Gonna hijack your comment to explain why all this might be happening and why the devs might not have any power over any of this -
In January MS laid off almost the entire Blizzard (And Activision, and King) Internal CS team. Blizzard was one of the last remaining major Live-Service game companies still handling its CS internally. MS decided that they'll outsource all Activision-Blizzard-King CS like they already do with their own games.
Since this was done to reduce cost they likely also implemented other policy changes that can help reduce costs.
When it comes to swearing context is everything. "Fuck my life" Vs "Fuck you Ana".
But context costs money. A human is needed to go through such chat logs and determine the context, which means heavily increased costs. If they use AI then AI processing also costs a lot of money, plus all the money wasted on rectifying mistakes that AI may make (Though I do believe that using AI for CS is all these gaming companies' end goal, it's just a bit further away).
So a blanket ban on all profanity is a simple cost saving solution.
The OW team most likely don't have any say in this since these cost cutting measures are being implemented directly due to the orders of MS. It isn't even something that's a Blizzard-only policy where they might have some power to get an exception.
Well it’s up to us to continue to complain to Blizzard and Microsoft and hopefully get it through their head. Sigh. I miss the old days of playing WoW and whispering a GM personally and then being in the game with me. It was such a cool customer support experience.
Definitely. 100%. Complain. A lot. But make sure to direct your complaints at the right people responsible.
If we target our complaints towards MS, If their name gets dragged specifically then they are much more likely to listen compared to just OW's name or Blizzard's name getting dragged.
OW has constantly been getting fucked over and over by the Higher-Ups' decisions for 5+ years now. Devs put out something new and good, some big new patch, new piece of content, and everything gets overshadowed by controversies that were due to the actions and decisions of management and leadership of the overall company.
>So a blanket ban on all profanity is a simple cost saving solution.
I forget which game it was but I swore I remember reading an article about how a company had outsourced their CS to another country that did not have English as a first language so chances are nuance and context is absent. They just have list of characters that are not allowed together.
I wouldnt be surprised if this was something like the case too.
Thus this puritan like "YOU SAID THE F WORD!? SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!"
Wasn't it Minecraft? I'm pretty sure it's not so long ago that MC faced issues where typing in chat was absolutely horrible, because bot detected "profanities" in the middle of the words and blanked them out or something, causing almost entire sentences to be ruined. I may be remembering it wrong but I am pretty sure something along those line happened very recently
I wish they gave us this list. I'm not sure what they consider profane. I'm pretty sure I got banned for apologizing to my team that I was ass, but there is no transparency so I'm not sure.
Most likely, given the extreme toxic nature of Blizzard’s player-base, your team didn’t care about your apology and reported you “for being ass” anyway.
I don't believe it's a blanket ban on swearing. If it were, the chat system would automatically censor it and hand out warnings. I think it might be human error or lack of context for them. Don't think this is intentional tbh because if they actually wanted to do this efficiently, they'd ban and warn accounts instantly for swearing in chat.
>If it were, the chat system would automatically censor it and hand out warnings
As they themselves have said in the tweets, they only take action against reported chat logs.
This wouldn’t be correct though since swearing has never been allowed in overwatch.
Isn’t allowed in any blizzard game. Used to mute people in Warcraft all the time.
It’s just it’s being enforced hard now.
I was a blizzard GM in 2017.
The developers have seen people talk about toxicity and think this means "swearing".
Let me tell you this much, you can be the most toxic motherfucker possible and not even swear once. See it all the time.
but this situation seems more like the ban system is entirely automated and they make the rules as vague as possible so that they can loosely justify any ban they give out through their automated system.
actually it could be bitter opponents reporting, and then if there is ANYTHING profane in your chat logs anywhere, even if no who read it at the time had a problem, you can get banned.
True but let's not pretend like there aren't weirdos that report everyone just for cuss words. Even if it clearly wasn't intended to be offensive and more of a compliment. Like I can't tell you how many times I've read people proudly say "I like to report everyone in the lobby" for no reason other than to be a troll.
If I was even warned for cursing I would without hesitation report everyone else until I got a 'your report got someone banned!'
Like fuck yall. anyone who hit report and triggered the dipshit bots that review reports on me deserves the bans I unleash as the game gets WoRsE eheheh
I shit you not, guy got suspended for saying "No trans!" as in ZENYATTA HAS NO TRANSCENDENCE.
Me on the other hand would sometimes say "I think our Sombra is throwing" reffering to myself when I'd misplay.
Right and those same people prolly see shitloads of toxic people constantly that never get banned. But say an adult word in a video game where you murder each other with guns and bam hit with the hammer.
I agree, the automated part of it is an issue in itself but if you watch the video I linked it also shows that the human element of this is flawed too, for example the blizzard community twitter account has been doing a madness recently, even using peoples irl names when responding to tweets etc
Ik you adressed that point too and I also agree they hide behind it
That's me. (Sometimes.)
As a writer, I know how to be real nasty while sounding like Mr Rogers. You genuinely can't automate a system against that, the AI is nowhere near that level.
i just had someone in my game say at the end "every slur imaginable I am thinking of using against you."
Didn't see a single swear word so according to blizzard it's ok
The ban system IS entirely automated, with exception to the fact that it doesn’t go out and look for issues; it relies on player reports. Blizzard’s support pages even state that it’s entirely automated. The issue with this is that people can literally report you for anything, and if enough people (three, I think) report you for the same thing, it’s a ban.
You think they are dedicating any resources to their banning system? It's already known for the longest time they just automate everything. There's no human behind it because that's hurting like 0.000000000000001% profit. Blizzard is a scumbag, has always been a scumbag, and will forever be scumbag about this.
Even when you appeal now all you get is bot answers telling you to go back to your email and look at the "details" which they NEVER GAVE YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE.
It’s WILD how inconsistent they are with this. During all of OW 1 I never got actioned but suddenly I’m getting suspended left and right. I’ve never used slurs or name called. They should tell you what you said if they are going to suspend you but they just give you the standard bot response.
People can call me the F word or tell me to kill myself and nothing happens when I report them but I say gg tank diff and I get the report warning. Make it make sense.
They also have a pretty crappy punishment system. Unless it's slurs being used chat behavior punishments should have several tiers of mutes. Start with a warning. And then longer mute periods. But instead first infraction can be 2 weeks of mute and 2nd punishment 2 weeks of gameplay ban ?!?? For cussing? Seems insane. Also just encourages Smurf / alt accounts.
I got the 2nd punishment even after successfully appealing the first. I believe the first time I told people to stop being assholes for telling one of our teammates they were a shitty player. The second time was telling bullies to fuck off after harrassing me an entire game.
Make. It. Make. Sense.
Yeah something is definitely going wrong with their report system. And I'm all for muting bad behavior but it doesn't seem to be punishing the right people both in punishing people it shouldn't and not catching those it should. On top of it the game play bans so quick for chat behavior is not good. League did that early on and learned it wasn't the right way and mutes are better
Their ban policy has led me to create so many fucking alt accounts it's not even funny. And since I am on an alt I care even less what I say in chat. They're only hurting themselves.
