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[IbizaPocholo]

Hey there! This is a topic near and dear to me, so maybe I can shed some light on it.

There a few moving parts here. One thing you're asking about is how will we action players caught cheating, exploiting, etc. That falls to our outstanding Customer Experience team and is outside the scope of my area of responsibility.

The general toxicity question is a great one. There has been quite a bit of talk about this recently in game development, led by the Fair Play Alliance. There are some great learnings about methods to combat toxicity that have been shared by several studios for the greater good. The tricky part is before you launch the game you don't really know how much toxicity will surface in your player community.

The approach we have been taking is a proactive one: studying best practices and success stories around the game industry and applying some of those in Anthem. I can't really speak to details at this point, but I'm working with a holistic plan with the ability to both be proactive and reactive to whatever flavor of community standards settle in around Anthem.

It's an important issue, and i'm encouraged that game developers are openly talking about it and sharing solutions among the dev community.

 

[royox]

>Start Game
>Join a party
>classic idiot starts yelling/saying shit
>Mute+block

I really don't understand what's so HARD about it.

 

[Lunk]

It will shut down its online servers to pretend its critics don't exist because BioWare.

 

[Schrödinger's cat]

>Start Game
>Join a party
>classic idiot starts yelling/saying shit
>Mute+block

I really don't understand what's so HARD about it.

What's hard is that it requires a modicum of personal agency and accountability.
This is a lot to ask.

 

[Mr Hyde]

The best way for Anthem to deal with toxicity is to not be released at all.

 

[Dunki]

Hey there! This is a topic near and dear to me, so maybe I can shed some light on it.

There a few moving parts here. One thing you're asking about is how will we action players caught cheating, exploiting, etc. That falls to our outstanding Customer Experience team and is outside the scope of my area of responsibility.

The general toxicity question is a great one. There has been quite a bit of talk about this recently in game development, led by the Fair Play Alliance. There are some great learnings about methods to combat toxicity that have been shared by several studios for the greater good. The tricky part is before you launch the game you don't really know how much toxicity will surface in your player community.

The approach we have been taking is a proactive one: studying best practices and success stories around the game industry and applying some of those in Anthem. I can't really speak to details at this point, but I'm working with a holistic plan with the ability to both be proactive and reactive to whatever flavor of community standards settle in around Anthem.

It's an important issue, and i'm encouraged that game developers are openly talking about it and sharing solutions among the dev community.

Since they are also under EA like Dice just censor words like White male and everything is fine.

On a more serous note. I do not know what these best practices are but to me it would be best to let me decide on my own what I can do. For example let me self censor words, let me self mute people. Let me decide what I am willing to accept and what not. I personally think this is the best approach. Also if you want to take a look at a great community try FFXIV.

 

[Sygma]

I can't really speak to details at this point, but I'm working with a holistic plan with the ability to both be proactive and reactive to whatever flavor of community standards settle in around Anthem.

At worse you'll have a LFG discord like in Destiny with people asking for multiple clears after one week that your raid is released.

Like Anthem doesn't even have PvP so you should be fine, for what's worth I've never seen any toxicity in isometric rpgs with online components, and its very rarely encountered in Destiny aswell. And for the sake of putting a name on it, that includes Torchlight and Diablo 3. What you don't want is heading the Overwatch route, which is one that has zero impact on your toxic behavior unless you're over invested in the game and thus, can't stand playing when you're banned for x amount of days

as Mike in breaking bad said best : no half measures. You ban / take actions for real so people stay in line or you don't and watch your community eat itself up. Been around since 15 years and I've seen the later in many online games

 

[Fuz]

Also if you want to take a look at a great community try FFXIV.

It was a complete shitfest of elitism and toxicity when I played. I played only a few months after ARR launch, toh. But I'm kinda skeptic that it has improved so much.

My personal choice for great community are those from LotRO and The Secret World. Absolutely amazing, super helpful, nice and respectful. They attract an older audience, I guess.

 

[Dunki]

It was a complete shitfest of elitism and toxicity when I played. I played only a few months after ARR launch, toh. But I'm kinda skeptic that it has improved so much.

My personal choice for great community are those from LotRO and The Secret World. Absolutely amazing, super helpful, nice and respectful. They attract an older audience, I guess.

I never had these problems to be honest and I played it a few years. There were some minor bad people but most of them were very friendly especially to the ones with the noob symbol on. Dungeon were a joy since you also forcing high level player to do the low level dungeons for their daily.

