Activision has provided a status report on toxic behavior, hate speech, and harassment in the various Call of Duty games, including Warzone, Black Ops Cold War, Modern Warfare, and CoD: Mobile. In a blog post, Activision said first and foremost that it will not tolerate this kind of behavior in its games, while it also takes a stand against it in society.
“We are focused on making positive steps forward, and together celebrating the best fans in the world,” Activision said. “We know addressing toxicity is not simple and requires sustained effort.”
Over the past 12 months, Activision has banned more than 350,000 accounts over racist names or toxic behavior in Warzone, Black Ops Cold War, Modern Warfare, and Mobile. These bans came as a result of both player-submitted reports and Activision’s own tools.
Also over the past year, Activision released new in-game filters that automatically detect racist and offensive names, while new technology was also added to the games to get rid of offensive text chat. These filters are now applied across 11 languages, Activision said.
This is just the beginning of what Activision hopes to achieve to clean up the Call of Duty community, the publisher said. Looking forward, Activision said it will increase the capabilities of its player-reporting tools and moderation systems, while the company will also do more with voice chat to combat toxic behavior.
“Our goal is to give players the tools needed to manage their own gameplay experience, combined with an enforcement approach that addresses hate speech, racism, sexism, and harassment,” Activision said.
Here are some of the ways that Activision will take aim at weeding out even more bad actors from the Call of Duty community:
- More resources to support detection and enforcement
- Additional monitoring and backend technology
- Scrubbing databases to bring systems up to current standards
- Consistent and fair review of enforcement policies
- Increased communication with the community
“We know we have a long way to go to reach our goals. This is just the start. Addressing this is an ongoing commitment that we will not waiver from. We look forward to making progress on this front and coming together with you to share in the fun and joy of playing together,” Activision said.
In addition to addressing toxic behavior, Activision continues to take a hard line against cheaters. So far, Activision has banned more than 500,000 accounts from Warzone alone for cheating.
