If You Hear Someone Getting Harassed In An Online Game, Don't

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>“I think we’d do better with a healer,” I suggested to my Overwatch team earlier this week. We were in the spawn room defending the Temple of Anubis and, without a healer, we would quickly forfeit the objective. Not even the slightest pause passed before a teammate told me that, instead, “What we need is another man.”

>This frustrating incident was sandwiched between two other matches, and in each, a teammate had snarked on my gender after I had attempted to strategize through voice chat. Earlier, I was referred to as “that fuckin’ bitch” when I asked whether we felt good about our team composition. And, in the spawn room of Horizon Lunar Colony later that night, after wishing my team good luck, I was asked: “Can you play? I just want to know. I’m so curious. Do you know how to play Overwatch?”

>Toxicity is on the rise in Overwatch, a game I had been enjoying for hundreds of hours since its launch last May. Since I wrote about its competitive mode’s toxicity epidemic on Monday, I’ve heard from over a dozen female players, many of whom said that they were throwing up their hands and walking away or making big sacrifices to how they play.

>This is ridiculous. Players’ rampant and unchecked cruelty and sexist commentary are preventing me and others from enjoying our favorite game, a first-person shooter with twice the female userbase as any other. And I want to be clear about something: When it comes to harassment in online gaming, silence is complicity.

>As long as developers are slow to address toxicity, it is on a game’s playerbase to stomp out hatred if they don’t want it there.

http://kotaku.com/if-you-hear-someone-getting-harassed-in-an-online-game-1796921373

How does /v/ deal with toxic comments during games?

Me? I just vote kick people that spew racist or sexist remarks. Feels like a waste of effort actually attempting to engage them.