70 percent of gamers avoid certain games because of 'toxic communities', study finds

Absolutely. I enjoyed playing a bit of Smite at one point in time (mostly that big open area map) and some Heroes of the Storm, but I'm not a big MOBA guy. Decided one day to give League of Legends a try, why the hell not ya know?

I have never been called a 'fucking fag' and been told to kill myself more times in a 5 minutes period of time in the entirety of my 40 years on this flying shitball of a planet. Not in public school, not on Xbox Live while playing Halo, not from my abusive family, never.

Uninstalled that shit 10 mins later and went back to TF2 where I get called that only once an hour.

That's why I liked hots, the capability to block chat from the start and for everyone.
It's not really a problem in non-competitive modes, as people usually just use on-map alerts.
- Disabling voice/text chat is usually my first go-to with almost any online game cause of shit like this lmao.
I enjoy League mechanically, played a lot, but it just got to be such a net negative that I can't do it anymore. I enjoy trying my best to win and I adore that feeling of a team coming together, but the toxicity was just too much.
- They got more aggressive about banning people for chat stuff a long while ago. But the same people just find ways to be just as toxic with game mechanics and other more subtle communication.
Yeah, I don't know what it is about the League community, but they are some of the worst people I've interacted with in games. I've heard that apparently Riot has cleaned up their community a bit since the early days, but first impressions are tough to overcome.
- I've heard that apparently Riot has cleaned up their community a bit since the early days
  
  Shit this was just a few years back so this was the cleaned up community lmao.

I have the misfortune of being a woman, so I play absolutely zero things with voice. And when I was younger, I'd pick the most 'bro' username possible just to avoid the bullshit.

Now that I'm older I just refuse to play competitive games at all. Life is too short to be constantly insulted. (Like the above user, I played LoL maybe twice before uninstalling.)

Before the internet was mainstream, I dreamt that online games would be amazing, civilized activities. Now I want nothing to do with what it became, and this is coming from a guy. It's like being a gamer became an identity, people take playing games too serious and there's virtually no punishment for being a dick. I've seen more mature 12 year-olds than some of these adults.
- I think you hit the nail on the head. There is almost no recourse for anyone being a dick, and some people consider it part of their "strategy" to get under people's skin.
I identify with this almost exactly except for the fact I played league for a few years rather than a few times. I'd say you chose the better route.
- League had a brief moment kinda from season 3 to 5 that had quite a female playerbase but they lost Lyte the guy who handled community systems and all went to shit. Throw it in the mountain of bad decisions they did. They were on the road of something good and they lost it. It's sad to see now, they have the worst image possible the por scene collapsed, their numbers are pulled up from China and Korea.
  I'm very sad to think it was a good game and I'm so very sorry for the way they treated us.
That's part of the reason I love Splatoon. No voice unless you are playing with friends, and it's not a total sausage fest. Though for whatever reason, the squid bagging and griefing gets cranked up to 11 during Splatfest.
It's such a pity that it has come to this. Having women present in voice chat somehow makes gaming with strangers more comfortable, probably even more fun, for me.

I avoid online games all together for this reason

Rocket League is alright so long as you can manage getting spammed WHAT A SAVE repeatedly after getting scored on.
- Yeah I know a lot of people will just turn chat off for that reason.
- It got so bad there's even a setting now to disable "nonessential" quick chats, so things like "what a save!" and "whew" don't display
Try out pve and coop games or game modes, they are usually more chill. Or find yourself a friend group who will be down for some coop and private games.

They need to run peoples text through a sentiment analyzer and categorize players based on toxicity and group tiers of toxicity together. Maybe include tips on how to be a better human.

Ultimately, this is one of those things that needs subjective judgment and community ambassadors to be handled effectively. That requires human labor with high turnover.

I'm sure at some point one of the big players in the especially bad spaces (like MOBAs) will figure out how to do it on the cheap and create a market efficiency. But until then, all the profit chasers are allergic to creating actual jobs to solve the problem.
Should we have a game toxicity review site to warn people of how toxic a community is.

Big part of the reason why I enjoy cooperative games nowadays like Risk of Rain 2, Helldivers, Deep Rock Galactic, etc.

You can occasionally come across a toxic person, but the broader communities in said games are amazing on the whole.

Deep Rock Galactic is better than most in this department. (I haven't played the others you mentioned.) I like how it supports only predefined shouts. "Morkite here." "Rock and Stone!"

Unfortunately, griefers still managed to ruin my night more than a few times. (And I couldn't report them, because for some reason, all of their usernames were in Chinese, which I can't read.)

I avoid any fast-paced competitive game designed to appeal to 13 year olds with no attention spans and inferiority complexes.

Words to live by. Because even if they're not 13, they act like they're 13 basically forever. cough Elon Musk cough

I like playing paid MMORPGs. When Age of Conan came out I was excited and was really getting into my character and having fun. One day, the game was suddenly swarming with with white supremacists and stayed that way. I remember partying with people who kept trying to recruit me into hate groups while playing. The global chat was full of their dog whistles. I remember folks trying to recruit from everything neo Nazis to Nordic cults.

