CSGO sharpens penalties for abuse reports in-game

The newest Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CSGO) blog entry, named “Squelching the Noise,” updates the developers’ efforts to minimize in-game voice and chat abuse. A new system is in the works in order to punish abusers more harshly when reports come in. This may somewhat resemble FACEIT’s own anti-cheat system that is being developed, Minerva AI.

More serious punishments for in-game abuse

Racism, sexism, homophobia, and other unnecessary in-game abuse are not an uncommon thing in CSGO. Yet in general, reporting for chat or verbal abuse in-game has yielded little to no result. CSGO developers have decided to make abusers’ life a little more difficult. Soon, reporting for “Abusive Communications or Profile” will be taken to the next level. Players that get a lot of abuse reports will now be notified with a message. If their behavior does not change and they receive more reports, they will be muted by default by other in-game players. The “default mute” state will be in place until the perpetrator “earns enough XP to remove the penalty” (in-game experience for playing the game). Of course, other team members may unmute the muted player, if they wish to do so.

Players that play the game more often and don’t report on a large scale will have their reports treated as more weighty. On the flip side, players that barely touch CSGO and report in overwhelming amounts will not have their reports treated as seriously.

Valve’s answer to FACEIT’s Minerva?

Abusive communications were not long ago taken to the next level by FACEIT when the platform decided to implement Minerva AI on their servers. Minerva tracks FACEIT’s platform, as well as in-game server, chat and issues cooldowns for acts of hate speech, racism, sexism, and others. Despite being a somewhat different system, this does up to some extent reflect FACEIT’s efforts to make Counter-Strike: Global Offensive environment more bearable and friendly. Seeing and hearing unnecessary hate speech throughout a match is something that many players complain about and even get discouraged by.

What do you think of Valve’s update on their system in CSGO? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. Follow Daily Esports for all your latest CSGO news.