We take feedback about communication abuse seriously, and in the past we’ve shipped settings that let customers control their exposure to other players’ avatars, names, and voice/text chat. (You can find these in Settings->Game->Communication and on the scoreboard). The settings are useful, but they have the downside of squelching communication indiscriminately.

So we’ve been working on a new system that will work more precisely. When the new system is fully deployed, players will receive a warning if they receive significantly more abuse reports than other players.

If they ignore that feedback and continue to receive abuse reports, they’ll receive a penalty: they will be muted by all other players by default. This ‘default mute’ state will remain until the player earns enough XP to remove the penalty, but other players can choose to manually unmute the user (as they would any other muted player).

Because the new system is driven by reports, it lets players establish their own standards for communication and ensure that their fellow players receive anonymous feedback when they’re out of line.

We’ve already started tracking players’ reports with the new system, and you can help us by getting into the habit of reporting abusive players for ‘Abusive Communications or Profile’ when you come across them. Note that reports are weighted higher for players that play more and/or report less frequently, so accounts that generate no XP and/or spam reports will have little to no impact.