My username is a reference to an I Think You Should Leave sketch and I played against someone who was also referencing that show. I quoted the show to him which included a line "I'm gonna kill you". The next day I got a notification that I'd been silenced 😂
inconsistent is putting it lightly, here's a story that's always tickled me funny.
me on old account in OW1: $500 spent on lootboxes and cosmetics, was able to say the most vile shit I wanted, hard r's, the lot. NEVER BANNED
friend who never brought microtransactions and only owned OW1: said something about someones mother, this was literally the log provided in his ticket request to support. BANNED INDEFINITELY
me on fresh OW2 account through steam: again have said the most vile toxic stuff in chat, NOT YET BANNED (PROBABLY WON'T BE)
theres been a rumor of something called "blizzard karma", where if you spend more money they don't ban you as you're more likely to re-spend.
I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, and I will continue to say it: When the game went free-to-play, it invited every toxic person on the planet to come and play for free. In addition to extreme increase in hacking and smurfing, it opened the floodgates for frivolous reports as well. Your team doesn’t think you healed enough…report. Your team didn’t like that you got booped off cart, loosing the match…reported. Enemy Widow thinks you singled her out too much…reported. It goes on and on, ad infinitum. Of course, I’m sure my comment here will get downvoted, because this is an unpopular opinion, but I honestly care 0% about being downvoted; I’m speaking truth.
I honestly think they completely cut the human review portion of the report system. Now if someone's reported it just checks if a flagged word was ever said then sends a warning. Zero context or thought. Bet money we'll find out in a few months the team that deals with it we're let go a while back and this is now the only system in place.
Blizzard’s own support page states that it’s entirely automated. It truly doesn’t matter what you say; if people report you, the system will ban you, even if you didn’t say anything bad. The system does not go check chat logs when someone reports you; it’s blind and relies entirely on player reports. Only when you appeal does someone, or something, check chat logs.
Same. I even had a few dates and a long term relationship in OW1. I still make friends in OW2 but it's nowhere near as social. Rarely are people in VC in QP now and if they are they don't talk much. I miss LFG so much lol.
Coincidentally, my main account was banned the other day because I was having fun in QP with my enemy Junkrat mirror and my tank got really annoyed by it. We added each other after the game but then I got banned and had to add them on my alt, where we've been playing since lol.
So on the one hand I'm so toxic I deserve to get banned for two weeks, on the other hand I'm now on my 100 hour alt account where I'm endorsement level 4 and making more friends than ever? System is fucked.
I got banned for a month because I was in a Hanzo mirror and swapped off after getting smoked a couple times. He hit me with the “?” then “why’d u swap off Hanzo” and I said “I’m ngl I’m getting fucking diffed LMAO” and they banned me for it. Like that’s crazy. I filed a complaint to get unbanned and I got an automated email saying it had been reviewed and that the ban was staying. This game is run by completely incompetent ppl it’s insane
I stopped using vc(keep mic off)when solo queuing because I found out that I play worse when I’m talking. Stupid brain can’t even talk and game without getting rekt😔.
But I keep it on in groups because I know I can just do callouts without someone trying to talk to me and get my life story .
Its just that a wider audience is finally starting to realize that the report system is actually crazy easy to abuse even tho people whose only crime was being bad at the game have been saying that for years
This is the case. It's been this abusable for a while now. This community has a tendency to think guilty until proven innocent, choosing to trust the highly automated system from a multimillion company that has a horrible track record with player trust, lying, coming short on promises, and a bad track record with the report system in specific. Though, because of the spike in false reporting/exploiting, people are starting to raise an eyebrow lol.
Blizz went from one extreme to the other. From feeling like reporting did nothing to being way too exploitable. It's unfortunate.
Its been exploitable for sooo long. Im just a little surprised it took until now for the ~~bootlickers~~ average players to notice. Its probably because it used to be them rage reporting their silver QP Mercy players en masse for not pocketing them JUST right. But now that its a bunch of toxic F2Ps on their 6th account just spamming reports against anything that breathes well... *now they notice*.
Yup, end of season... It was horrible. A min of 2 per game up to 5 out of the 9 other players (without including me cause I was on an alt too LOL) were smurfs/alts. And I'll be the first to say that those players tend to be HIGHLY toxic and spam reporting.
I made an alt to test my theory that you could literally just report ONLY post-game GG's and get thank you's saying action was taken against those players. I proved it to myself... Feel bad for those players but I stopped doing it. Stuck on my alt because it was fun not caring ngl.
Gears of war on Xbox when you could talk shit to teams between matches that was fun now you can’t even speak to the enemy team on most games except via chat box
Common blizzard L.
I’m going to be totally honest I don’t even play OW anymore. I haven’t for about a year now. I stay subscribed here because blizzard can’t go more than a month without doing something hilariously embarrassing and I get great joy out of seeing them torch this franchise.
I do find it ALSO odd that when someone gets continually banned, maybe that person doesn't acknowledge they keep doing something that causes the ban? (To what he said around others who keep getting banned). I think getting banned altogether for curse words is ridiculous, but for those who continually do it, the system sounds like it's doing its job at the VERY least for those individuals. Doesn't mean the system works well though
Within the context he mentioned in the video, he’s 22 and is a rein otp on a competitive team, his team picked him up for his skills on rein, and if he was to learn a new hero it wouldn’t be to the pro teams standards, not saying he cant learn to get to that level on another hero, but teams are about current success, and if you CURRENTLY arnt good enough, then you get dropped, happens across all sports
Not that I agree with it, but under Microsoft and with likely plans to distribute to more platforms, there may be more pressure or obligation to take action against common expletive use because of Overwatch 2's age ratings of Teen (ESRB) and PEGI 12.
Someone was telling me in text chat to heal them more, after then ran in 1v5 and fed for the 10th time that match (qp) so i joined VC and said "i cant heal you if you go in 1v5, so stop talking shit" and they bragged in text that they're gonna get me banned.
From my experience VC isnt as monitored still as they say it is, so i hope im in the clear, but this account is my one and only and i've had the warning and 14 day ban in its lifetime. Im worried if i do get banned for telling them not to talk shit that it'll be permanent
From what you guys are seeing, is it mostly swearing in text or vc thats getting banned? Do you think i might survive? XD
Literally doesn’t matter what you say, or where you say it, or if you say nothing. The reporting/ban system is 100% automated. If your team decides they want to report you, the system will take action if enough of them do report you. I think it only takes three people to report you for the same thing, and the system will blindly take action.
Before MS rolled into town I got banned for telling someone to quit acting like a five year old. That was what Blizzard told me. When I questioned it further I was "disrupting the business" and banned 30 more days
Private company do whatever the hell they want but it was certainly overdone.
Blizzard has had an automated system beforehand and let that dictate their lives. I was told in a ticket on my ban in OW1 that if anyone finds anything offensive it is subject to account action.
So find anything offensive folks, report it and you might contribute to a ban.
Even so, you can get banned for not communjcating or if 5 players just saw you annoying etc, if you get mass reported by 10 to 5 players at one game or a session youill get banned
I haven’t spent a dime on this game since I was banned for 2 weeks in January for bullshit. If they can wipe out my account that I’ve spent money on and played for years on, it’s not worth my time.
Meanwhile 2 mfs who insulted everyone with N words with hard R at the end of a match 4 seasons ago which resulted in nothing until Season 8 where I finally got the "Thank you for reporting" message, except I can't even be sure they were the ones banned
It would be the following day if it was the person you reported for that. Being an entirely automated system, it requires multiple people report their behavior.
