Valve making steps to address toxic behaviour on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

I especially like that they take the reporter into account.
Should prevent the "I'm so offended by everything!"-people from effectively mass-reporting everyone.

I also like that it still lets people play, they are just being muted.
More games should do that.

A little off topic, I was talking with someone about Proton and how intrusive anti cheats blocks it, and I was thinking about why there's no anti cheat based on AI.

On CSGO I do some "overwatchs" and there's a lot of obvious cheaters, with wallhacks, aim, speed hacks, etc, really easy to catch, so an IA can do the job. Looks like it's really easy to bypass VAC, but I think that it's a lot harder to bypass a AI.

Maybe an IA can detect a toxic player too

There are two types of different unpleasantness: naughty behaviour (ex: two time in the last month I played a guy that killed me while team mate in last survivor; the guy that cry in his mic; guy with music in the mic, etc.) and cheaters.

At least if cheaters were put aside it would help this great game. Yesterday, I stopped to play after 4 different rounds I was in front of cheating people with no fun. Replay VERY helps and it should be used by full time moderators after reports.
The inventiveness of cheats is also incredible: the classical guy that only killed by head shoot in one bullet whatever the gun he had, the guy that can take 3 awp shots in a raw with only 80hp decreased (meaning that he can probably tweak his cheat? or with adding more armor? don't know how) -seen yesterday, the guy that can view all hidden people ...I don't know how also :D
This game is a hack hole for hackers XD

A little off topic, I was talking with someone about Proton and how intrusive anti cheats blocks it, and I was thinking about why there's no anti cheat based on AI.

On CSGO I do some "overwatchs" and there's a lot of obvious cheaters, with wallhacks, aim, speed hacks, etc, really easy to catch, so an IA can do the job. Looks like it's really easy to bypass VAC, but I think that it's a lot harder to bypass a AI.

Maybe an IA can detect a toxic player too

Valve is already using one. The problem is that AI requires training and will always have false positive detection's (but to be fair, humans do have them as well), so I doubt that it will eventually get to be the unique security measure to be used.

A little off topic, I was talking with someone about Proton and how intrusive anti cheats blocks it, and I was thinking about why there's no anti cheat based on AI.

On CSGO I do some "overwatchs" and there's a lot of obvious cheaters, with wallhacks, aim, speed hacks, etc, really easy to catch, so an IA can do the job. Looks like it's really easy to bypass VAC, but I think that it's a lot harder to bypass a AI.

Maybe an IA can detect a toxic player too

To a degree an AI could be used to detect these sorts of things and such AI approaches have already been used in the past. Hell, who knows, maybe you doing overwatches is already training an AI model behind the scenes? But AI isn't a silver bullet, despite how much some marketing teams in tech may want you to believe it is. Particularly in terms of toxic language, AI will have serious trouble deriving context to make determinations on what is and isn't toxic. It'll either let toxic stuff pass or you end up with a Scunthorpe problem. You can ask YouTubers what they think of Google's monetization AI and how well it works (or rather, how poorly it does). Some problems are just best dealt with by humans.

Isn't the entire point of cs:go to swear at each other in russian?

Good step in the right direction, but I would rather like the cheater problem adressed. In the last weeks since "Operation Shattered Web" the number of players cheating in this game gets frustratingly high. If I could I would refund my shattered web pass, because getting this thing done while playing against 50% cheaters is no fun.

Isn't the entire point of cs:go to swear at each other in russian?

or in spanish, depending on time you play ^^

Ahh to be honest last time game chat was audable for me was 2008 on the 360, have been perma muting everybody since and it has enhanced my enjoyment of multi player games massively.

I'm not sure if the proposed system will work out well enough for everyone. If for example a player that appears to be female is constantly harassed and therefore reports lots of people, the weighted system will gradually ignore those complaints. Just keep in mind that not everyone filing lots of complaints is a hypochondriac snowflake. And the offenders in those cases might very well be the ones that cause more harm on the community and game experience than those mass reporters, so downplaying complaints on them actually works as support for them and punish their current and future victims.

Interestingly, the report system takes into account the person reporting as much as the person being reported. If a regular player who doesn't report often makes a report, it will be weighted more heavily than someone who doesn't play often or reports constantly.

