MCV/DEVELOP News, events, research and jobs from the games industry
The London Police force has been given approval to establish a new unit designed specifically to target the perpetrators of online hate crimes. The BBC reports that the new team will consist of five officers. The Home Office is to contribute 452,000 of the two-year pilot’s 1.7m cost. Essentially the …
Read More »Blizzard introduces Silence Penalty for repeated WoW potty mouths
Bad mouthing other players too many times in World of Warcraft will soon render you silent. Blizzard has unveiled ‘The Silence Penalty’ for those who are reported multiple times under the Spam or Abusive Chat categories”. If upon investigation Blizzard is concerned, the offender’s chat privileges will be severely reduced. …
Read More »Toxic League of Legends players also also make for toxic workers, Riot finds
Having examined 12 months worth of gameplay for every employee, League of Legends developer Riot discovered "a correlation between in-game and in-Riot toxicity". Writing for GoogleRe:work, the studio said: The Riot team hypothesised there’d be a correlation between highly toxic in-game play and workplace toxicity; if a Rioter received lots …
Read More »Government continues online abuse crackdown
The Crown Prosecution Service has published a new set of guidelines designed to broaden the scope with which online bullies can be prosecuted. Among the new crimes is the setting up of fake profiles in another person’s name. There is also clarification on actions such as revenge porn and intimidation, …
Read More »Undertale is about to be voted the Best Game Ever – and the internet is furious
A Kickstarted six-hour RPG made by two people and released just three months ago is about the be crowned the Best Game Ever. Toby Fox’s Undertale, which was released on PC in September, is currently winning the polling in a GameFaqs contest to crown the best video game ever made. …
Read More »Trolls under pressure as both Reddit and Twitter take action to limit hate
The internet’s reputation as a hatred free-for-all is being increasingly challenged, and now two of its leading networks have taken steps to limit people’s freedom to abuse. Having outlined a new anti-harassment policy last month, Rediit has today taken the unprecedented step of completely banning five hate-led subreddits – r/fatpeoplehate …
Read More »Kickstarter troll victim Dimension Drive funded at second attempt
2Awesome Studio’s second attempt at crowdfunding sci-fi shooter Dimension Drive has been met with success. Despite seemingly coming close during its previous attempt at raising funds, the studio’s hopes were snatched away from them with just 30 minutes to goafter a fraudulent donation of €7,000 was reversed. The team had …
Read More »This is how Xbox One will help you avoid the trolls
Microsoft has offered more details on its troll-avoiding Reputation system that will be used on Xbox One. Feedback on players has been streamlined to be more direct and ultimately group players into one of just three categories – Green (Good Player), Yellow (Needs Improvement) or Red (Avoid Me). This categorisation …
Read More »Xbox One Reputation system will match trolls with trolls
Microsoft realises it can’t stop people being dicks. But it can protect everyone else from their insidious influence. That’s the idea behind Xbox One’s Reputation system, which will monitor a player’s behaviour and the responses they evoke in others over time to form a Reputation profile. As this develops, trolls …
Read More »Why all that whinging online is counterproductive
Ever been left infuriated as the developer or publisher from whom you have been demanding answers online simply ignores you? Yeah, well it could be that’s there’s a very good reason for that. You may well fall into an upsettingly large category of online forum users whom sane minded individuals …
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