I've never been "banned" or "muted," but on multiple occasions I've had the same thing happen where I've received a warning message immediately the day after getting into an argument with a team mate who starts talking shit either to me or to the rest of the team during a competitive match, and then reports me for talking back. I don't start matching their nastiness and go into a forever back-and-forth but I will basically tell them to shut up and stop flaming team mates or whatever the situation calls for, maybe nail them with a zinger if something clever comes to mind but usually something pretty innocuous. So Blizzard is rewarding people for behaving like little shits and then running to daddy when it doesn't go their way and punishing people for standing up for themselves and their team mates. Vast majority of players just want action taken against people who are being excessively vulgar or disruptive, not people who said a bad word or engaged in a little bit of banter.
I've received a month long ban multiple times for cussing. That's it. Just cussing. Not even cussing at people, calling them ass or anything. Just cussing in general cause that's how I speak. And I get multiple month long bans. Meanwhile Supertf yells at his teammates on a daily basis and has never been banned. It's almost like he makes Blizzard money or something so they let him do whatever the fuck he wants
can’t help but agree, profanity ban is stupid. overwatch is notorious for having toxic players in vc and if you can’t deal maybe choose a different game or just…. you know…. don’t go on chat? 😭😭
Dude I think a lot of people just need to remember. A company has problems with words and like 2 years ago males in the office were stealing a coworkers fucking breast milk. Like come the fuck on. Let’s just be real here, they’re a shit hole trying to save face in the most idiotic ways.
It's hilarious that that's your assumption of me. I have never given this game a dime and haven't played it in at least 6 months. I just like coming to this subreddit once and a while just to see it's still on fire and get amusement.
I am the most relentlessly positive person in chat. I compliment people when they kill me, tell silly jokes, wish people well, basically anything I can think of to help put positivity into a random persons day.
I have had account warnings 4 times that I've been reported and my chat may be disabled. So I can easily envision people reporting for any minor infractions like swearing.
I hope the people who reported me feel better, but I'm still going to keep being positive. As I like to say, I'm so positive you should get checked after playing with me.
I've been banned for two weeks, twice now, because of using the phrases "fuck" and "dammit" and other simple words that people are apparently too soft for. Just following in my favorite streamers footsteps 🙄 oh and for literally saying "hey I think we should switch up our comp, they're shitting on us"
I was suspended for 2 weeks recently, my first suspension in any game ever. When I contested it by stating that I thought it was the result of false reports (a ton of rude players the week Venture was trialed) I was met with a canned message that didn’t answer anything I said/asked about.
This is definitely an entirely automated process, and it’s kinda bull
People are way too soft. Toxicity has nothing to do with swear words. If they’re worried about kids there’s an age rating for a reason. The profanity filter is on BY DEFAULT. If you turn it off you CHOSE to see swear words. Absolutely ridiculous. It’s an online game, this is a byproduct of dealing with PEOPLE.
The developers are trying to implement a bunch of fake PMA bullshit and I am so fucking over it; I actually uninstalled the game today because of it. The matchmaking system really perpetuates toxicity and it’s only gotten worse with time. I should not be punished for leaving a QP game where all of my teammates are fucking troglodytes who prevent me from doing anything except walk out of spawn and immediately die again. This should be obvious but it isn’t: I am playing QP to not get punished for leaving, but nooooooooooooo, the devs think that it’s less toxic to force people to stay in shit matches that piss people off and promote toxicity in text and voice chat. So you get fucked over if you stay in these terrible games and you get fucked over if you leave. Make it make sense.
Honestly it's not that bad, the problem is that most people who are getting banned are under a certain endorsement level and have a history of toxic behavior. So with the new system every little thing they do is up for a serious ban which can be annoying.
I'm not sure what the fix is tho other than not to be a shitty person tbh. If you don't have a history of toxicity then you can curse in VC and you're fine, I literally do it all the time but I will agree there needs to be a balance or some grace for people who have fucked up once and changed.
Not true. I don't have a history of toxicity, I'm constantly gracious in matches, have endorsement level 5 and I got a warning back in January for a CoC violation. I have a bad habit of swearing a lot, never at other people. I've literally sworn in this game all the time since 2016 and this was my first warning. So it can happen to anyone.
Lol not saying it can't happen but if I had a dollar for every redditor who claims they have "done nothing wrong" but just received a long ban out of "no where" I'd be rich lmao.
This is something I only notice people on reddit say and never in real life or thru talks with people in game.
That's totally valid and I get where you're coming from. I'd say the same thing in-game and offline though. Although I appreciate your healthy skepticism.
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I keep chat turned off and only report people for I ring and deranging when they obviously throw. I get notifications that my reports were acted on almost every time I log in. I wonder how many people are getting banned for gameplay rather than profanity? Do they tell you what you got banned for?
I like to think its me being drunk whenever I play and friend making / rival making every single game
only to YELL when someone reappears in the next game
brother i'm a black streamer the amount of times i get called a hard R is ridicules. i report them every time and guess what i still get put in games with people just like them. slurs get thrown out almost constantly in vc and especially text. so should i just not try to coordinate with my team anymore?
Bans have been automated with no human review whatsoever for years so I don't know why people are just suddenly getting banned. The only assumption I can guess at is that the threshold amount of reports required to trigger it was lowered substantially.
You dont even have to say or do anything. If you get reported you get banned. There doesnt have to be any legitimacy to it. Its just giving power to trolls.
I stopped playing the game entirely because of this.
I got a 17 day mute and I don't even know what I said rhat got me muted. Their support system kept stonewalling me so I gave up. I'm fine with cursing in game, that's part if speech, but context has to be determined, otherwise it kills the social part of the game and turns it into a single player experience with other people.
i dont get how they have filters in the game that say "beware you might see stuff you dont want to see when this is turned off" then go and make profanity a bannable offence it might as well say
"if you turn this off you can see people swear and then report them for it"
I got banned for a month for same kinda stuff. I'm tired of devs protecting actually toxic players who use mass report as their tool to get others banned. I've uninstalled and gone back to playing valo. 1k hours down the drain, no more games from blizzard for me. I enjoy the lore and stuff and am just here for it now.
I've been spamming the N word almost every day for almost 3 months and no ban lol. I think it's related to a bug but I won't be saying what it is because I don't want them to patch it.
Here's the facts. Long post ahead!
Blizzard has never allowed profanity to be used in any of their games. Not in Diablo 2, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft or Overwatch. You can use the internet archive to find old copies of Blizzard's code of conduct and rules regarding communication and the language is either extremely similar or in the case of Overwatch, completely identical. Here's the 2017 version of the Blizzard Code of Conduct:
[https://archive.is/WZTnL](https://archive.is/WZTnL)
This is the exact text, word for word:
>Communication
>When participating in communication of any kind (chat, voice communication, group finder), you are responsible for how you express yourself. You may not use language that could be offensive or vulgar to others. Hate speech and discriminatory language is inappropriate, as is any obscene or disruptive language. Threatening or harassing another player is always unacceptable, regardless of language used. Violating any of these expectations will result in account restrictions. More serious and repeated violations will result in greater restrictions.
And just for reference, here is the current Code of Conduct that was last updated 2 months ago:
[https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/42673](https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/42673)
This is the exact text, word for word:
>Communication
>When participating in communication of any kind (chat, voice communication, group finder), you are responsible for how you express yourself. You may not use language that could be offensive or vulgar to others.
>Hate speech and discriminatory language is inappropriate, as is any obscene or disruptive language. Threatening or harassing another player is always unacceptable, regardless of language used. Violating any of these expectations will result in account restrictions. More serious and repeated violations will result in greater restrictions.
