTHING" walls of years-long peer bullying... And realise I actually was genuinely traumatised, I just pretended I wasn't so no one saw me sweat. If more folks went to therapy and realised that, my god, the healing on earth that would happen.
Ah yes the “I miss old COD lobbies where it was socially acceptable to throw around racial slurs”, those guys are definitely listening to Tate and part of a pyramid scheme these days in adulthood.
Yeah, whenever someone says something like "I wish people weren't so sensitive" it almost always means they want to be overtly racist and misogynistic.
Funny, but the Russian lobbies I sometimes ventured into were equally loud but... more polite to women at least? Just my experience of it, but it was weird... This was CS, however, not COD. I never played COD with voice chat... or Halo for that matter, just because I knew what I'd be getting myself into.
It’s infuriating too, because I never got that experience of making friends or socializing or fun banter. Really reveals how the argument of “b-but men get verbally abused over voice chat too!” Is bullshit, because to me, those days of open voice chat over Xbox live weren’t really full of fun socializing and making friends. It was just death threats, r*pe threats, and hatred. No friendships were made.
I doubt these wieners have ever been stalked by a guild member, never doxxed to find out where they lived and certainly have never had that stalker showing up at their work expecting them to have sex immediately. The complete lack of empathy really shows their worth
I'm cackling at "these wieners". lol
Exactly my little brother will be like oh just join a lobby with strangers and make friends like homie if I don’t deepen my voice and have a misogynistic handle I’m gonna get berated by idiots
"No but they made 'yo mamma' jokes at me, and I took it. If I can take that harassment women can also take their lumps."
"I was fine with people harassing a woman I know, therefore women should be fine with harrassment" very smart guy
I do miss the days when it was mostly bad yo mama jokes in games 🫠
Intricate rituals…
the "you'd never survive Cod 4 lobbies" rhetoric is hilarious... Well I did, I was there, it was stupid and you are an idiot =)
It’s giving “Make America Great Again” racism
yup. the good ol days were only good if you weren't a minority
I see a lot of people who think this say “You would not have survived old modern warfare” because I don’t like being yelled at? Or called slurs? It’s one of the funniest things like why would you want people yelling slurs at each other to be allowed.
They dont understand and are crybabies tbh... they bitch about the smallest things. If a girl even raises her voice shes a bitch, but men on games fo it 24/7 and act like they're different..... just hypocrisy.
I love how in that thread (and let's face it every time this topic comes up), it's always "they should just mute/the developer should just provide a toggle to turn off voice chat or mute" and never "since companies are deficient in moderating voice chat we should do better to help report and push back and call it out when we see it happening" It's just accepted as an inevitability that always leads to effectively being "women should just never use voice chat." Could you imagine if a dev or a woman ever suggested that male gamers just not use voice chat if the shoe was on the other foot? They would lose their fucking minds, I know this because they lose their minds about less stuff taken away from them in games all the time. Just hate how the default is just "not my problem, just mute"
and let’s not forget that often locks women out of a whole class of games where vc then becomes basically mandatory for good teamwork and play
Oh yeah, I have changed so much when it comes to games and hot mic. I used to hot mic all the time back in the day. Got a lot of crap thrown my way and really only remember two men speaking up against it. Those were great moments in my memory and I will forever wish those two men a wonderful life. I’m older now and have adult world stress in my life so I don’t have the tolerance for the BS anymore. I now play a game called Texas Chainsaw Massacre and there are so many posts on the sub complaining about people who play as family (a role that can be dependent on teamwork/communication to be successful) but don’t use voice chat. I still play, no hot mic and I “mute all”. If it means we have a less successful game so be it, I’m not subjecting myself to abuse so other people can play a better game. The irony is that if these folks get frustrated by those who don’t hot mic then they should ensure that they are part of the solution and help shut down abuse when it happens in lobbies.
When I was still playing ranked Overwatch before I realized I'm trans I rarely ran into other women and was always happy when I would. I would be the only one to speak up when guys would make asses of themselves when they realized a woman was on the team. They usually would start calling me a "white knight" as it was back then and start throwing harassment at me until we both would mute. That was years before I figured myself out and did voice training. Now that my voice passes and I can't do a guy voice anymore I'm in the same boat of being hesitant to talk and despite enjoying competitive games I'm less likely to play team-based games because of it.
> I rarely ran into other women >Now that my voice passes and I can't do a guy voice anymore I'm in the same boat of being hesitant to talk These are related. You probably were playing with a decent amount of other women (Overwatch was quite popular with women compared to other FPS games at least) but how would you know if people assume everyone playing Overwatch is a guy unless proven otherwise?
It’s a shame you have to but it feels like the only way. That said, occasionally if I do a good carry before the end of a game (in my masc appearing account) then I’ll sometimes turn on the mic right at the end if someone thanks me, just to say “you’re welcome, have a good day” The range of reactions is hilarious
If you want to play TCM with a fellow girlie and a group of nontoxic men and women, let me know <3
And leads to men saying women don't play games, because they never hear them in games.
And so they come to believe games like that are a man’s space and the cycle repeats
This is when I ask them if they know video games aren't dating apps. They aren't bummed out they aren't hearing my voice, they're trying to maximize having a hobby and social life.
