LogInCall of Duty: Black Ops 6 will launch with "anti-toxicity moderation systems" on day one.
If you think about the voice chat in old-school Call of Duty games, released during the era when the community was still excited for each new installment, the first word that probably comes to mind is "chaos" – chaos that perfectly represented an unrestricted and unmoderated way of communication between players that some still perceive as one of the symbols of the "Wild West" feel the gaming industry once had.
These days, however, this "Wild West" has largely been civilized, with Activision now placing more emphasis on moderation to combat the toxicity and overly aggressive behavior still associated with CoD games today.
Activision
Recently, the studio published a comprehensive report detailing the progress of this moderation initiative, sharing the latest results and upgrades made to what they refer to as "anti-toxicity tools," which have already been implemented in the latest Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III.
According to Activision, they are utilizing Modulate's ToxMod AI tool to address issues like harassment and derogatory language in CoD voice chats, which resulted in a "67% reduction in repeat offenders of voice-chat-based offenses in Modern Warfare III and Call of Duty: Warzone." The upcoming Black Ops 6, set to launch later this month, will include these voice moderation systems from day one, supporting English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German languages.
"The Disruptive Behavior team knows that hype and passion is part of Call of Duty's DNA," the team wrote in the report. "Voice and text-based moderation tools in Call of Duty don't target our competitive spirit – it enforces against behavior identified in the Call of Duty franchise Code of Conduct, targeting harassment and derogatory language. Similar to Modern Warfare III, the Call of Duty Code of Conduct will be visible during the initial in-game flow when players first launch core multiplayer modes in Black Ops 6, asking players to acknowledge the Code of Conduct pillars."
Activision
Besides voice moderation systems, BO6 will also include text-based moderation of in-game text chat and usernames in twenty languages, which has been present in every CoD game since 2019's Modern Warfare. "The system analyzes text chat traffic in near real-time, resulting in the blocking of over 45 million text-based messages in violation of the Call of Duty Code of Conduct since November 2023," reads the report.
"The Disruptive Behavior team is continually making improvements to reduce our community's exposure to disruptive behavior as well as enhancing our moderation effectiveness across all types of social interactions in Call of Duty. These improvements include improved messaging to players, Code of Conduct updates, and enhancements to our enforcement strategies."
Following the report's publication, many criticized Activision's priorities, suggesting that the company should concentrate more on combating cheaters rather than moderating what players say in voice chats. Others condemned the studio's approach to moderation, arguing that players can easily outsmart the system by using personalized attacks instead of generic slurs.
As expected, some also objected to the very idea of their speech in voice and text chats being moderated, likening the initiative to censorship. Finally, some expressed concern about Activision's reliance on AI to manage this task, as it essentially means that machines could decide whether humans can say something or not, which, if worded this way, does sound quite eerie.
And what do you think about the initiative? Is it an effective way to combat 14-year-olds with awful mics yelling slurs each time they get fragged or is it "commie-style censorship" and "literally 1984"? Leave your thoughts in the comments!
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