 

[Virex]

The word "toxicity" has lost all meaning once the gaming industry started using it. Grow a fucking pair and stop being a pussy. there will be mean people in all walks of life

 

[RoyBrown7777]

How come on PS3 the word Horse was censored from chat, no one bat's a fucking eyelid.

 

[Fuz]

I never had these problems to be honest and I played it a few years. There were some minor bad people but most of them were very friendly especially to the ones with the noob symbol on. Dungeon were a joy since you also forcing high level player to do the low level dungeons for their daily.

Do you remember the people insulting the newbies because they didn't want to skip the cutscenes on dungeons (because it was their first run and they wanted to see the story), and telling them to head for youtube? I do.

Or outright telling them to leave because their gear wasn't enough for a fast run.

Those things were commonplace.

 

[Dunki]

Do you remember the people insulting the newbies because they didn't want to skip the cutscenes on dungeons (because it was their first run and they wanted to see the story), and telling them to head for youtube? I do.

Or outright telling them to leave because their gear wasn't enough for a fast run.

Those things were commonplace.

Never really had this. Maybe it is a Server thing? I think I was on Odin (European) it was pretty chill there. I had this shit a lot with FFXI though

 

[Woo-Fu]

It isn't Anthem's job to protect your feelings, oops, I mean deal with toxicity. Long as chat of any sort is opt-in/opt-out every player has the tools they need to deal with it.

Deal with it.

 

[REDRZA MWS]

>Start Game
>Join a party
>classic idiot starts yelling/saying shit
>Mute+block

I really don't understand what's so HARD about it.

Agreed completely. When you have large groups of people some will be assholes. This isnt a world police issue, its an individual one. You will never stop soneone else from being said asshole.

This quote above is 100% on.

 

[royox]

It was a complete shitfest of elitism and toxicity when I played. I played only a few months after ARR launch, toh. But I'm kinda skeptic that it has improved so much.

I've played FFXIV:ARR since release and I can say without a doubt that it has the best community I've ever seen in any game. When people see a sprout on a party they explain bosses, have patience, try to teach them the basics and rotations, etc. Of course there are morons EVERYWHERE but it's not really common.

Do you remember the people insulting the newbies because they didn't want to skip the cutscenes on dungeons (because it was their first run and they wanted to see the story), and telling them to head for youtube? I do.

I do remember those days. It was very frustrating for EVERYBODY that dungeon. Newbies wanted to see the +1h cutscenes because it was "the ending" of the game and the other players wanted to end that daily as fast as possible. Squareenix tried to solve it by nerfing the dungeon so if 2-3 players were new and wanted to see the cutscenes they could while the rest keep advancing throught the bosses....but after years it was impossible for new players to watch the whole thing as the cutscenes were auto-skipped when bosses died. They found a new solution 2 patches ago. Those scenes are UNSKIPABLE for EVERYBODY, the game also tells you "this is a fking damn long dungeon and you can't skip shit so take care". It also gives almost 2 whole levels to any +lvl50 character and i think 100 high end tomestones (the weekly cap being 400 so it's very high).

Or outright telling them to leave because their gear wasn't enough for a fast run.

I never seen that. I've seen people telling the tank he should be more geared for the content he was trying (witch was 100% true, that poor guy was doing the 1st Heavensward dungeon with item lvl50 gear so...my Titan was better than him at tanking...and It did tank lol).


The community is very friendly today and the devs are doing everything possible to keep it that way.


SHIT THIS WAS AN ANTHEM THREAD!! Don't talk bout FFXIV when I'm bored at work!

 

[Grimmrobe]

There's no such thing as toxicity. These are war games and you are therefore expected to kill people in them.

The Myth of Toxicity
https://www.patreon.com/posts/18587172

It's paywalled, but I will give you a quote:

"In summa, there is no "toxicity" in videogames; there are just a bunch of effeminate morons who download war games because they are too stupid to read the labels, and expect them to be a walk in the fucking park. Then there are journalists who have no interest in the artform (because no journalist ever does), and whose entire occupation is to stoke and even provoke outrage for clicks, and for whom therefore "toxicity" is a very lucrative subject. Add on top of that the constantly increasing level of immersion of said war games, that require progressively stronger and stronger temperaments to stomach, and you have a situation where absurd bleating about "toxicity" is pervasive and unavoidable, and is only bound to increase. However, not everyone is, or has to be, a hysterical effeminate little sheep, so it is up to us to be the men here, and remain cool and composed in the face of all this hysteria and manufactured outrage, and understand what is happening here, and why, and defend the games and developers and players who are bearing the brunt of this attack, which, when you strip all the bullshit from it boils down to an attack on masculinity and masculine videogame subjects, plain and simple. After all, no one complains of a "toxic" environment in Nintendogs or Wii Fit or Just Dance, because these are stupid, simplistic, boring-as-fuck effeminate games, and therefore 100% "toxicity"-free (read: masculinity-free).