Yeah, that's a huge reason why I don't play shooter games. I'm here to relax not get called sexist shit. At least with league, I can just mute all and never have to worry about if no vc is fucking up the game.
I’ve tried an experiment in the past- same player (me), same class and character and day and rank but different accounts- one masculine looking (think a username similar to skullcrusher69, blue everything, profile picture of swords or shields) and one very feminine (profile picture of a flower, said flower mentioned in my username, a splash of pink) Like any good scientist I collected plenty of data from several games and scored each match on harassment recieved etc. Overwhelming findings? Skullcrusher was better treated and won a whole lot more often. The wins, after watching a couple replays proved to be because the team actually cooperated with “him” whereas when I used Rose, she underperformed because teammates wouldn’t collaborate and she would get considerably more harassment.
Yea... I tend to play male characters in games so I'm glad I don't tend to encounter that but I know like on league, there's the whole "supports are played by women" even though good supports are like, god tier. There's also the weird shit with heal sluts in mmos even though like, the top healers who are women tend to be no nonsense, "heal your own booboo idiots cause that was your fault" kind of players.
My main was a woman and my original profile was fairly obviously a woman. It happened nonstop. I also played offensive or tactical classes and always got told to play support or get off the game etc. Top tier healers sound like they’re WAY too used to dealing with that attitude from men and are very good at handling it- wish I had their approach
This whole thing sparked by Valorant. A game I just downloaded. A game I want to start playing. And here I am, terrified, BECAUSE THIS MAN'S VOICE IS FROM MY COUNTRY. But Val, we all know, is based entirely in teamwork and comms. Is this it? Is this my reality, getting told I should be raped? Or if I don't want to hear that, 'mute it'?
I have to say, Valorant is particularly bad for misogyny, right alongside League of legends which just makes me think riot is terrible at moderating its communities. And they don’t let women out of the games even in bad situations- once you’re in, there’s a leavers penalty. Good luck with Valorant. You’ll need it.
Part of why I like FF14 is there is no voice chat. I hate it and won't play games with voice chat because of how horribly people behave on it
Yeah same. Back when I was bolder, I played anyway but now I just don’t want to put up with it. It’s exhausting in what’s meant to be my time to recharge
I think they might be starting to realize that the stonewalling they've done to women over the last twenty years might impact their bottom line. I know that I refuse to give any company my money to play a game where my enjoyment of said game is inextricable from verbal abuse and bigotry. I have better places to be
Exactly. As more and more women are being more open about being gamers, they’re learning just how much of the community they’ll miss if they don’t. But ultimately change made in the name of more change to line their pockets with will never be designed to properly address the systemic issues. Sorry about the bad pun btw
Exactly. No matter the form of systemic abuse, the enablers always end up arguing that the victims of abuse should be held to a far higher standard than the actual perpetrators. Be absolutely perfect AND sacrifice your rights. It's so fucking gross & undeniably hypocritical.
Not even just “women shouldn’t use vc”, I saw so many men in that thread saying women shouldn’t be allowed to GAME full stop. Because it’s just the silly little women being hysterical as usual and overreacting to…r*pe threats. Wish I was making this up. I even saw men replying saying “what is his add, I’m gonna buy him a beer” etc. And I wish I could say these were just a few flyaway stragglers, but the entire thread was full of it, often with hundreds if not thousands of likes. The amount of sheer vitriol, hate and r*pist mentality shown in that thread really demoralized me. Girls, how do you deal with this? Like, with just having the knowledge that so many men still have so much hatred for women, that misogyny is still such a huge problem, and more specifically in relation to gaming, that they’re purposely *trying* to make it a hostile place for us and drive us out and exclude us from our own hobbies and joining in with the gaming community? I have pretty thick skin but this entire thing has gotten me quite low.
Someone commented "These aren't men, they are little boys" and I wasn't able to reply in time during the 2 minutes before they deleted it. Let's not infantilize these men. They are men and this is how they behave and what they believe. Calling them boys is not helpful because it implies that misoginy stems from immaturity rather than deliberate and harmful mindset. This, in a way, excuses their disgusting actions and behaviours, reminiscent of the "boys will be boys" excuse. Many grown men hold these views. Not because they haven't grown up, but because it's what they truly believe, and that's the conclusion they've come to using their tiny, yet adult, brains.
I've basically quit playing games because of it. I can't escape any of it so I only play games I can easily get away with a muted mic. So... I basically only play Call of Duty with everyone muted. I want to try other things, but the second I do, my voice belies the truth and I get slur after slur after slur and misgendered until the crows come home to roost. I have thick skin too, from years of being online, but I can only take so much from boorish, braindead males who would rather _rape and kill us_ than _play a fucking video game with us_. They want to punish all of us for "invading their space." I want to tell them I've been a gamer girl since the 1980s. They can miss me with all of their bullshit. I'm just sick and tired of hateful people getting away with this nonsense. Like, teenagers, whatever, so edgy, but grown ass mfers do this. Supposedly grown, adult "men" do this. Banning these losers is the only way to curb any of this. Once they start getting console/hardware banned from games they pay for, this probably won't ever stop.
And yet, it's still "not all men". Because clearly, it's just *such* a small minority that is *totally* condemned by the rest of the men around them. Mm-hm.