Interesting, but I hope it doesn’t start penalizing people who make frequent legitimate reports... I would expect people who are frequently targeted by reports to be weighted down instead.

I like the weighting of the reporters. My first thought was how they're going to prevent brigading, or mass reporting of an individual in order to silence them and get them banned for malicious reasons, often including fake accounts to boost the numbers. If anything, it's the people characterized as "I'm so offended by everything!" (or as we say in reality, those speaking out against toxicity) who are most often the targets of such actions.

With this system, an innocent player can be reported by a group of digital bullies.

Interesting, but I hope it doesn’t start penalizing people who make frequent legitimate reports... I would expect people who are frequently targeted by reports to be weighted down instead.

My thoughts exactly. They build a system that relies on people reporting bad behavior and then they take that exact component out of the system by starting to downplay/ignore the people that actually help the system to work. That makes no sense to me. The correct way to do it would be to look at the percentage of successful reports (number of reports that got verified by the moderators as legit, divided by that person's total number of reports) and start ignoring people who file a high number of baseless reports that got tossed out by the mods.

There also does not seem to be a mechanism to punish abuse of the reporting system, which also would be indicated by a low successful reports rate.

The above is assuming that human moderators look at the reports to begin with. If it's fully automatic, it's garbage to begin with, as it would be prone to be abused by the very people it's designed to combat.

In the end, the system is not nearly radical enough for me. Toxic players shouldn't be just muted, they should be perma-banned using a three-strikes system. Two warnings and you're out. Forever. The toxic masculinity (and that's what we're talking about here in the end) that has more or less defined gaming culture since its inception needs to be finally removed from it.

Interesting, but I hope it doesn’t start penalizing people who make frequent legitimate reports... I would expect people who are frequently targeted by reports to be weighted down instead.

... The toxic masculinity (and that's what we're talking about here in the end) that has more or less defined gaming culture since its inception needs to be finally removed from it.

Oh I think you forgot to mention that it is WHITE toxic masculinity! Of course women (and divers people?) do never show toxic behavior. Masculinity is the root of all evil (at least in the gaming world)!

It is really sad, that you bring this nonsense into the discussion. Hope you can find the irony.


Last edited by einherjar on 7 Feb 2020 at 4:47 pm UTC

Isn't the entire point of cs:go to swear at each other in russian?

Hmm, I play CS:GO for years and that is not the case. Sometimes you find this toxic russians, but the most russianns I played with, are fine people with good behavior.
But it also seem to depend on your rank. The longer you play and the higher the rank gets, the less cheaters and toxic behaviour you find.
But sadly there are sometimes kind "waves" of cheaters even in the higher ranks. But I think that is until VAC detects the new cheats and then it gets ok again.


Last edited by einherjar on 7 Feb 2020 at 4:54 pm UTC

I'm not sure if the proposed system will work out well enough for everyone. If for example a player that appears to be female is constantly harassed and therefore reports lots of people, the weighted system will gradually ignore those complaints. Just keep in mind that not everyone filing lots of complaints is a hypochondriac snowflake. And the offenders in those cases might very well be the ones that cause more harm on the community and game experience than those mass reporters, so downplaying complaints on them actually works as support for them and punish their current and future victims.

Honestly, in years of CS:GO playing, I only met a few female players. But these where treated well. In my experience it is more the case, that it comes with "hey cool, a girl that plays CS".
Of course as I am male, I might have a different experience than a female player.
You also have players where you can not really decide, if the voice is from a 12 year old or a girl - but who cares. As long as a player behaves well, no one really cares.
Sometimes people get unfriendly when your team is on the loose, but that can hit everyone. When you are the last one against 3 and you just kill 2, you may get insulted. But I do not really care. You can mute single players and you know very fast, whom to mute.

It is a good thing, that they invest in getting rid of bad behaving people.

I don't believe being "toxic" should be a punishable offense. People should just mute or vote kick.

Finally

People who can only have fun at the expense of others do not deserve to have fun. Efficient systems to curb shitty behaviour in communities, online or not, are welcome. I have no idea if this particular system will do any good, but I guess that remains to be seen.