So keep your cool, and understand, and man the fuck up."

 

[REDRZA MWS]

The word "toxicity" has lost all meaning once the gaming industry started using it. Grow a fucking pair and stop being a pussy. there will be mean people in all walks of life

Also 100% spot on. Also, lol!

This is an individual issue, thicken your skin, block them, mute them, or start a party and problem is solved.

 

[Damien Crowley]

There's no such thing as toxicity. These are war games and you are therefore expected to kill people in them.

The Myth of Toxicity
https://www.patreon.com/posts/18587172

It's paywalled, but I will give you a quote:

"In summa, there is no "toxicity" in videogames; there are just a bunch of effeminate morons who download war games because they are too stupid to read the labels, and expect them to be a walk in the fucking park. Then there are journalists who have no interest in the artform (because no journalist ever does), and whose entire occupation is to stoke and even provoke outrage for clicks, and for whom therefore "toxicity" is a very lucrative subject. Add on top of that the constantly increasing level of immersion of said war games, that require progressively stronger and stronger temperaments to stomach, and you have a situation where absurd bleating about "toxicity" is pervasive and unavoidable, and is only bound to increase. However, not everyone is, or has to be, a hysterical effeminate little sheep, so it is up to us to be the men here, and remain cool and composed in the face of all this hysteria and manufactured outrage, and understand what is happening here, and why, and defend the games and developers and players who are bearing the brunt of this attack, which, when you strip all the bullshit from it boils down to an attack on masculinity and masculine videogame subjects, plain and simple. After all, no one complains of a "toxic" environment in Nintendogs or Wii Fit or Just Dance, because these are stupid, simplistic, boring-as-fuck effeminate games, and therefore 100% "toxicity"-free (read: masculinity-free).

So keep your cool, and understand, and man the fuck up."

People have to pay to read this?

 

[Grimmrobe]

More from the linked article:

"Or take the randoms in team games who whine about their random teammates killing them. If you are playing a team game with strangers you DESERVE to be killed by them. That's not "toxicity", that's you being braindead, moron. Wake up and make some goddamn friends! And look up the word "team" in the dictionary while you are at it."

 

[royox]

There's no such thing as toxicity. These are war games and you are therefore expected to kill people in them.

The Myth of Toxicity
https://www.patreon.com/posts/18587172

It's paywalled, but I will give you a quote:

 

[Damien Crowley]

So... he is woke?

 

[Grimmrobe]

Because not paying your journalists causes gamergate. You stop being their customer, and they start treating you like shit - which you deserve.

Then the PR companies start paying their wages, and THEY become their customers.

 

[LukeSkywater]

They should just let people opt into a permanent safe space server called snowflake. In that server no one actually plays the game, they just all stand around wearing pink pussy hat's and "I'm with her" t-shirts while sobbing and throwing temper tantrums. The only competitive multiplayer is a match called "who's the biggest victim."

 

[royox]

they start treating your like shit - which you deserve.

Stop making me laught out loud at work you moron xD

 

[RoyBrown7777]

You don't need to know how much will arise. Just do your fucking job.

 

[Damien Crowley]

Because not paying your journalists causes gamergate. You stop being their customer, and they start treating you like shit - which you deserve.

Then the PR companies start paying their wages, and THEY become their customers.

Wait... THIS is how "ethics in game journalism" should look like for the GGs? Holy circle jerk, Batman!

 

[Cert.in.Death]

Knowing EA, you’ll have to pay for it somehow. Maybe the ability to avoid players will be a pre-order bonus

 

[Deleted member 752119]

>Start Game
>Join a party
>classic idiot starts yelling/saying shit
>Mute+block

I really don't understand what's so HARD about it.

It’s not that it’s hard, it’s just a lot of people don’t want to hear that nonsense in the first place. It sucks to come home from a long day of work and want to relax with some gaming and have to deal with people screaming insults, slurs and what not, or griefers team killing, not going after objectives etc.