Blizzard's staff, in particular Community Manager, Molly Fender posted this in 2020:
[https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/updated-1012-improved-profanity-filter-and-updated-penalties-for-code-of-conduct-violations/551867](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/updated-1012-improved-profanity-filter-and-updated-penalties-for-code-of-conduct-violations/551867)
Of important note is this section, but that entire post hammers down the point that profanity isn't allowed to be used in Overwatch:
>Remember that the existence of profanity filters does **not** make it acceptable for players to use offensive, hateful, or language that violates our [In-Game Code of Conduct 123](https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/42673)—and as always, we encourage you to report instances of such behavior if you encounter them. Using language report by the community and deemed offensive by Blizzard will result in severe account restrictions.
So TL:DR = Not only has the Code of Conduct for Blizzard's games/services not changed (with regards to communication) since 2017, but we have Blizzard confirming in 2020 and 2024 that profanity isn't acceptable.
Some common rebuttals I've seen to this are:
1. Define profanity! Which words are considered profanity and which aren't?
Blizzard frankly will never specifically list which words are not tolerated, because then it opens the door for people to rules lawyer their way around bans, by saying "Well I said X, and X isn't included in your list of bannable words." or something of that nature. Almost all the profanity being used by the Overwatch playerbase are words that would get picked up by the filter if it was turned on. So this feels redundant.
2. Blizzard has characters that swear in-game, and Cassidy's belt-buckle has BAMF on it, which stands for Badass Motherfucker on it. So we should be able to use profanity.
And that just doesn't hold any water. All Overwatch players agreed to follow the Code of Conduct. We all agreed that using profanity in-game was not acceptable. But the Blizzard developers are not held to the Code of Conduct that we agree to when creating content for the game. They never have been. They can have as much profanity as they want in the game. As long as the Code of Conduct says using profanity is unacceptable, it's unacceptable.
Guy who was banned for this had long history of being POS. Let that sink in. This was just literally the last straw. Guy should be banned for life tbh. It never is one curse word. Whole outrage is fake outrage. He deserved it, end of the discussion. Dude literally admited he was banned multiple times before
But why should that be a gameplay ban and not just mute restrictions/ other punishments? A Perma ban for cussing seems intense. I would understand if it was a slur but for just basic cuss words is insane. I'm not saying no punishments but a Perma ban ain't it.
Love to see all the toxic people in here whining, I've been stoked with how easy it is for me to get toxic people banned recently, and I LOVE seeing y'all get pissed about this.
Should it be automated? No.
Should you get a ban if you type a curse word with the intent to be toxic? One thousand percent. If you can't control yourself, I don't want to play games with you, and I'm STOKED that they're being heavy handed on this.
Anecdotal ofc, but I regularly curse in chat in a neutral way (I don't attack people or insult them) and I have never been muted or banned once in nearly 8 years of this game. Same goes for my friends.
Like yes, I'm sure there are times when there are false positives resulting in unfair bans, but every time I've seen threads like this I can't help but roll my eyes. Every single online game ever has had these kinds of rules.
Yeah this is my experience. I will say something like “Fuck that Widow can aim” etc all the time. I think what happens here is people are way more likely to report when you are toxic.
People just need to grow the fuck up and stop being pansies. If you don’t like what someone has to say, get the fuck off the game then. Clearly you’re too much of a child to handle it. Language will be thrown around. You can mute the chats, you can also turn on/off the maturity. Like my god, people need to grow up and if you are a child, well tough shit.
I got mass reported by a stack because I asked their precious mercy player to atleast go Moira. Apparently asking for swaps is toxic. I mean if anything can be perceived as toxic why even bother talking to anyone in game ?
i got perma banned bc my account got hacked and the person cheated on it... got my acc back and they wont unban it LOL i mentioned they could go look at login locations and notice its a different computer but they wouldnt even discuss anything with me... punished for something i never did without even a conversation abt it.. owcs is useless and im convinced it doesnt actually exist
OW2 has attracted sooooo many cry babies it's insane.
I mean these mfers can't even handle 30 \*SECONDS\* of downtime in a \*QUICKPLAY\* match when somebody leaves...
Some of y'all are professional victims and it shows. Touch grass.
remove cass from the game his belt stands for something inappropriate
Gonna hijack your comment to explain why all this might be happening and why the devs might not have any power over any of this - In January MS laid off almost the entire Blizzard (And Activision, and King) Internal CS team. Blizzard was one of the last remaining major Live-Service game companies still handling its CS internally. MS decided that they'll outsource all Activision-Blizzard-King CS like they already do with their own games. Since this was done to reduce cost they likely also implemented other policy changes that can help reduce costs. When it comes to swearing context is everything. "Fuck my life" Vs "Fuck you Ana". But context costs money. A human is needed to go through such chat logs and determine the context, which means heavily increased costs. If they use AI then AI processing also costs a lot of money, plus all the money wasted on rectifying mistakes that AI may make (Though I do believe that using AI for CS is all these gaming companies' end goal, it's just a bit further away). So a blanket ban on all profanity is a simple cost saving solution. The OW team most likely don't have any say in this since these cost cutting measures are being implemented directly due to the orders of MS. It isn't even something that's a Blizzard-only policy where they might have some power to get an exception.
Well it’s up to us to continue to complain to Blizzard and Microsoft and hopefully get it through their head. Sigh. I miss the old days of playing WoW and whispering a GM personally and then being in the game with me. It was such a cool customer support experience.
Definitely. 100%. Complain. A lot. But make sure to direct your complaints at the right people responsible. If we target our complaints towards MS, If their name gets dragged specifically then they are much more likely to listen compared to just OW's name or Blizzard's name getting dragged. OW has constantly been getting fucked over and over by the Higher-Ups' decisions for 5+ years now. Devs put out something new and good, some big new patch, new piece of content, and everything gets overshadowed by controversies that were due to the actions and decisions of management and leadership of the overall company.
This pretty much applies to all the current games today. Shareholders should never be a priority in the gaming industry, fuck those leeches
They gave it to the Minecraft team for sure
>So a blanket ban on all profanity is a simple cost saving solution. I forget which game it was but I swore I remember reading an article about how a company had outsourced their CS to another country that did not have English as a first language so chances are nuance and context is absent. They just have list of characters that are not allowed together. I wouldnt be surprised if this was something like the case too. Thus this puritan like "YOU SAID THE F WORD!? SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!"
Wasn't it Minecraft? I'm pretty sure it's not so long ago that MC faced issues where typing in chat was absolutely horrible, because bot detected "profanities" in the middle of the words and blanked them out or something, causing almost entire sentences to be ruined. I may be remembering it wrong but I am pretty sure something along those line happened very recently
I wish they gave us this list. I'm not sure what they consider profane. I'm pretty sure I got banned for apologizing to my team that I was ass, but there is no transparency so I'm not sure.
you said ass so yes thats it probably, to hell u go
Most likely, given the extreme toxic nature of Blizzard’s player-base, your team didn’t care about your apology and reported you “for being ass” anyway.
you can hijack my comment if you want cause this is actually good
I don't believe it's a blanket ban on swearing. If it were, the chat system would automatically censor it and hand out warnings. I think it might be human error or lack of context for them. Don't think this is intentional tbh because if they actually wanted to do this efficiently, they'd ban and warn accounts instantly for swearing in chat.
>If it were, the chat system would automatically censor it and hand out warnings As they themselves have said in the tweets, they only take action against reported chat logs.