At one point I made a dark skinned character from the dark skinned race in the game and instead of them yelling about my faction, they hurled insults directed at my character’s race. All the classic insults for blacks and dark skinned Arabs were included. I left that game disappointed. I love sword and sorcery but could not deal with the constant race obsession of the other players.

I prefer to play the old school way- in my living room, disconnected from the internet. I'd go back to Sega Genesis and old NES any day.

I'm single player, PVE only, for the past 5-6 years. It just removed a lot of shit I didn't want to deal with when the whole point of playing was supposed to be for fun. That decision was made a lot easier with the stupid levels of monetization and grind being rammed into everything.
I hear that. It's just a shame some consoles and carts are starting to need service due to their age, especially for handhelds, and retro gaming has gotten more and more unaffordable. Glad I picked up most of my collection when it was cheap.

Nah, the devs are better at making me want avoid certain games than toxic players. I can't stand predatory mechanics, they are worse than toxic players (or maybe I am too good at not giving a shit about what random kids yell to me)

I only play PvE

I'm really looking forward to Starfield. One of the most compelling selling points: no online play.

I just want coop. 8 plays but no online stat tracking. Just let me play with friends how I want to play. No matchmaking. No leader boards. No anti cheat.

I’m looking at you overwatch, and really any mp I don’t actively play on a regular basis.

Exactly why I never bothered to play league

I enjoy Smash Bros. Both in playing Ultimate and watching Melee. But I never want to go to another smash tourney, or hang out with other smash fans again. I used to be part of my university's smash group, and looking back I only got a long with a few of the people there, and everyone else was a fucking toolbag, or an incompetent manchild. I remember having an enlightening conversation with someone who tried to convince me women were incapable of playing melee competitively due to the shape of their heads and motor skills. I remember the smell being soo bad at one tournament, that I ended up forfeiting one of my matches so I could go home cause I couldn't take the smell anymore. One of my best friends, who was a brilliant Robin player in Smash 4 was called the "N" word multiple times cause people couldn't handle losing to him, and the tourney organizers would do nothing about it. I main Ness in both 4 and Ultimate, and almost got a controller thrown at me cause the guy kept running into my pk fires. and a local game store stopped hosting smash tourneys cause people wouldn't stop breaking shit after losing, and shit kept getting stolen after tourneys.

Great news, the Melee community has weeded virtually all of those terrible out, though I've heard that most of them I've heard just went to Ult (whose community is fairly disconnected). I used to avoid the entire game because of the community, but now that it's not being run by people in their low 20s or younger, I actually finally picked up the game.

Unpopular opinion I guess but I just play with mic and voice disabled.

Same. And if they have chat, first thing to go is local chat. Then server if it gets bad.

Dota is the definition of toxic that's true.

Definitely, I avoid online playing as the plague. Except with friends. I enjoy couch coop with my wife a lot!

Eve online...those guys are toxic AF

At least Siege now they get the spicy dorito so you now they’re toxic and can mute them right away

No they don't! You absolute moron!! /s

Not game-specific but those types of games certainly were a big factor.
I used to love playing with my school friends. Yet slowly but surely they became very toxic to play with as they became bitter in adulthood. Now I only play single player and stick to text chats with them.

Smite: During my third game I've never been insulted like that in any other videogame.

DOTA2 advise new players to turn off communications. How did it come to that?

That's why I play Fromsoft games offline

Pick out one headline that kept me from picking up COD type games.

I only play csgo with friends. And I have voice/chat turned off for nom-friends. People just get under my skin man. Sometimes I suck and sometimes i don't. Sometimes I'm slow and other times I make bad decisions. Other times I feel like a superstar with insane flicks thinking "I'm so getting reported for this".

I hate how people say "GG ez" after clutch games. Bad sportsmanship really became the definition of online gaming. :(

Even in games where they replace it with something else like "I'm insecure and ....". it's the same end result because people know what they said to get that result.

Honestly. I play video games to unwind for the day and I enjoy the thrill of competitive online games. I just only play online games with friends because everybody seems to be an absolute d*ck online.

Remember when you could make friends online? Pepperidge farm remembers.

i have a lot of fun playing valorant, but in order to preserve my sanity i immediately mute everyone and disable text chat whenever i join a game. if something is important, they can ping it. it makes me sad, because in my experience the valorant lobbies are a coin toss between the sweetest and goofiest people you'll ever meet online, or the most unhinged sociopathic 16-year-olds letting their life frustrations out on you.

i want to meet those sweet and goofy people and have fun with them, but i just can't be bothered sitting through 3/4 lobbies of toxicity until i find one with mentally stable people

In a way, I can understand.

Albion Online: I've seen (what I thought was) a good deal of toxicity in games before, but the public chat in that game was by far the worst in recent memory. Uninstalled.