But it just is what it is. There’s not a lot devs can do beyond investigate reports of bad behavior more vigorously, use tech to hear slurs and issue bans like Battlefield (I think does and so on).

Personally, I mostly don’t play MP games at all any more and if I do I’m either playing with friends or solo and in party chat 100% of the time. I have zero interest in ever hearing a random online gamers voice ever again. Too many losers to bother.

Mostly moot for me as I really only enjoy narrrarive-driven single player games anymore thankfully. Even more than not wanting to deal with that nonsense, I just have no interest in high levels of challenge in games. I get too much of that from career, life, running etc as is and turn to games, movies etc. to relax. Competitive games don’t fit the mold at all of course. Co-op stuff like Destiny or Anthem could, but lack of friends into those games killed them for me due to not wanting to hassle with finding decent randoms to play with.

 

[Grimmrobe]

It’s not that it’s hard, it’s just a lot of people don’t want to hear that nonsense in the first place. It sucks to come home from a long day of work and want to relax with some gaming and have to deal with people screaming insults, slurs and what not, or griefers team killing, not going after objectives etc.

Smart people. Because it's a good idea when you get home after a long hard day at work to invite complete and utter strangers off the street to your home to play games with. Certainly beats having friends!

They get exactly what they deserve.

 

[Grimmrobe]

Whoever needs friends: https://culture.vg/chat

Best clan in the world, not in terms of competition, but in terms of having fun playing a lot of cool games.

 

[Deleted member 752119]

Smart people. Because it's a good idea when you get home after a long hard day at work to invite complete and utter strangers off the street to your home to play games with. Certainly beats having friends!

They get exactly what they deserve.

I get what you’re saying. And it’s part of why I don’t bother with mp stuff. Most of my friends either quit gaming as they got older and busier (we’re all pushing 40 or past it already) or just don’t game online. And I just don’t care enough to find good people to play with from forums etc. since I like sp gams more anyway.

That said, it does suck that chat got so hostile over the years as it wasn’t always this bad. The early days of Xbox Live on the original Xbox and early 360 days wasn’t anywhere near as bad. Much more regular chatting and much less screaming, slurs, kids being obnoxious etc.

But online gaming got bigger and the number of assholes and obnoxious kids expanded. Party chat made the ratio of assholes and annoying people far worse as so many normal people do like I do and never go into game chat. So it just is what it is at this point.

 

[Grimmrobe]

But online gaming got bigger and the number of assholes and obnoxious kids expanded. Party chat made the ratio of assholes and annoying people far worse as so many normal people do like I do and never go into game chat. So it just is what it is at this point.

Things getting bigger has both advantages and disadvantages. The more passionate people know how to maximize the former while minimizing the latter. MP games with large tightly-knit groups can be HUGELY satisfying experiences, but you gotta lay the groundwork. You can't expect to play in a well-coordinated 5 on 5 basketball match with people you just met five minutes ago! If you are not willing to put in the effort, you cannot and SHOULD NOT reap the rewards.

Having said all that, if you want to meet the coolest, friendliest group of gamers on the planet, where the group is already tightly knit and all the groundwork has been done and all you need to do is show up and be friendly to have a good time, check the link I gave you.

 

[Deleted member 752119]

Things getting bigger has both advantages and disadvantages. The more passionate people know how to maximize the former while minimizing the latter. MP games with large tightly-knit groups can be HUGELY satisfying experiences, but you gotta lay the groundwork. You can't expect to play in a well-coordinated 5 on 5 basketball match with people you just met five minutes ago! If you are not willing to put in the effort, you cannot and SHOULD NOT reap the rewards.

Having said all that, if you want to meet the coolest, friendliest group of gamers on the planet, where the group is already tightly knit and all the groundwork has been done and all you need to do is show up and be friendly to have a good time, check the link I gave you.

I do understand.

That said, the coordination point is different from the hostility/toxicity point. I've played a lot of pickup basketball with randoms on playground/park courts, college rec centers and gyms like LA Fitness and never heard the type of insults, hateful slurs etc. that you get in online gaming. There's some trash talking but it's stuff like "you can't guard me," "you can't make that shot" not screaming slurs and insults etc.

Of course the difference is that basketball is in person and people have to adhere more to social norms or risk shame if their friends are embarrassed by their behavior or getting their ass kicked if whoever they're insulting gets violent. The anonymity and safety of the internet lets people say whatever they want with no ramifications. Add in how many social rejects their are in the group of people gaming online and playing solo in game chat rather than in party chat with friends, and it's a recipe for toxicity. As I said, it just is what it is and I just choose not to bother with it.