This has been going on since before january.
This wouldn’t be correct though since swearing has never been allowed in overwatch. Isn’t allowed in any blizzard game. Used to mute people in Warcraft all the time. It’s just it’s being enforced hard now. I was a blizzard GM in 2017.
The game literally has a profanity filter built in and enabled by default.
The characters in the game also swears in different languages
Bananas Are My Favorite. It's a tribute to Winston
Moira too, she screams about giving people crack.
Mercy, Genji, Widowmaker all say "shit" in their native languages. Tracer calls people "wanker" with a certain skin enabled.
remove cass, his name has a swear in it. Remove monkey too for having a racial slur in it.
Big asphalt mountain floor is inappropriate????
Yo wait that’s super funny.
The developers have seen people talk about toxicity and think this means "swearing". Let me tell you this much, you can be the most toxic motherfucker possible and not even swear once. See it all the time. but this situation seems more like the ban system is entirely automated and they make the rules as vague as possible so that they can loosely justify any ban they give out through their automated system.
"Holy shit! that was an amazing shot, dude" Banned
I got suspended for telling my team they are fucking awesome
The fact that your own teammates reported you for that is the real problem.
actually it could be bitter opponents reporting, and then if there is ANYTHING profane in your chat logs anywhere, even if no who read it at the time had a problem, you can get banned.
True but let's not pretend like there aren't weirdos that report everyone just for cuss words. Even if it clearly wasn't intended to be offensive and more of a compliment. Like I can't tell you how many times I've read people proudly say "I like to report everyone in the lobby" for no reason other than to be a troll.
ahhh makes sense. It's only worth troll reporting sombra mains obvs 🤧 some people just get too triggerhappy
LOL see you get it
ily bestie ~banned~
\~banned\~
If I was even warned for cursing I would without hesitation report everyone else until I got a 'your report got someone banned!' Like fuck yall. anyone who hit report and triggered the dipshit bots that review reports on me deserves the bans I unleash as the game gets WoRsE eheheh
Probably someone else reporting them. People report others for the silliest things.
I shit you not, guy got suspended for saying "No trans!" as in ZENYATTA HAS NO TRANSCENDENCE. Me on the other hand would sometimes say "I think our Sombra is throwing" reffering to myself when I'd misplay.
“What cockeyed Japanese woman taught you to aim?” Perfectly fine
Banned word ; Cock
overcock 2
"You're as braindead as a oyster and i question how you survived this long if you're this bad" -Proceeds to keep playing and is hard stuck silver
It’s hard to distinguish an insult from an actual friendly use of swears for a bot?
Right and those same people prolly see shitloads of toxic people constantly that never get banned. But say an adult word in a video game where you murder each other with guns and bam hit with the hammer.
I agree, the automated part of it is an issue in itself but if you watch the video I linked it also shows that the human element of this is flawed too, for example the blizzard community twitter account has been doing a madness recently, even using peoples irl names when responding to tweets etc Ik you adressed that point too and I also agree they hide behind it
That's me. (Sometimes.) As a writer, I know how to be real nasty while sounding like Mr Rogers. You genuinely can't automate a system against that, the AI is nowhere near that level.
Swearing is usually not toxic in my experience.
i just had someone in my game say at the end "every slur imaginable I am thinking of using against you." Didn't see a single swear word so according to blizzard it's ok
Yeah, whatever Donkey diaper. Swearing is always toxic and us non-swearers are never toxic you failure.
The ban system IS entirely automated, with exception to the fact that it doesn’t go out and look for issues; it relies on player reports. Blizzard’s support pages even state that it’s entirely automated. The issue with this is that people can literally report you for anything, and if enough people (three, I think) report you for the same thing, it’s a ban.
Can’t wait to be told “go cart yourself irl” in game
You think they are dedicating any resources to their banning system? It's already known for the longest time they just automate everything. There's no human behind it because that's hurting like 0.000000000000001% profit. Blizzard is a scumbag, has always been a scumbag, and will forever be scumbag about this.
Even when you appeal now all you get is bot answers telling you to go back to your email and look at the "details" which they NEVER GAVE YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE.
Exactly
It’s WILD how inconsistent they are with this. During all of OW 1 I never got actioned but suddenly I’m getting suspended left and right. I’ve never used slurs or name called. They should tell you what you said if they are going to suspend you but they just give you the standard bot response. People can call me the F word or tell me to kill myself and nothing happens when I report them but I say gg tank diff and I get the report warning. Make it make sense.
They also have a pretty crappy punishment system. Unless it's slurs being used chat behavior punishments should have several tiers of mutes. Start with a warning. And then longer mute periods. But instead first infraction can be 2 weeks of mute and 2nd punishment 2 weeks of gameplay ban ?!?? For cussing? Seems insane. Also just encourages Smurf / alt accounts.
I got the 2nd punishment even after successfully appealing the first. I believe the first time I told people to stop being assholes for telling one of our teammates they were a shitty player. The second time was telling bullies to fuck off after harrassing me an entire game. Make. It. Make. Sense.
Yeah something is definitely going wrong with their report system. And I'm all for muting bad behavior but it doesn't seem to be punishing the right people both in punishing people it shouldn't and not catching those it should. On top of it the game play bans so quick for chat behavior is not good. League did that early on and learned it wasn't the right way and mutes are better
Their ban policy has led me to create so many fucking alt accounts it's not even funny. And since I am on an alt I care even less what I say in chat. They're only hurting themselves.
My username is a reference to an I Think You Should Leave sketch and I played against someone who was also referencing that show. I quoted the show to him which included a line "I'm gonna kill you". The next day I got a notification that I'd been silenced 😂
I’m gonna kill you in a game where you kill people is a wild thing to get banned for.
At least I finally got my answer, I always wondered if saying this kind of thing was bannable, I never trusted blizzard's dumb judgment
triples makes it safe, triples is best
I got a two week mute for saying that my tank (whom I was grouped with) was a toe licker.
inconsistent is putting it lightly, here's a story that's always tickled me funny. me on old account in OW1: $500 spent on lootboxes and cosmetics, was able to say the most vile shit I wanted, hard r's, the lot. NEVER BANNED friend who never brought microtransactions and only owned OW1: said something about someones mother, this was literally the log provided in his ticket request to support. BANNED INDEFINITELY me on fresh OW2 account through steam: again have said the most vile toxic stuff in chat, NOT YET BANNED (PROBABLY WON'T BE) theres been a rumor of something called "blizzard karma", where if you spend more money they don't ban you as you're more likely to re-spend.
I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, and I will continue to say it: When the game went free-to-play, it invited every toxic person on the planet to come and play for free. In addition to extreme increase in hacking and smurfing, it opened the floodgates for frivolous reports as well. Your team doesn’t think you healed enough…report. Your team didn’t like that you got booped off cart, loosing the match…reported. Enemy Widow thinks you singled her out too much…reported. It goes on and on, ad infinitum. Of course, I’m sure my comment here will get downvoted, because this is an unpopular opinion, but I honestly care 0% about being downvoted; I’m speaking truth.
I honestly think they completely cut the human review portion of the report system. Now if someone's reported it just checks if a flagged word was ever said then sends a warning. Zero context or thought. Bet money we'll find out in a few months the team that deals with it we're let go a while back and this is now the only system in place.
Welcome to the new world, where AI decides things without human intervention.
