Valve's forgotten game: Team Fortress 2's shocking toxicity problem - Sensationalist Headlines

lots of people here not reading the actual article completely missing the point makes me sad. as someone active in the workshop i've witnessed some of this shit first hand and it goes way beyond just ignoring ppl

I didn't even know there was a retail box

Can all of you fucking idiots forming your opinions and replying based on the title of the thread go right the fuck back and read the article. This isn't "Well TF2 was always like this duhhh." or "Just use the mute option lol." This is a case that goes beyond the game and in to the community in a way that targets underrepresented groups because of who they are and that shouldn't be a problem in any gaming sphere. If you have to get so defensive based on an article title maybe TF2 really does have a toxicity problem.

Woooosh

bring back "didn't read the article" bans

There isn't actually a good reason. My only issue - with say the way that R6S has done it - is that it's very easy to misspell say, the word "like" into a slur, especially if you're typing quickly mid-match.

Don't say Schwarzenegger in Siege.

Because bad words are the most superficial and meaningless form of harassment and applying word filters does absolutely nothing to reduce toxicity let alone prevent people from using the bad words.

Did steel even read the article before posting it. Just shows the state of this section when almost nobody posting in the thread actually read the article or has any clue about the context in which is was written, not even the guy who posted it to mock the headline.

https://twitter.com/tylerthecreator/status/285670822264307712?lang=en

lock ratings from tools below 200 posts while youre at it

idk, I'm uncomfortable with the idea of a dev deciding what is and is not appropriate communication. I think, on a public server, they can do whatever they want and ban people who break some kind of code of conduct. On private servers, however, I don't think valve should have any jurisdiction (to ban a users account for all servers, for example). The game's chat features and voice features are just a communication channel and valve shouldn't have any jurisdiction over a communication protocol used via a private channel. However, all the shit about the workshop and steam forums not being moderated is just fucking laziness. It's yet another example of large tech companies wanting to have inline interactions without hiring the requisite people to moderate those interactions. Valve could, at the very least, require the dev of a game to moderate their own subforum but that would place undue burden on small devs (though I guess they could opt-out of having a subforum if they want)

Because the Siege system is flawed and tries to apply English-speaking acceptability to languages other than English. For example, the game features gadgets called Black Eyes and Black Mirrors, plus a set of skins called Black Ice. In the Spanish-language translation of the game, those things use the Spanish word for black, negro. When the chat autoban system was rolled out, Spanish-speaking players were getting banned for referring to those in-game skins and gadgets in chat because of the way negro is used in English. Does that sound like a good system?

I've noticed it's getting better on community servers because most of the assholes and hackers have fucked off to matchmaking. Otherwise my opinion is that the bots in this game are surprisingly better than most players in skill and manners so go play with them for a consistently challenging experience.

Youve either still not read the fucking article or think this is relevant to irl sexual harassement, doxxing, stalking, transphobia and and racism. Good look, lad.

Jesus christ, I was waiting for this kind of sarcastic and honestly dumb biased comment that has the same black and white idea as "if you're not with us, you're against us", as if there never is a grey area other than "yes and no". But I never expected someone to be THAT obvious and pretty much bite the bullet. Really, its as if theres always someone ready to jump into it with a comment like that. I'll humor you, but instead of saying yes, I'll instead say: "you don't need to pretend to be this or that. You're playing a game. Why are we talking about gender when we're playing a game? Someone was mean to you? Either answer back or mute them, why did it escalate into people knowing you're transgender?"

To build on your point there was a time when facepunch had an automoderator system. If you used the N word you were automatically permabanned and if I remember right there was no appeal. One lad tried to post a thread in the PC hardware section, looking for a bigger hard-drive. Take a look at what letter is next to B on a qwerty keyboard and why someone typing a little quickly might end up on trouble for that.