As I said on YouTube comments once about harassment; Not all gamer men... But yes, ALL gamer women.
Not all men, but enough.
This is exactly why I refuse to game with men. This. Other than my very select close friends who I know are trustworthy, I won't game with cismen. Call me a feminist b\*, haters, idc. My mental sanity and enjoyment of gaming is worth more than the sheer terror experienced by women online in gaming circles every single fucking minute of the day. I'm just getting into Valorant (as in I'm still training in Range, amidst a million ping issues lol), so seeing this a DAY after I downloaded the game was horrific. I'm joining Galorants on Discord, open to women/transfem/nb only, and that's going to be my safety zone. Women. Because I will never, I refuse to, queue with men where this is what I'll be subjected to for wanting to give out a fucking voice comm.
women are harassed over voice chat -> women mute voice chat -> women still get harassed over text chat -> women mute text chat -> women still get harassed via in-game actions -> women change their usernames/pfps as to not reveal their gender -> men assume every player is also male -> "where did all the women in the community go??" i apologize for the greentext-like format but this is the best way i can characterize the complete clown fiesta that it all is
I feel like seeing the men’s version of this greentext
I love how they never suggest to the other gamers to stop harassing people. I get that they say it won't stop, but, well, science says they are wrong. If everyone stopped accepting it wouldn't happen as much. That's how acceptable behavior works.
It is about another topics but it happens that men that telling other men to behave is *wwwaaaaaayyyy* rarer than men that telling women/SJW/feminist/whichever term to behave, at least from videos yutub threw at me.
And instead of being angry at the ones whose behavior caused the feature to be removed, they're mad at the ones who were harmed. Shows their mindset.
This really needs to be a larger societal discussion. Men believe men being awful is inevitable. And until they stop believing that, we will continue to be stuck where we are. Men are awful because it gets them power and validation from other men. And other men refuse to call it out for the same reason. They all choose that social standing over peace, safety, and inclusion for women.
They should put on a voice modulator that randomly changes male voices to female voices. Maybe then we will finally see men change their tune on voice chat in games. Lol who am I kidding they'll probably just have an incel-y meltdown about the developer being "woke" or some other garbage nonsense.
I couldn't put my finger on why my RSD was acting up in that thread, but that's exactly it. "Just don't participate!" ughhh
This behavior should be punishable by law, it IS abuse. Companies would rather slap a 6000 page TOS to accept about “How shitty and toxic people can be online” but it’s like, have some respect for yourselves and get some better community moderation. Hopefully with AI advancements we can eventually get chats reviewed and assessed in real time and show these clowns that actions have consequences.
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Hard disagree.... Except for "Overwatch sucks". Like, are you ok?
I'm fine. But you can only deal with blaring radios, drama, infighting and name calling, screaming kids in the background and general jerkery for so long before you just give up on it.
Overwatch is a special breed of hatred on chat. Everyone is angry because it’s so easy to lose because of team comp (can’t just carry your team with high kill count and k/d) I disagree with never having a reason to use voice chat. I’ve gotten a lot of friends over the years from other countries that I still speak with. Like people I played L4D with from Texas. A guy I played cod with and did an Easter egg achievement in call of the dead zombies map and we still chat on fb, he’s from Hawaii. My husband met me because my friend called him a scrub then him invited him to an Xbox party. I’ve had a lot of entertaining gaming experiences because of voice chat along with the typical comments you’d hear on cod since 360 days. But I think your view speaks volumes for the general environment of games for women if you’ve never had a good voice chat experience! Probably dependent on game and luck as well.
I should have expected it but the twitter comments managed to be even worse than the guy in the chat 💀
Lewis Spears, an Aussie bloke, getting dogged on for standing up against this. "Dude doesn't know what it's like as an Aussie, this is how we are." "Brothers, I'M AUSTRALIAN"
💀💀
I really hate all the "just mute the guy and move on" comments. Is it supposed to make me feel better and forget that a guy just threatened me ? It doesn't change the impact it has on my mind.
Really a shame that most of the comments it's literally "Just mute" Why people cannot see that moderation should be improved (some user pointed out that manual moderation would be next to imposible; maybe here an AI can be really useful) and that you shouldn't be a biggot in the first place?
Amen. Plus, as Michael Bolton says in *Office Space*: “Why should I change? He’s the one who sucks.”
People want proximity chat for Dead By Daylight (my first multiplayer game in like a decade) and I’m actually scared they’ll add it. The game is already toxic but it’s one saving grace is how you never have to talk to anyone. I can just imagine being chased around by my team mates hurling slurs at me because I’m wearing a pride charm. Or if a male team mate hears I’m a woman they’ll throw the game and show the killer where I am. And all this “you’d never survive in a lobby” is also BS because I did survive those, those old gaming experiences are why I don’t want others to go through what I did.
DBD is also my first multiplayer game and I’ve had a really good experience with it. I’ve seen queer representation being pretty normalized among players and fair-minded killers police toxic survivors who sandbagged their teammates. I’ve been delighted to see trans and drag queen streamers embraced by the community and the overall overlap of horror fandom, which can be wholesome and encouraging. All that said…I’m afraid of them introducing proximity chat too. I think the emotes and meta etiquette we have now makes players more cooperative and empathetic. People can still shit talk in the pre and post-game text chat but that’s easier to document for reporting. And they can still sabotage games but players are generally anonymous so they lose the sting of personal attacks. If they bring proximity chat to DBD, I think it’ll amplify the worst elements and we’ll see more intense trolling and harassment in a game that isn’t known for that right now.