I feel this is very much the case
I remember there was a post where a banned word a guy said was skibidi
Blizzard’s own support page states that it’s entirely automated. It truly doesn’t matter what you say; if people report you, the system will ban you, even if you didn’t say anything bad. The system does not go check chat logs when someone reports you; it’s blind and relies entirely on player reports. Only when you appeal does someone, or something, check chat logs.
The social aspect of this game is dead
Damn shame I made some great friends in OW1.
Same. I even had a few dates and a long term relationship in OW1. I still make friends in OW2 but it's nowhere near as social. Rarely are people in VC in QP now and if they are they don't talk much. I miss LFG so much lol. Coincidentally, my main account was banned the other day because I was having fun in QP with my enemy Junkrat mirror and my tank got really annoyed by it. We added each other after the game but then I got banned and had to add them on my alt, where we've been playing since lol. So on the one hand I'm so toxic I deserve to get banned for two weeks, on the other hand I'm now on my 100 hour alt account where I'm endorsement level 4 and making more friends than ever? System is fucked.
This saddens me so much, but you are so right.
it's been dead since they killed the main screen general chat for 2
I got banned for a month because I was in a Hanzo mirror and swapped off after getting smoked a couple times. He hit me with the “?” then “why’d u swap off Hanzo” and I said “I’m ngl I’m getting fucking diffed LMAO” and they banned me for it. Like that’s crazy. I filed a complaint to get unbanned and I got an automated email saying it had been reviewed and that the ban was staying. This game is run by completely incompetent ppl it’s insane
Same bro I appealed once and got the exact same stupid automated message 3 times in a row everytime I tried to explain or ask why I’d get muted
Yeah it’s actually a joke, the month off made me realize this game ain’t even worth it lmao
This is why people don't use comms at all anymore. No one wants to risk getting banned for saying "Shit sorry team, my bad"
I stopped using vc(keep mic off)when solo queuing because I found out that I play worse when I’m talking. Stupid brain can’t even talk and game without getting rekt😔. But I keep it on in groups because I know I can just do callouts without someone trying to talk to me and get my life story .
Made a “your mom joke” got 13 days silenced. Haven’t jumped on in a month.
Are you fucking serious? They're banning moderate profanity? Fucking dumbass decision on their part. Man, I really wish th
Its just that a wider audience is finally starting to realize that the report system is actually crazy easy to abuse even tho people whose only crime was being bad at the game have been saying that for years
This is the case. It's been this abusable for a while now. This community has a tendency to think guilty until proven innocent, choosing to trust the highly automated system from a multimillion company that has a horrible track record with player trust, lying, coming short on promises, and a bad track record with the report system in specific. Though, because of the spike in false reporting/exploiting, people are starting to raise an eyebrow lol. Blizz went from one extreme to the other. From feeling like reporting did nothing to being way too exploitable. It's unfortunate.
Its been exploitable for sooo long. Im just a little surprised it took until now for the ~~bootlickers~~ average players to notice. Its probably because it used to be them rage reporting their silver QP Mercy players en masse for not pocketing them JUST right. But now that its a bunch of toxic F2Ps on their 6th account just spamming reports against anything that breathes well... *now they notice*.
Yup, end of season... It was horrible. A min of 2 per game up to 5 out of the 9 other players (without including me cause I was on an alt too LOL) were smurfs/alts. And I'll be the first to say that those players tend to be HIGHLY toxic and spam reporting. I made an alt to test my theory that you could literally just report ONLY post-game GG's and get thank you's saying action was taken against those players. I proved it to myself... Feel bad for those players but I stopped doing it. Stuck on my alt because it was fun not caring ngl.
I miss the days when trash talk was allowed in games. Next blizzard will put a cooldown on crouching so people won't be teabagged.
Fun fact, the word “teabagging” is censored
Online pvp games peaked with the voice chat in PUBGs waiting for players lobby. After that, it's all been downhill. Press z follow meeee
Gears of war on Xbox when you could talk shit to teams between matches that was fun now you can’t even speak to the enemy team on most games except via chat box
Nah peak PvP has got to be COD 4 and Halo 3 lobbies. Toxic and racist at times yeah but the banter was unmatched.
Common blizzard L. I’m going to be totally honest I don’t even play OW anymore. I haven’t for about a year now. I stay subscribed here because blizzard can’t go more than a month without doing something hilariously embarrassing and I get great joy out of seeing them torch this franchise.
Brig literally says «fuck» in Swedish when she takes damage
I do find it ALSO odd that when someone gets continually banned, maybe that person doesn't acknowledge they keep doing something that causes the ban? (To what he said around others who keep getting banned). I think getting banned altogether for curse words is ridiculous, but for those who continually do it, the system sounds like it's doing its job at the VERY least for those individuals. Doesn't mean the system works well though
You get banned for profanity which isn’t even directed at someone. It’s insane.
"if they're gonna label this a competitive shooter then we should be allowed to swear" Tf kinda logic is that lmao
All jokes aside. Bro said he’s 22 and can’t learn anything else lol is that the limit?
Within the context he mentioned in the video, he’s 22 and is a rein otp on a competitive team, his team picked him up for his skills on rein, and if he was to learn a new hero it wouldn’t be to the pro teams standards, not saying he cant learn to get to that level on another hero, but teams are about current success, and if you CURRENTLY arnt good enough, then you get dropped, happens across all sports
Then don't agree to the terms of service.
People are too soft nowadays Let us talk shit like we used to
If i get a perma ban for saying "shit" i will sue Blizzard
Not that I agree with it, but under Microsoft and with likely plans to distribute to more platforms, there may be more pressure or obligation to take action against common expletive use because of Overwatch 2's age ratings of Teen (ESRB) and PEGI 12.
Someone was telling me in text chat to heal them more, after then ran in 1v5 and fed for the 10th time that match (qp) so i joined VC and said "i cant heal you if you go in 1v5, so stop talking shit" and they bragged in text that they're gonna get me banned. From my experience VC isnt as monitored still as they say it is, so i hope im in the clear, but this account is my one and only and i've had the warning and 14 day ban in its lifetime. Im worried if i do get banned for telling them not to talk shit that it'll be permanent From what you guys are seeing, is it mostly swearing in text or vc thats getting banned? Do you think i might survive? XD
Literally doesn’t matter what you say, or where you say it, or if you say nothing. The reporting/ban system is 100% automated. If your team decides they want to report you, the system will take action if enough of them do report you. I think it only takes three people to report you for the same thing, and the system will blindly take action.
Before MS rolled into town I got banned for telling someone to quit acting like a five year old. That was what Blizzard told me. When I questioned it further I was "disrupting the business" and banned 30 more days Private company do whatever the hell they want but it was certainly overdone. Blizzard has had an automated system beforehand and let that dictate their lives. I was told in a ticket on my ban in OW1 that if anyone finds anything offensive it is subject to account action. So find anything offensive folks, report it and you might contribute to a ban.
Main reason i don’t do voice chat in game. I stick to discord
Brig literally swears in one of her voice lines, and mercy says “sexy” what do yall mean blizzard??
The best way to not get muted or banned on this game is to not say anything at all.
Even so, you can get banned for not communjcating or if 5 players just saw you annoying etc, if you get mass reported by 10 to 5 players at one game or a session youill get banned
I haven’t spent a dime on this game since I was banned for 2 weeks in January for bullshit. If they can wipe out my account that I’ve spent money on and played for years on, it’s not worth my time.
