Blizzard to Combat Chat Abuse

After a Hearthstone tournament in Austin, Texas, Blizzard and Twitch are pooling their resources to create a friendlier online atmosphere at events.

This comes after one player in particular, Terrence Miller, was racially abused at the tournament.

Blizzard President Mike Morhaime told Polygon, “We’re extremely disappointed by the hateful, offensive language used by some of the online viewers during the DreamHack Austin event the weekend before last. One of our company values is ‘play nice, play fair.’ We feel there’s no place for racism, sexism, harassment, or other discriminatory behaviour, in or outside of the gaming community.”

This is not the first time something of this nature has happened at an event.

ESports competitor and streamer Hafu has often been the butt of sexist abuse, even to the point of rape threats.

In February, she told PCGamer, “When you have 70,000 people watching a stream, and all you see is terrible things being said about you, it’s kind of like, why am I competing?”

Mike Morhaime said that Blizzard will be working alongside Twitch to mainstream a pilot system to regulate chat, and ban anything deemed discriminatory.

Terrence Miller was on board with the idea that no one should have to put up with discrimination or abuse while playing. “If you’re just banned from one chat, you can go somewhere else and continue to do it. Maybe a bigger punishment for constantly doing things that are just meant to be malicious.”

Tournaments are supposed to be competitive, and trash talking is a given in any sport. But when it comes to discrimination or straight up sexism, that’s where the line needs to be drawn.