"Overwatch" is the massive multiplayer hero shooter which has dominated the online gaming market since it was released in 2016. Despite only launching a bit over a year ago, it feels like Blizzard's successful game has been around forever. With a new season every other month and new heroes constantly announced, there always seems to be something happening in "Overwatch."
Although the developer releases updates quite often, they confirmed that the process has been slowed down due to the toxic nature of some parts of the community.
Good behavior leads to faster updates
Blizzard is constantly updating the game, introducing new heroes, animations, and maps. This is a huge online game and one that is constantly evolving, and the company has made it clear they do not plan to let it go stale anytime soon.
As anyone who has ever played a massive multiplayer online game knows, the experience is only as enjoyable as the people playing with you. A toxic or unwelcoming community could actually kill an MMO since it can lead to new players not wanting to try and get in on the action.
In a Developer Update released on the game's official youtube channel, Game director Jeff Kaplan summed it up by asking games to "play nice, play fair." Apparently, the situation in "Overwatch" has gotten so bad, that Blizzard is wasting a lot of their time trying to punish and monitor the behavior of the community.
This cuts into time that could be spent developing new heroes or maps.
"We've been put in this weird position where we're spending a tremendous amount of time and resources punishing people and trying to make people behave better," explained the game director.
While some other games might try to separate the good from the bad players, Blizzard simply does not want them to play "Overwatch." Kaplan declared "if you are a bad person doing bad things in Overwatch, we don't want you in Overwatch."
Will this help?
This probably will not help.
If there is one thing that the internet tends to not react well to is threats. As great as it would be to play "Overwatch" without some 14-year-old kid insulting your dead grandmother, it is unlikely they will change their ways just because Blizzard asked them to behave.
Unfortunately, the only way to improve this type of issue is to punish offending players to an extent that they are removed from the game. Since this update specifically mentioned removing bad players, it could be the developer already has plans in place. They cannot say they have not been warned.