(Let's ignore the first paragraph, since that doesn't contribute anything other than insults.) We are talking about gender, because as others have pointed out in this thread already, the harassment stretched beyond the scope of the game. The competitive environment consists largely of specific individuals, which play in teams and appear more than once. Inevitably, those people will get to know each other better than your average public lobby player. And unlike said average players, you simply cannot avoid running into these people again. Here's a little thought experiment. TF2 becomes a large competitive hit and reaches a status akin to CS:GO's current one - that is, tournaments held in public arenas, through LAN, with players making a physical appearance there. A team with a transgender person in it enters the tournament and they qualify for the matches that are played in front of an audience, in those fancy soundproof booths and whatnot. What would a transgender player be supposed to do in that case? Desperately try to obscure their identity because some sheltered douche in the audience (or even in the other team) cannot fathom their existence? Arekk's behaviour towards Nursey - and the behaviour of the toxic part of TF2's competitive community - was unacceptable, both from a sportsmanship-based and from an interpersonal point of view. There is a line between non-hostile banter before the fight and making an active effort to harass, insult, silence, or even blackball someone based on their identity.

it is definitely toxic, but I still have had tons of fun playing it over the years. I usually play with a group of friends now, privately. Pubs are an absolute cesspool. The very sparse times I've used voice chat, I get fucked with by reeeeaaaally aggressive weirdos. The only people who don't give me a hard time are other girls, or young kids

That's fucking it Imma find some doctor to make a psycho serum and release it into the water supply worldwide, feels are cancelled forever because y'all cannot behave

I had no idea they were banning people for using the word negro too. That's definitely a step too far, especially in regards to language differences - and lets be honest, most racists default to using the full on n-word anyway, not softer varieties.

Yeah I'd rather not Valve start cracking down on "toxic" comments on Steam. Because we all know it'd be done automatically and result in hundreds of people and content being wrongly banned.

Toxic comments /= doxxing, harassment

so do they want valve to be moderating private servers now or something? TF2 is an anachronism, its not really controlled by valve much other than a few things like the loadout servers, its really out of their hands what people do on other people's servers, its up to those servers to moderate their platform.

I have had nothing but nice experiences playing competitively on TF2. Unfortunately Valve's ranking system made me stop playing. I totally tell friendlies and people trading to fuck off in normal servers because they aren't playing the game. I also tell whiners to stop whining about mechanics in the chat. Play the game.

It goes the other way aswell, I can call someone horrible things in their or my language as long as it's not a slur in English. It's just a flawed system.

man you read neither the article NOR the things other people were posting like did you just come in here based on the title, scrolled down and smacked that down?

"hurr just turn off your chat/voice comms" what if someone wants to actually be able to communicate with their team and other players? why should it be their fault that some cunt starts shitting on them, simply for wanting to interact with others and use an important feature of the game? sure, if it's just some random asshole in one game, you can mute/block and move on. but (as several others before me have said), if you actually read the article, you'll realize that there's far more to this shit than just some kid typing a misspelled slur into the chat. as a side note re: "tf2 was always like this" (and this is just a personal, potentially skewed opinion), back in like 2008-2011 or so when i played the game heavily, there was plenty of banter for sure, but it was hardly ever truly mean-spirited and anyone who was a fucking pissy baby and started being legitimately toxic and flaming at other players would be ridiculed. i've gone back and played it a few times recently and that kind of asshattery seemed to have become the norm (outside of smaller community servers). maybe it's just matchmaking that attracts dickheads like flies to shit, or maybe my sensibilities have changed since then, but it feels more toxic than it used to.

congratulations, here's your 'officially cannot read the goddamn article' certificate but i doubt you can even read these words so what's the point second runner up

Again there's 2 things, for anyone needing a tl;dr cause they cant be bothered to read the article. -Ingame toxicity through voicechat and chat, which are trash and shouldnt be tolerated but isnt what the article is about -Toxicity outside of the game in different tf2 communities, with a bunch of comp players being exposed as being genuinely racist, mysoginist, transphobic and more, multiple of them recieving league bans. Plus actual crimes commited by undisclosed community members, creating a shockwave in the last weeks. Overall, some community members coming from minority groups have been genuinely harassed, and thats what the article is about.