CS:GO update quiets abusive players

Valve finally gave meaning to in-game CS:GO reports of “Abusive Voice Chat” and “Abusive Text Chat”. Their latest CS:GO update, appropriately named Squelching the Noise, aims to put an end to audio and text chat spammers. The system, not yet deployed, combines the “Abusive Voice Chat” and “Abusive Text Chat” report options into a single “Abusive Communications or Profile” option.

If a single CS:GO player receives more reports than other players in the match, they will receive a warning. Should they not heed that warning and reports keep pouring in, by default, all players will globally mute them. After the player earns an undisclosed amount of experience, this penalty will be removed. Other players can still manually unmute them in the client as with any other muted player.

Valve stated that this new system “lets players establish their own standards for communication and ensure that their fellow players receive anonymous feedback when they’re out of line.”

Valve also says that reports from players who play more and don’t spam reports will be “weighted higher.” Report weights are in comparison to those who don’t play and/or spam abuse reports. This is a huge step towards ridding the community of players who spam chat binds or create disruptive noise.

The section of the report option labeled “or Profile” is also a point of interest. This could mean that Valve is trying to use this CS:GO update to remove Steam accounts with offensive profiles. As of this writing, no new information covers how or if that will be implemented.

Another interesting thought is whether or not Valve kept track of previous CS:GO abuse reports. They did say “We’ve already started tracking players’ reports with the new system” but it doesn’t mention anything about reports from the previous system. If Valve’s records hold old reports, this may lead to many players being muted because of older system abuse. Fans will be surprised to consistently hear some sweet, sweet silence and good callouts.

Written by Gabriel Ionica