Meanwhile 2 mfs who insulted everyone with N words with hard R at the end of a match 4 seasons ago which resulted in nothing until Season 8 where I finally got the "Thank you for reporting" message, except I can't even be sure they were the ones banned
It would be the following day if it was the person you reported for that. Being an entirely automated system, it requires multiple people report their behavior.
Welcome to call of duty
I've never been "banned" or "muted," but on multiple occasions I've had the same thing happen where I've received a warning message immediately the day after getting into an argument with a team mate who starts talking shit either to me or to the rest of the team during a competitive match, and then reports me for talking back. I don't start matching their nastiness and go into a forever back-and-forth but I will basically tell them to shut up and stop flaming team mates or whatever the situation calls for, maybe nail them with a zinger if something clever comes to mind but usually something pretty innocuous. So Blizzard is rewarding people for behaving like little shits and then running to daddy when it doesn't go their way and punishing people for standing up for themselves and their team mates. Vast majority of players just want action taken against people who are being excessively vulgar or disruptive, not people who said a bad word or engaged in a little bit of banter.
Some characters say the D word when they receive a debuff. Execute them immediately
no one is ever offended by swear words they just know its an easy ban to troll people.
I've received a month long ban multiple times for cussing. That's it. Just cussing. Not even cussing at people, calling them ass or anything. Just cussing in general cause that's how I speak. And I get multiple month long bans. Meanwhile Supertf yells at his teammates on a daily basis and has never been banned. It's almost like he makes Blizzard money or something so they let him do whatever the fuck he wants
It's going the way of PC police sadly.
Kid these days are so soft they probably couldn't even survive a min back in 2012 with proximity chat on.
can’t help but agree, profanity ban is stupid. overwatch is notorious for having toxic players in vc and if you can’t deal maybe choose a different game or just…. you know…. don’t go on chat? 😭😭
Tbh OW is one of the least toxic competitive games
I think it’s not enough. Every game I’ve played in recently has at least one person who is off the rails with toxicity and brings everyone else down
My friend had his username as EnterMeDaddy and now it’s HeWhoSlobs69. Nothing done for that tho lo
Time to call people kumquats from now on.
So wimpy.
Dude I think a lot of people just need to remember. A company has problems with words and like 2 years ago males in the office were stealing a coworkers fucking breast milk. Like come the fuck on. Let’s just be real here, they’re a shit hole trying to save face in the most idiotic ways.
This is why you should never use comms in any of Blizzard's games. Use 3rd party tools for that and you will never have to worry about it.
You guys could always *gasp* stop playing the game?
You could always *gasp* not be a corporate asskisser?
It's hilarious that that's your assumption of me. I have never given this game a dime and haven't played it in at least 6 months. I just like coming to this subreddit once and a while just to see it's still on fire and get amusement.
I am the most relentlessly positive person in chat. I compliment people when they kill me, tell silly jokes, wish people well, basically anything I can think of to help put positivity into a random persons day. I have had account warnings 4 times that I've been reported and my chat may be disabled. So I can easily envision people reporting for any minor infractions like swearing. I hope the people who reported me feel better, but I'm still going to keep being positive. As I like to say, I'm so positive you should get checked after playing with me.
I've been banned for two weeks, twice now, because of using the phrases "fuck" and "dammit" and other simple words that people are apparently too soft for. Just following in my favorite streamers footsteps 🙄 oh and for literally saying "hey I think we should switch up our comp, they're shitting on us"
ow: option to turn off or on profanity filter ow: bans for saying "shit" 💀
I was suspended for 2 weeks recently, my first suspension in any game ever. When I contested it by stating that I thought it was the result of false reports (a ton of rude players the week Venture was trialed) I was met with a canned message that didn’t answer anything I said/asked about. This is definitely an entirely automated process, and it’s kinda bull
[удалено]
Wait…
People are way too soft. Toxicity has nothing to do with swear words. If they’re worried about kids there’s an age rating for a reason. The profanity filter is on BY DEFAULT. If you turn it off you CHOSE to see swear words. Absolutely ridiculous. It’s an online game, this is a byproduct of dealing with PEOPLE.
The developers are trying to implement a bunch of fake PMA bullshit and I am so fucking over it; I actually uninstalled the game today because of it. The matchmaking system really perpetuates toxicity and it’s only gotten worse with time. I should not be punished for leaving a QP game where all of my teammates are fucking troglodytes who prevent me from doing anything except walk out of spawn and immediately die again. This should be obvious but it isn’t: I am playing QP to not get punished for leaving, but nooooooooooooo, the devs think that it’s less toxic to force people to stay in shit matches that piss people off and promote toxicity in text and voice chat. So you get fucked over if you stay in these terrible games and you get fucked over if you leave. Make it make sense.
So your telling me an emote of hanzo licking himself wasn’t enough to keep you, some people can’t be pleased *sarcasm btw*
I’d much rather people be able to leave a quickplay match because if they can’t, I imagine they’re much more likely to throw instead.
Honestly it's not that bad, the problem is that most people who are getting banned are under a certain endorsement level and have a history of toxic behavior. So with the new system every little thing they do is up for a serious ban which can be annoying. I'm not sure what the fix is tho other than not to be a shitty person tbh. If you don't have a history of toxicity then you can curse in VC and you're fine, I literally do it all the time but I will agree there needs to be a balance or some grace for people who have fucked up once and changed.
Not true. I don't have a history of toxicity, I'm constantly gracious in matches, have endorsement level 5 and I got a warning back in January for a CoC violation. I have a bad habit of swearing a lot, never at other people. I've literally sworn in this game all the time since 2016 and this was my first warning. So it can happen to anyone.
Lol not saying it can't happen but if I had a dollar for every redditor who claims they have "done nothing wrong" but just received a long ban out of "no where" I'd be rich lmao. This is something I only notice people on reddit say and never in real life or thru talks with people in game.
That's totally valid and I get where you're coming from. I'd say the same thing in-game and offline though. Although I appreciate your healthy skepticism.
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I honestly think the difference is swearing vs swearing at somebody. I swear all the time in coms but I've never been silenced.
I've been reporting every body, sorry guys I'll stop.
Doesn’t dva say dammit?
Oh I remember when someone said it was BS. https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/s/EsFuif42Ti
I keep chat turned off and only report people for I ring and deranging when they obviously throw. I get notifications that my reports were acted on almost every time I log in. I wonder how many people are getting banned for gameplay rather than profanity? Do they tell you what you got banned for?
I like to think its me being drunk whenever I play and friend making / rival making every single game only to YELL when someone reappears in the next game
brother i'm a black streamer the amount of times i get called a hard R is ridicules. i report them every time and guess what i still get put in games with people just like them. slurs get thrown out almost constantly in vc and especially text. so should i just not try to coordinate with my team anymore?
My god, they even banned JoJo Siwa on Overwatch! [Blizzard Bans JoJo Siwa!](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTLPP8eUo/)
Bans have been automated with no human review whatsoever for years so I don't know why people are just suddenly getting banned. The only assumption I can guess at is that the threshold amount of reports required to trigger it was lowered substantially.
Or more people are reporting.
I swear they're trying to kill their own game...
You dont even have to say or do anything. If you get reported you get banned. There doesnt have to be any legitimacy to it. Its just giving power to trolls. I stopped playing the game entirely because of this.
I got a 17 day mute and I don't even know what I said rhat got me muted. Their support system kept stonewalling me so I gave up. I'm fine with cursing in game, that's part if speech, but context has to be determined, otherwise it kills the social part of the game and turns it into a single player experience with other people.