 

[royox]

It’s not that it’s hard, it’s just a lot of people don’t want to hear that nonsense in the first place. It sucks to come home from a long day of work and want to relax with some gaming and have to deal with people screaming insults, slurs and what not, or griefers team killing, not going after objectives etc.

No, you don't have to deal with them. At the first sigh...FIRST FREAKING SIGH of a kid/screamer/toxic player I mute+block they and forever forget they existed. Most of MP games have like 30-60 seconds of "pre match" and during that time most of the toxic players will behave the way they usually do so you get plenty of time to mute, block and forget their existance.

You people (not you dmaul, people in general ) think this..."toxicity" is new? From nowadays? This is how games have been ALWAYS. I remember shit-talkers on StarCraft!! On Diablo 1!!!!!!!!!! On jedi Knight 1 and 2, Counter Strike 1.fucking.4...it's always been a thing. What people did was laughting at them, joining them to trigger them even more (that was fun as hell), troll them ingame (spawnkilling, ganking....whathever you wanted) or just MUTE+BLOCK them!

Srsly people nowadays must get a lot of sunburns with this thin skin, my gosh.


ps: The most BRUTAL comebacks i've seen came from female players to male bullies followed by a lot of "loooool, lfmao, BOOOM, etc" coming from the other players and usually a "player left the game" text after that. Now what they do is cry on twitch because some 15 years old kid called her names.

 

[Grimmrobe]

No, you don't have to deal with them. At the first sigh...FIRST FREAKING SIGH of a kid/screamer/toxic player I mute+block they and forever forget they existed. Most of MP games have like 30-60 seconds of "pre match" and during that time most of the toxic players will behave the way they usually do so you get plenty of time to mute, block and forget their existance.

You people (not you dmaul, people in general ) think this..."toxicity" is new? From nowadays? This is how games have been ALWAYS. I remember shit-talkers on StarCraft!! On Diablo 1!!!!!!!!!! On jedi Knight 1 and 2, Counter Strike 1.fucking.4...it's always been a thing. What people did was laughting at them, joining them to trigger them even more (that was fun as hell), troll them ingame (spawnkilling, ganking....whathever you wanted) or just MUTE+BLOCK them!

Srsly people nowadays must get a lot of sunburns with this thin skin, my gosh.


ps: The most BRUTAL comebacks i've seen came from female players to male bullies followed by a lot of "loooool, lfmao, BOOOM, etc" coming from the other players and usually a "player left the game" text after that. Now what they do is cry on twitch because some 15 years old kid called her names.

The stuff you recommend sounds fun for 1 time per year. The rest of the time I just want to play the damn TEAM GAME with my damn TEAM. And since I have a team, it's all good. The rest is for friendless losers.

 

[Fuz]

There's no such thing as toxicity. These are war games and you are therefore expected to kill people in them.

The Myth of Toxicity
https://www.patreon.com/posts/18587172

It's paywalled, but I will give you a quote:

"In summa, there is no "toxicity" in videogames; there are just a bunch of effeminate morons who download war games because they are too stupid to read the labels, and expect them to be a walk in the fucking park. Then there are journalists who have no interest in the artform (because no journalist ever does), and whose entire occupation is to stoke and even provoke outrage for clicks, and for whom therefore "toxicity" is a very lucrative subject. Add on top of that the constantly increasing level of immersion of said war games, that require progressively stronger and stronger temperaments to stomach, and you have a situation where absurd bleating about "toxicity" is pervasive and unavoidable, and is only bound to increase. However, not everyone is, or has to be, a hysterical effeminate little sheep, so it is up to us to be the men here, and remain cool and composed in the face of all this hysteria and manufactured outrage, and understand what is happening here, and why, and defend the games and developers and players who are bearing the brunt of this attack, which, when you strip all the bullshit from it boils down to an attack on masculinity and masculine videogame subjects, plain and simple. After all, no one complains of a "toxic" environment in Nintendogs or Wii Fit or Just Dance, because these are stupid, simplistic, boring-as-fuck effeminate games, and therefore 100% "toxicity"-free (read: masculinity-free).

So keep your cool, and understand, and man the fuck up."

While I do partly agree that this whole "toxicity" is an overreaction and you can just ignore/mute/block whoever you want instead of running to the devs crying (and I don't like excessive control), this article is fucking terrible.
"effemminate"? "man up"? Are you friggin' kidding me?