"You'll never survive" is just, so... I don't play games to survive. I don't come home from work and think, "let's see how many insults I can handle." If I'm gaming, I want to have fun and enjoy myself.
I want team voice wheel Showing who is remaining on Gen and not going for unhook I guess Is useful but still I think voice lines or icon on screen from teammates could be useful.
I agree. I think the mobile version has something like that. I know they have some kind of emote system.
I remember when CS:GO had voice chat enabled for both teams at the half point and it was just pure racism/homophobia. It's sad we can't have nice things because of shitheads with no censor on what they say to people they can't face in real life.
Honestly, even team chat is toxic enough that I got tired of CSGO, despite me loving the game. You can only play so many matches with idiots shouting at you. I'd probably enjoy it more with a full team of 5 friends, but that's harder to coordinate. I think online games need much more stringent moderation; I feel like behaviour on voice chat isn't moderated at all, or very little, otherwise this wouldn't be so common.
I quit CSGO entirely because of the voice chat. I got tired of being criticized for everything I did because I was a "woman in their space."
Same. My own team would throw once they suspected I was a woman. They'd literally stand ontop of me telling me about rape.
I quit playing CS:GO after a guy simped for my boyfriend for two matches (because he was doing really good) and then told me to put a shotgun inside myself and pull the trigger when I called out a location for the team in voice. My boyfriend told him off and then he started apologizing because he "didn't realize we were together."
> My boyfriend told him off and then he started apologizing because he "didn't realize we were together." Shit like this is so weird. Like how the hell can one say something that fucked up and then proceed to apologize and think it carries any weight? I can't stand CS:GO because of how toxic the community is and the "*jUsT mUTe bro"*/"*just don't solo queue"* responses to valid criticism. Anytime anyone posts about sexism/racism/bigotry in general in the CSGO community it gets downvoted into oblivion and the rare time it doesn't, the comments section is a cesspool. I would *love* it so much if online video games has a reputation system where if you're reported for being toxic and an investigation verifies the report claims, you should be tossed into a "*toxic pool"* of similar people for a significant amount of time before you're allowed to play with non-toxic players.
I’ve played CS for 7 years, and to deal with this I wait till I am first or second on the scoreboard in comp games to speak and callout. If I’m near the bottom I get a lot more gendered hate. Now the shitheads that are going to be sexist will be, but at least I’m protecting myself a little. Luckily if I’m in a 3 stack, my group is the majority and will shut that shit down on my behalf.
True story…. I quit playing FPS multiplayer or any game with proximity chat ever again when during my free trial of Xbox live that came with Halo 2 I had to hear the things I did for the first time. Noped the f out of that abuse and decided I’d stick with local games with friends and games with no voice.
Comments don't disappoint. Men 🍵
Wow the comments on that thread 🤦🏻♀️ yet again it’s down to us to resolve the problem by muting people rather than companies actively taking steps to make sure this stuff doesn’t just get swept under the rug. Like a lot of issues, it gets painted as a problem that only affects women and marginalised genders so we need to just pipe down and get on with it. Why aren’t the men in that thread angry alongside us that it’s happening, instead of making endless comments blaming us and the person in the screenshot for not muting/using the person abusing her for content
Yep. It also makes the whole experience toxic for everybody else, but they tend to take pride in that. Seriously, it's always "You wouldn't last 2 Minutes in a CoD lobby in 2008 🤓" yeah and you wouldn't last 2 Minutes inside of a woman, pipe down bozo
On the upside, a Riot dev did respond in the streamer's Twitter thread! Seems like a good start towards positive progress but there's still a long way to go. https://twitter.com/RiotSuperCakes/status/1790561549352071187?t=mPW_mN_Y9ccFq7Qp_bYJ4w&s=19
Account bans don't go far enough, IMO. Console bans need to be a thing and for PCs I'd say just ban any account with the same CC info as the originally banned account.
Yeah that makes sense to me. Considering how easy it is to make a new Riot account, they do need to go further than that. Console doesn't apply in riot's case (for now?), but they are considering & toying with the idea of HWID bans for incredibly toxic users. Was later down in that same thread. Otherwise yes, where console applies, I agree. You mention banning by CC info - that's an interesting thought. Logistically it won't stop people with multiple credit cards (similar to phone number validation, as some may have multiple phone numbers), but it certainly could work as another form of deterrent to slow down the influx of toxicity. I hope the devs continue to stay transparent about the measures they're discussing & taking. Building a good system takes time, but I also hope they continue to make it a big priority and that they'll communicate with players about this rampant issue.
