how does blizzard handle threats?

[Deleted]

if people threaten you through voice chat how does blizzard handle this? will they get account closed?

[Temp name]

For just doing it once? Probably not. If it continues, likely.

[Deleted]

For just doing it once? Probably not. If it continues, likely.

what is the point to report if they don't stop them?

[Stardrift]

Best is to just not get butthurt about it. They're the losers. They're threatening over an online videogame. Get butthurt, they win. Ignore them? They'll most likely scream and throw a fit with their mic on mute.

[jellmoo]

https://us.battle.net/support/en/art...ode-of-Conduct

"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."

[Jessicka]

They need to be reported a number of times in a short period for Blizz to act. Starts by muting them, increases from there.

[xChurch]

If there is a pattern of abuse then they do get punished, but it takes a few reports. Best you can do is report someone, mute them and move on.

[Deleted]

if people threaten you through voice chat how does blizzard handle this? will they get account closed?

Probably best way is to include a lot of words like "abuse" "hate speech" "racism" "threat" "suicide" "kill" and stuff like that in your report, and hope they got some kind of algorithm in place to filter out more serious reports.

[DeadmanWalking]

what is the point to report if they don't stop them?

If you don't report them and they never get repeat reportings then nothing ever gets done about them. I report people regularly for bad behavior, if I get 1 toxic player removed from the games that I enjoy it makes the game a much better place for everyone else who knows how to behave themselves.

[Deleted]

So far the only form of punishment we know off for "toxicity" is getting a chat ban. At least i haven't read anything else, it's empty threats said in the heat of the moment so Blizzard would probably not even give a shit if you didn't open up a ticket and send them a video then maybe they would.

[-aiko-]

With brute force. Blizzard has a special operations team that will hunt down and destroy the threat for a nominal fee.



For real though, if it's through a third party voice chat there is not much they can do. If you are using in-game voice or in-game text chat they can review the claim and suspend for harassment as necessary.

[Deleted]

So far the only form of punishment we know off for "toxicity" is getting a chat ban. At least i haven't read anything else, it's empty threats said in the heat of the moment so Blizzard would probably not even give a shit if you didn't open up a ticket and send them a video then maybe they would.

lol... chat ban for threatening people? they should ban their accounts...

[Ehrenpanzer]

if people threaten you through voice chat how does blizzard handle this? will they get account closed?

The problem is "voice chat". There is no way to prove what people said, simply mute them and move on. Honestly you should kinda cut them some slack, if their entire life revolves around how good they are at a FPS, they probably have a pretty shitty life to begin with and deserve your pity.

[Jessicka]

I just play without voice and text chat so I don't have to deal with it.

Pretty much. At this level 90% of it is silence, the rest various bodily sounds. Was asked today to join it on threat of the guy throwing; I joined and within a minute I had everyone muted because it was just burping and chewing. Seriously, nobody wants to hear that shit.

[Mifuyne]

Call the internet police since you met someone super dangerous online.

[ComputerNerd]

They need to be reported a number of times in a short period for Blizz to act. Starts by muting them, increases from there.

Maybe, maybe not.
I reported a player for impersonating me in a rather less than flattering way.
I can't be certain whether other players reported them or not, but that got acted upon and very quickly by blizzard's standards.
Given the complete ceasing of it, I suspect it was at least muting.

[Raetary]

like usual.

starting low with a chatban.
if that doesnt help they even start banning.

[Deleted]

Pretty much. At this level 90% of it is silence, the rest various bodily sounds. Was asked today to join it on threat of the guy throwing; I joined and within a minute I had everyone muted because it was just burping and chewing. Seriously, nobody wants to hear that shit.

that's weird, i mean sure - there are obnoxious fucks on voice but its easy to just mute them, and as far as voice goes i'd say it's 70-80% just silence and most of the rest people are actually trying to communicate to win... in total i probably have 400-500 hrs on ow, way over 100 in competetive where i think people tend to be most toxic and i had to mute someone only a handful of times .. usually hovering at gold - plat dunno about other skill ratings

OT: as for the threats, just report, /ignore and move on

[Deleted]

Pretty much. At this level 90% of it is silence, the rest various bodily sounds. Was asked today to join it on threat of the guy throwing; I joined and within a minute I had everyone muted because it was just burping and chewing. Seriously, nobody wants to hear that shit.

It gets better in higher rankings. The higher you go, the more communication you will find.

- - - Updated - - -

lol... chat ban for threatening people? they should ban their accounts...

I imagine they will if they receive enough reports. Given that the whole system is automated they only look into it if there's enough reports or the person wishes to appeal or something.

I preferred HoN's way of dealing with reports. They personally looked into every single report made, however, if they didn't consider your report valid enough to warrant action against the person, you received a mark of sorts which lasted for 3 months or until your next report is deemed valid. If you received 3 marks, you were made unable to report people for 3 months regardless. It also cost a fairly small amount of in-game currency (which you obtained simply by playing the game), if your report was deemed valid you were refunded the currency spent in full.

Basically, anyone who made proper reports could keep doing so (like I was), and you received confirmation whether they took action or not based on your report (which meant you actually felt like they were punished), and those who just reported people for no reason quickly lost those privileges so they wouldn't drown the moderators in pointless nonsense.

Their reporting system even had a slider where it asked you to put it at what minute into the game the toxic behaviour in question happened, so the moderator wouldn't have to watch the whole re-play of the game (as that would take far too much of their time).

I imagine this is a more expensive means of handling reports than the automated system Blizzard uses, but it felt like toxic behaviour was actually dealt with even through a single report, which was great.

[Joeygiggles]

Well what threat was made? Are they saying they are going to find you a kill you? or is it something less something more? You may have perceived view of a threat that may not actually be a threat but abusive language so if we had more context we could see what category it would fall under