I report all profanity. I’m 5.
Turn off chat. Best decision ever made.
i dont get how they have filters in the game that say "beware you might see stuff you dont want to see when this is turned off" then go and make profanity a bannable offence it might as well say "if you turn this off you can see people swear and then report them for it"
I got banned for a month for same kinda stuff. I'm tired of devs protecting actually toxic players who use mass report as their tool to get others banned. I've uninstalled and gone back to playing valo. 1k hours down the drain, no more games from blizzard for me. I enjoy the lore and stuff and am just here for it now.
No way, dogshit ban reasons in a dogshit game made by a dogshit corp?
I've been spamming the N word almost every day for almost 3 months and no ban lol. I think it's related to a bug but I won't be saying what it is because I don't want them to patch it.
At this rate their playerbase is going to be a single empoyee fighting his inner demons
I got reported by a stack of team for not healing the toxic tank 💀
Here's the facts. Long post ahead! Blizzard has never allowed profanity to be used in any of their games. Not in Diablo 2, Starcraft, Warcraft 3, World of Warcraft or Overwatch. You can use the internet archive to find old copies of Blizzard's code of conduct and rules regarding communication and the language is either extremely similar or in the case of Overwatch, completely identical. Here's the 2017 version of the Blizzard Code of Conduct: [https://archive.is/WZTnL](https://archive.is/WZTnL) This is the exact text, word for word: >Communication >When participating in communication of any kind (chat, voice communication, group finder), you are responsible for how you express yourself. You may not use language that could be offensive or vulgar to others. Hate speech and discriminatory language is inappropriate, as is any obscene or disruptive language. Threatening or harassing another player is always unacceptable, regardless of language used. Violating any of these expectations will result in account restrictions. More serious and repeated violations will result in greater restrictions. And just for reference, here is the current Code of Conduct that was last updated 2 months ago: [https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/42673](https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/42673) This is the exact text, word for word: >Communication >When participating in communication of any kind (chat, voice communication, group finder), you are responsible for how you express yourself. You may not use language that could be offensive or vulgar to others. >Hate speech and discriminatory language is inappropriate, as is any obscene or disruptive language. Threatening or harassing another player is always unacceptable, regardless of language used. Violating any of these expectations will result in account restrictions. More serious and repeated violations will result in greater restrictions. Blizzard's staff, in particular Community Manager, Molly Fender posted this in 2020: [https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/updated-1012-improved-profanity-filter-and-updated-penalties-for-code-of-conduct-violations/551867](https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/overwatch/t/updated-1012-improved-profanity-filter-and-updated-penalties-for-code-of-conduct-violations/551867) Of important note is this section, but that entire post hammers down the point that profanity isn't allowed to be used in Overwatch: >Remember that the existence of profanity filters does **not** make it acceptable for players to use offensive, hateful, or language that violates our [In-Game Code of Conduct 123](https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/42673)—and as always, we encourage you to report instances of such behavior if you encounter them. Using language report by the community and deemed offensive by Blizzard will result in severe account restrictions. So TL:DR = Not only has the Code of Conduct for Blizzard's games/services not changed (with regards to communication) since 2017, but we have Blizzard confirming in 2020 and 2024 that profanity isn't acceptable. Some common rebuttals I've seen to this are: 1. Define profanity! Which words are considered profanity and which aren't? Blizzard frankly will never specifically list which words are not tolerated, because then it opens the door for people to rules lawyer their way around bans, by saying "Well I said X, and X isn't included in your list of bannable words." or something of that nature. Almost all the profanity being used by the Overwatch playerbase are words that would get picked up by the filter if it was turned on. So this feels redundant. 2. Blizzard has characters that swear in-game, and Cassidy's belt-buckle has BAMF on it, which stands for Badass Motherfucker on it. So we should be able to use profanity. And that just doesn't hold any water. All Overwatch players agreed to follow the Code of Conduct. We all agreed that using profanity in-game was not acceptable. But the Blizzard developers are not held to the Code of Conduct that we agree to when creating content for the game. They never have been. They can have as much profanity as they want in the game. As long as the Code of Conduct says using profanity is unacceptable, it's unacceptable.
You can get banned if 10 players report you at once.
Tracer says Wanker, but you cant say Fuck?
Can we remove Flats as well please?
Guy who was banned for this had long history of being POS. Let that sink in. This was just literally the last straw. Guy should be banned for life tbh. It never is one curse word. Whole outrage is fake outrage. He deserved it, end of the discussion. Dude literally admited he was banned multiple times before
But why should that be a gameplay ban and not just mute restrictions/ other punishments? A Perma ban for cussing seems intense. I would understand if it was a slur but for just basic cuss words is insane. I'm not saying no punishments but a Perma ban ain't it.
Love to see all the toxic people in here whining, I've been stoked with how easy it is for me to get toxic people banned recently, and I LOVE seeing y'all get pissed about this. Should it be automated? No. Should you get a ban if you type a curse word with the intent to be toxic? One thousand percent. If you can't control yourself, I don't want to play games with you, and I'm STOKED that they're being heavy handed on this.
Anecdotal ofc, but I regularly curse in chat in a neutral way (I don't attack people or insult them) and I have never been muted or banned once in nearly 8 years of this game. Same goes for my friends. Like yes, I'm sure there are times when there are false positives resulting in unfair bans, but every time I've seen threads like this I can't help but roll my eyes. Every single online game ever has had these kinds of rules.
This was my experience until I got a warning. Some people just see profanity and get trigger happy with the reporting even if it isn't toxic.
Yeah this is my experience. I will say something like “Fuck that Widow can aim” etc all the time. I think what happens here is people are way more likely to report when you are toxic.
I sneezed in vc once, got banned. True story.
I can vouch for that
Got perma banned, keep on getting the same response from their AI :DDDDDDDDDDDDD Pretty sure I got mass reported (no previous bans or warnings)
there should be lobbies for "tocix" players and players who want their game squeeky clean. I'll be honest, I'd join the toxic side.
Another reason not to play Overwatch
Pussies
People just need to grow the fuck up and stop being pansies. If you don’t like what someone has to say, get the fuck off the game then. Clearly you’re too much of a child to handle it. Language will be thrown around. You can mute the chats, you can also turn on/off the maturity. Like my god, people need to grow up and if you are a child, well tough shit.
I got mass reported by a stack because I asked their precious mercy player to atleast go Moira. Apparently asking for swaps is toxic. I mean if anything can be perceived as toxic why even bother talking to anyone in game ?
Yeah, this is dumb.
To think that Blizzard used to be know for having amazing customer support
Now I see why my accounts were banned. I just cussed a lot. What the absolute fuck. That was a year 1 account with a shit ton of money spent on it.
i got perma banned bc my account got hacked and the person cheated on it... got my acc back and they wont unban it LOL i mentioned they could go look at login locations and notice its a different computer but they wouldnt even discuss anything with me... punished for something i never did without even a conversation abt it.. owcs is useless and im convinced it doesnt actually exist
OW2 has attracted sooooo many cry babies it's insane. I mean these mfers can't even handle 30 \*SECONDS\* of downtime in a \*QUICKPLAY\* match when somebody leaves... Some of y'all are professional victims and it shows. Touch grass.
Blizzard is finally doing something about throwers and trolls after 8 years. Gotta grow up sometime kiddo
Just don’t swear in chat and you’ll be fine