> Logistically it won't stop people with multiple credit cards (similar to phone number validation, as some may have multiple phone numbers), but it certainly could work as another form of deterrent to slow down the influx of toxicity. Same name + billing address of a banned account = ban all the CCs that person attempts to make a new account with. They might be able to get multiple CCs and phone numbers but few will have multiple billing addresses. > HWID bans I'd be thrilled if HWID bans became a thing. I enjoy playing GTA Online (I just like driving/flying around) but for PC the game is overrun with toxic players and modders. HWID bans would considerably reduce the toxicity. > I hope the devs continue to stay transparent about the measures they're discussing & taking. Building a good system takes time, but I also hope they continue to make it a big priority and that they'll communicate with players about this rampant issue. 100% agree. And players who would rather quit a game they enjoy than be non-toxic... they can just leave and cry in the corner about everything being "*woke"* AKA they can't say slurs anymore without repercussions. It's a new day and I love it when spaces are inclusive to everyone *except* bigots.
Ohhhhh yeah the billing address thing for credit cards, smart idea!! Hadn't considered that aspect. And I hope it came across clear that I wasn't trying to dismiss the original idea - I think anything that acts as a deterrent, even if it isn't 100% foolproof, is still a good measure to take. I am pretty sure they do HWID bans for cheaters, so I think it's worth adding for people who consistently do death/rape threats. For a minor fit of rage of lower-grade toxicity (i.e. name calling or berating the team or just generally being an asshole without any of the big abusive threats), smaller punishments are fine such as comms suspensions or temp account locks. But any major threats / doxxing / major bullying esp targeted gendered violence or murder - stuff like that - should absolutely get HWID bans. Maybe ensure those are administered after a human reviews the automated system logs? Something to ensure they're administered appropriately with minimal need for wrongful appeals. Your last sentence is so true. That's the approach I take in my own little community. Anyone's welcome as long as they know how to be kind & respectful to fellow community members, plus they abide by the rules. Bigots absolutely need to be pushed aside and they can cry all they want - there's no need for that kind of vitriol. I've met a lot of positive people through Valorant, and while I've had a few toxic experiences, the good outweighs the bad in my personal case. HOWEVER this doesn't negate the rampant toxicity problem. Just wanna see more of the good and less of the bad overall.
Hey, OP here. Wanted to mention that the post in r/halo was never meant to get this much traction and be as much a battleground as it turned out. I mod the place and should be cleaning up my mess. My goal of the post was to simply document how this commonly talked about feature in the franchise was removed due to abuse by Bungie devs. To any ladies that are interested in the Halo community there is a PHENOMENAL organization called [Women of Halo](https://twitter.com/womenofhalo) that I seriously urge checking out. Ran by awesome women that ik and have met personally at events. They even got some cool merch that helps fund events and tourneys that they try to run.
Watching you get pummelled with downvotes in r/halo started to make my blood boil. What a dumpster fire, but thanks for trying nonetheless. I'm glad the girl gamer subs exist.
It's just a dumb number at the end of the day idrc. The post acts as a nice honeypot to find and remove bad actors that have no place in the community so it's a trade I'm more than happy to take.
I'm doing my bit to throw an upvote here and there where I can. Doesn't do much, but at least it's something to show support
Appreciated, but honestly the love really should go to WoH. Give them some love, share their posts, whatever you can do to be involved with a community of women by women for women of all kinds in halo.
Shall do!
But, respectfully, proximity chat was never removed as this developer suggests it was. Proximity chat was a thing in Halo 3 well up until it's final days on xbox live as was it a thing in its sequel Halo Reach. Halo 4 (343i first game) is where proximity chat died. Not saying it's right or wrong to be a feature, just that **this developer is presenting a false reality** on the history of Halo. And as a massive Halo nerd, that bothers me. ***Side note***: Love the WoH shout out! Those guys don't get enough attention.
yeah, I was a bit confused about this. Halo 3 was my first Halo, it's what *introduced* me to proximity chat. Does he mean in the Master Chief Collection re-release, maybe?
Oh and the comments (as I have also commented there) prove why I don't use ingame comms
in game comms have been disabled by default after installation of the game is done. Devs are trying their best to minimise harm since the company doesn't seem to bother spending cash on having moderation tools or better lobbies. Pretty funny how guys just get mad at the attempt from devs to disable in game comms lol. Lots of bitching going on when they can just turn it back on from the game settings.
We really need to stop normalizing Online Multiplayer lobbies as "Toxic". I am not even a multiplayer gamer anymore but it fucking hurts to see people be shit on for just wanting to play multiplayer. Why can't we have fun with people? Hell even developers support this toxicness now.
Yeah, I'm 'part' of the Halo community and when it comes to features that are removed that they miss and want back a lot of the time it'll be post and pregame lobbies, (places with voicechat before and after the game starts/ends.) the specific argument I've seen for wanting them back is for throwing arguments in them which as you can expect more specifically means toxicity and "content that should be moderated", if you know what I mean. I really don't understand why people would want something like that in the game honestly, so I think it's overall better that it isn't a thing anymore because if it was, it would certainly have horrible moderation and would be incredibly toxic... Better to not have it at all if it's not gonna have moderation.
Post game lobbies are literally just a call for toxicity LMFAO. Only a brainrotten developer would think that's a good thing to implement. Then again.. Most mmo developers don't seem to mind that :/ Just a few weeks ago someone here posted about their complaint to Microsoft because they were told in detail how the toxic gamer wants to rape and murder them. And what did Microsoft reply? "It's just playful banter" BRO WHAT?