 

[Grimmrobe]

"effemminate"? "man up"? Are you friggin' kidding me?

So effeminate things don't exist? And manning up is not a valid piece of advice to give to crybabies?

Interesting.

 

[Dontero]

Stop playing with random people.

It is like going to amateur illegal boxing championship in dahood and expect people there to behave like they are professionals.

 

[Zimmy68]

Yeah! When????

 

[Fuz]

So effeminate things don't exist?

It's not that they "don't exist". It's when you use it as a derogatory term.

And manning up is not a valid piece of advice to give to crybabies?

Holy shit, no it's not. It's not even "advice".

 

[Grimmrobe]

It's not that they "don't exist". It's when you use it as a derogatory term.


Holy shit, no it's not. It's not even "advice".

Okay don't worry, we'll only save hugs and kisses for you XOXO

 

[LukeSkywater]

It's not that they "don't exist". It's when you use it as a derogatory term.


Holy shit, no it's not. It's not even "advice".

Actually, it's really good advice that today's narcissistic millennial snowflakes could use.

 

[NickFire]

Why bother commenting when you basically are saying nothing at all?

 

[DonF]

Communication toxicity is easy. You have the virtual capacity of shutting someone's mouth, use it.
Griefing, trolling and other behavioral toxicity is another thing. I hope the game has a report function like overwatch.

 

[LucidFeuer]

In the real world there is no way of dealing with toxicity but to be a fucking human with a spine, and either ignore it, respond or sue.

The fact that on the internet a simple digital button enables you to mute/block/report is already fantastic. The only thing I regret is publishers or platforms not having had automatically censored and blocked users using terms that are clearly illegal (at least in civilised country who understand the concept of freedom and it's limits).

So fuck your degenerate first-world bourgeois problems of "toxicity".

 

[WaterAstro]

They'll just add a block feature.

The game is like Destiny, probably, so there isn't much opportunity for griefing.

 

[Hudo]

Make a "Prison Server" for shitty players, activate friendly fire and let them sort themselves out. Kinda like Australia.

 

[Zewp]

There's no such thing as toxicity. These are war games and you are therefore expected to kill people in them.

The Myth of Toxicity
https://www.patreon.com/posts/18587172

It's paywalled, but I will give you a quote:

"In summa, there is no "toxicity" in videogames; there are just a bunch of effeminate morons who download war games because they are too stupid to read the labels, and expect them to be a walk in the fucking park. Then there are journalists who have no interest in the artform (because no journalist ever does), and whose entire occupation is to stoke and even provoke outrage for clicks, and for whom therefore "toxicity" is a very lucrative subject. Add on top of that the constantly increasing level of immersion of said war games, that require progressively stronger and stronger temperaments to stomach, and you have a situation where absurd bleating about "toxicity" is pervasive and unavoidable, and is only bound to increase. However, not everyone is, or has to be, a hysterical effeminate little sheep, so it is up to us to be the men here, and remain cool and composed in the face of all this hysteria and manufactured outrage, and understand what is happening here, and why, and defend the games and developers and players who are bearing the brunt of this attack, which, when you strip all the bullshit from it boils down to an attack on masculinity and masculine videogame subjects, plain and simple. After all, no one complains of a "toxic" environment in Nintendogs or Wii Fit or Just Dance, because these are stupid, simplistic, boring-as-fuck effeminate games, and therefore 100% "toxicity"-free (read: masculinity-free).

So keep your cool, and understand, and man the fuck up."

Oh lovely, more IcyCalm junk.

It's less funny when you realise it's not actually satire.

 

[Zewp]

On the other hand, if I'm an asshole to other customers in a restaurant I can expect to be kicked out. Being a paying customer wouldn't save me.

I don't see any problems with videogame companies doing the same. You agree to their terms of service when you accept the EULA their servers are still private property. They can revoke your server access if you break their ToS.

I ran a couple of game servers in my university years and I routinely banned people who proved themselves to be assholes multiple times. I used a three strike system. It had little to do with hurt feelings and everything to do with the fact that nobody feels like dealing with assholes after a long day, even if it was as simple as muting them. In general people behaved very well on my servers and those who didn't, didn't get to stay long. It was a really nice community of a couple hundred people.

People behave like assholes online because they get away with it. I don't see any reason NOT to punish people for being assholes. I'm glad that many videogame developers are starting to realise this too. Letting squeakers run amok doesn't benefit anybody.