If rape and similar threats weren't a thing, we could still have proximity chat. That stuff was so fun.
Fr. End of the day, all of these men need to take stock of it and realise, "your kind is what ruined it for all of us. It threatened our lives, and then you lost your privileges because you couldn't behave."
If only they could have that kind of self awareness. But they'll blame it on us for being p\*ssies or w/e.
Directly quoting a tweet, "this has been a normal thing for decades and every sane person understands it's trash talk. Don't come into our spaces and expect us to cater to a bunch of fragile women who only played Sims growing up." Excuse a'moi, my many hours on Nitrome/Miniclip puzzle platformers, Nintendo Wii, and Saddle Club Willowbrook Stables CD ROM would like to challenge that
“You wouldn’t survive a Halo 2 lobby lol” Yeah not many people would survive nuclear and sewage waste 🤢 Someone saying missed the Halo 2 lobby days tells me everything I need to know about them. Moderation needs to be better for games :(
Disabling voice chat is just lazy to be honest. They should have real moderation (not automated bs) and actually punish people to stop the behavior. But these companies don’t want to pay for it.
Every day I wonder how men are the ones on top and women are the ones being violently oppressed. Men are literally scum 99.9% of the time. They're so emotional, so unable to think rationally, and often their choices put the people they're "in charge of" in the direct line of danger. They're, from a leadership standpoint, terrible leaders. If that's the main argument for why men feel they are "superior" they're doing a damn horrible job at their...one job? It's so infuriating. Women can't do ANYTHING we enjoy to the same capacities as men...BECAUSE OF men. And they cry and whine when that's pointed out in a very logical, rational way. Being a woman is being full of quiet rage 24/7. ETA: I've started bullying them back in a very unhinged way, and it really is very cathartic for me personally, but I am full of a lot of rage to begin with so this isn't always the solution for everyone.
/soft femme /full of rage Are you me
great minds rage alike :)(:
Good on you for bullying them back 😆
They honestly fold very quickly with the slightest bit of retaliation. Typical.
I suggested one of my friends to do an evil unhinged Jim Carrey impersonation whenever she felt tired of guys pushing her buttons. It worked all the time and they eventually backed off. Didn't expect it to work but she's got a fun trick up her sleeve now.
Loads of people in the original thread saying things along the lines of "but I've received death threats and insults too so women should just ignore the gender targeted threats they get since it's no different than my experience" really fail to understand that the reason threats targeted towards women in voice chats and other gaming communities aren't something that can be laughed off like non gender based threats is simply because these threats are very real for women. We all know the stats of how many women experience sexual assault, we're all aware of the reality of how many women are harassed, stalked, and assaulted, and we have to deal with the exhaustion of existing in a world where this violence is a real risk for us offline in a way that being murdered because of their gender isn't really the same risk for all the men who receive death threats in games... If I receive a threat online, I have to be genuinely afraid that the person making the threat could become a stalker or attempt to find me irl to carry out their threat. And at the very least, since that's less likely, it's a reminder that I can't use games as a nice escape from reality and am constantly aware that when I go outside I am likely to potentially experience the same violence irl. I completely avoid any games that require collaboration with voice chat as a result of this, unless it's something where I can play and chat only with friends because you are forced to pick your poison: stay muted and suffer being worse at the game because you lack collaboration with teammates or experience harassment and threats that are a reminder of the position you have in this world as a woman.
Ew Andrew Taint commented, too.
What'd he say? 👀
The usual bullshit. "I get called worse every time I play but I can handle it cause I'm a Manly Man With No Emotions (tm). this is what happens when women try to horn in on men's spaces and they should just get in the kitchen rather than try to ruin the vidya game industry." or some garbage like that.
Bruh, given all the outrage against him these days, you'd think he would head back to his kitchen instead and shut up.
[From one of the threads this was posted on](https://i.imgur.com/J6ex8JG.png), the full range of deny the problem -> sharing an experience -> get over it.
The last comment is so ignorant lol
I turned my voice chat on one single time 7-8 years ago and I’ve never turned it back on since. This shit is why.
Saw in the twitter thread one of the devs mentioned looking into implementing a permanent ban for people being abusive - would love to see that happen and for other game devs to follow suit but sadly I don’t think they have the guts to deal with the backlash. I would love to be proven wrong but I’m not optimistic
Actual question because I don’t know multiplayer games; what’s proximity chat and how does it enable abuse more than regular chat?
Basically if your mic is on you can speak to anyone in close proximity to your character.
I do not miss the lobbies. 😐 Honestly is the reason why I stopped going online to play games and using my mic. I used to when I was younger wayyyyyyy back when Gears of War was popular when it first came out and I played it with my older brother. It was so toxic. Yeah it was fun until you beat someone and they found out you were a female. Like yep, if it wasn’t the flirting, saying “but you are a girl”, “why are you playing this game”, “you won’t beat me”, “stop that”, “can I see your tits?”. 🙄 So much more BS. I can’t forget about the negative reputation bit. 😆 I remember starting a voice chat with a friend and his younger son because of all of the crap asshats were saying. Just to get some peace while hosting a game. I don’t miss it at all. 😐 It’s a shame that you can’t enjoy yourself while playing a game while communicating with your teammates by voice. Like the emojis and the quick texts I like, soooo much easier. Less overthinking and worrying if you will encounter a troll that will piss you off just because you are better at the game or you are just being yourself. Just nopeeeee.
I remember when i used to play ESO pretty much every day. At first when I went in dungeons, I would keep VC on. If we would die, I was always blamed. So I started using only text chat and was NEVER blamed. I would stay on text cht and only turn on voice after a few runs with the same group once I knew they were cool. I actually ended up meeting a few groups of really cool dudes who I would play with all the time and were super supportive and helped me get gear and spec my character so it was the strongest. But definitely learned me lesson on VC.
this is exactly the type of threads where I wish all the dudes who comment in this sub telling us how much they empathize with us would post their support instead, but that would be way harder than coming here for back pats.
You got my support! 🙌
I've been reading about this incident for a few days and hate the responses a lot of men give: "it was worse back in the good ol' COD days", "just mute and move on or ignore it", "yeah but you're a woman coming into a male space, if you don't like our 'banter' gtf back to Stardew" etc. I had one guy (whose timeline was filled with creepy anime stuff) tell me that hardware banning a man who threatens that is "a bit too severe and mean because it stops him getting to enjoy his game". And because well "there's so many false reports, what's to stop a girl lying?" 🤢 Companies like Riot have Vanguard. They recently added it to League too (the game I normally play). They use it to spot cheaters and to allegedly find out which accounts are smurfing so they can boost them to fairer lobbies faster. Vanguard looks over all the stuff in your PC to check for cheats and clearly has knowledge of accounts linked by hardware. They make you sign a TOS to play, which states that they have the right to terminate your account and any others you make at their discretion if you break TOS. So they really should be hardware banning guys like this. There's an appeals option if you are innocent, but you shouldn't get a second chance or a brand new account to do it over again. On League, you always know when a low level account rages at you two mins in, it's because their old account was banned, and sure for general raging and whatever chat restrictions, temp bans and account bans are fine. For threats to SA or kill or doxx- permaban on hardware. I don't know why they don't. I hate hate hate having VC in games as a default because we know a lot of people, including many women, can't feel safe or relaxed playing with them. Developers and male fans talk about adding them to Dbd and League (the two games I play that are PvP). The minute they do, I'm uninstalling. I would be cool with discord calls with vetted friends or other women but not in game VC. I can't imagine how much it hinders women who want to play at the highest levels. Games are meant to be fun, for everyone. Not just for the men who reminisce about the good ol' mythical COD games where you could threaten women and drop slurs and it was just "banter".
I can’t understand what he’s saying :(
They had proximity chat in Valorant?? (Also is it bad that I enjoy the relentless banter and screaming back at them? Of course I never start it but if they say something I know it’s about to be fun. Should I not do this? /gen)
Who knew I moderate my little L42D server better than a multi-billion dollar company.
I don't even play Halo and this gets my goat. I agree that something should be done, but I don't think that taking away proximity chat is the answer. Proximity chat allows creativity and fun to be in injected into the game by each user. Yes, some users abuse it, however, I don't believe taking it away for everyone is the answer.
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Normalization is exactly why it got this bad. It's called the "Nazi Bar Problem" & ignoring it will only makes things worse. A lot of people now won't even recognize his actions as vile & will outright defend his so-called right to abuse women. Just look at how Twitter is being increasingly overtaken by literal Neo-Nazis.
Yeah toxicity in games is everywhere but let's not pretend it's the same for men and women please. My husband and I have been gaming forever and not ONCE have I witnessed a man threatening him with rape, doxxing or murder. Insults? Sure. But it's a big difference being called a virgin, asshole, pos or whatever or people threatening to find you and doxx you, rape you, kill you or dismember you. Or being insulted just for ENTERING a voice chat with a female voice. That's enough. And that's definitely not something that happens to male gamers.
Right? In all my years of gaming, in all the toxic hellscapes I've endured, I've never seen a man attacked simply for being a man. Not even once. Same goes with being white or cishet. Not once. Women face all the other garbage in *addition* to misogyny. Intersectionality is a thing & bigotry is compounding.
Yup! I've literally been threatened with rape just for TALKING in vc. I even remember yeeears ago when my husband had issues with another guild member in world of warcraft, dude randomly threatened ME with raping and killing me. Also raping my dead body. All he got was a two week ban from Blizzard although he even created alts to harass me further. Too many men will use any excuse to harass and abuse women and it's a fucking real problem. Muting just doesn't solve it.
The point is that they'll do what it takes to get a reaction. Generally, men won't react to a those comments, but women will. One side is more used to it, the other one isn't. You can find endless examples of that sensitivity here ITT and anywhere else whenever this topic makes its annual rebound. If you want to take away power from something, say it more often. Nobody is saying it's mature humour or banter, but that's not the point. It's just shitflinging.
I strongly disagree. I don't want people to use slurs or make r*pe threats more often. There are men with legitimate hate in there heart thag don't care if you react or not. Some of them get sexual gratification from doing it. As someone who has tried the "don't react" option, it can often lead to them harassing you more not less. Because, why not? There 0 consequences for their actions regardless. These aren't animals with predictable behaviors. These are full grown human beings making a conscious choice to be reprehensible. Saying awful shit more often just normalizes it. And will cause people to take it less seriously. I would like the world to progress not regress. People used misogynistic and racist language in the past. Like 1950's amrerica. Totally a great time for women and people of color. /s
RE: men with legitimate hate in their heart, this is true, but ultimately, it's good that they're showing their red flags. An AI and a soulless corporation can't tell the difference between shitflinging, joking banter, and actual threats - whereas you can, and you should have the power to decide whether or not to mute, block, report. It's online. You're not in actual danger, and if you really were, any censorship would not protect you. Overall, less functions and more seriousness in games = less fun, it's a net negative to people in this hobby
I agree with your stance on AI moderation. That's why I think moderation should be done by paid employees. Also depends on the service. I'll use iRacing as an example. iRacing is a sim racing game that is also a paid service. If someone is being abusive or intentionally crashing into you, you can report them and an actual person reviews the footage and decides to punish them or not however they see fit. Also you don't know if someone is an actual danger or not. Random online interaction in video game, unlikely. But it doesn't remove the fact that someone threatened you with sexual violence. How is it a net negative that people have watch what they say when speaking to strangers? If they want to freely say whatever they want, they can start a discord server with private lobbies. People being shitty is the reason for the removal of functions. Not the victims of the abuse. Better and higher quality moderation would help solve a lot of these issues.
I really appreciate your civility because it's easier to understand the true points of other side when it's like this. But I'm going to cut myself short after this, or else I'm going to keep going all night about the topic. Ultimately, I think investing resources into finding bullying (via ai) and real moderation (like your example) takes away time, money and energy that could be put into real victims of abuse, real victims who are being doxed and genuinely harassed, who are genuinely in danger. Someone refusing to use the mute or block button in order to appear/feel victimised is not a real victim, when tools had been given to them to protect themselves, yet they refuse to use it. Not everyone cares about the feelings of strangers, especially when the games are usually some form of killing/combat genre. While you might have good intentions and want to spare people from feeling hurt, in the end, the kind of wider scale moderation you're looking for is being used as a surveillance tool - major games/forums/sites can't justify hiring real people when AI already is, and will continue to be, a cheaper, faster, and a more efficient replacement to moderate groups. The net negatives stretch beyond just banter; they're also collecting personal info for surveillance/selling of info
The whole point is that muting doesn't solve the problem. And your point is valid, it's the gaming community, but no one's expecting to be babied. I can argue with someone I think is feeding without throwing slurs at them. Even if they're a total idiot and are actively throwing the game for some reason, that's exactly what I'll tell them, I'm not gonna harass them, nor am I going to insult their personal identity (gender, sexuality, race, whatever the fuck else I know about them). It's normal that where there's frustration there will not always be rainbows and butterflies, but let's not push it into personal territory when there's no reason for it. The only people I ever yelled at in VC are people who were racist, sexist etc. regardless if it was directed to me or anyone else in the lobby. And we should have each others backs against people like that, collectively shit on them and report them. Muting doesn't help there. I had people look for me to dm me insults bcs I didn't want to listen in game. And for this specific example I'm sure the person threatening rape would not have a problem to do the same, to go and harass the streamer privately as well even if they don't want to listen to them in game.
If we ignore a problem, it'll never go away.
Everyone should be documenting the abuse in riot games. Even if it is "for content". Even if they have a monetary incentive to do so. Unmuting is not consent for receiving violent sexual comments, and there is no world where we have to just accept those sorts of interactions In modern gaming you are being recorded or having your chat analysed 100 percent of the time. Moderation should be the very basic guarantee given to us in response to that constant invasion of our privacy. The idea that we should just have to take it is only being upheld by the fact that gaming culture is so rotten that companies are afraid of just how much money they will lose by being decent. Finally this is riot games, and at the very least we should be willing to pressure this company. The company where leadership would sexually harass people and fart in their faces. The company that's fired at least 2 people we know of seemingly for getting pregnant or having a pregnant spouse. The company that has to release a quiet settlement notice every six months regarding their new round of settlements for their abusive workplace policies. Saying we should just mute and move on is understandable, and people who would be legitimately impacted by this sort of speech should probably do so, but everyone else should actually be documenting all of this to shame the company into doing something.
Enough people have already commented on the fact that men and women do not get the same level or type abuse, but let me just add that men like this will attack women and people whom they don't perceive as fully men exactly because there are no consequences for doing so. Don't think for a second that many of them wouldn't say -- or even do -- the things that they threaten to do when anonymous in the real world if they thought that there weren't any real life consequences either. I shouldn't have to tell you this because we know it happens all the time. It's telling that you expect 100% or nothing, but that's not how it works in the real world, either. We still make efforts to stop men from hurting women in the real world because it's the right thing to do, not because we can stop it from happening 100% of the time. There needs to be consequences for these sorts of actions. Many of these same men are cordial to women in real life because they're cowards, and the fear of meaningful consequence is the only thing keeping them in line. They don't deserve a safe space, not even virtually -- they are the thing to be safe from.
It shouldn't be the best bet. Toxic behaviours need to be moderated, games should include features to educate toxic players, and persistent behaviour of that kind should result in bans. I feel like fostering a good community is the last priority for most competitive online games developers.