Study Reveals 79% Of 'Dota 2' Players Have Been Harassed In Game - Forbes

Dota 2 players have experinced large levels of harassment.

Credit: Valve

Everyone knows that the language used by players in multiplayer games is less than ideal, but a new study from The Anti-Defamation League has revealed that 79% of Dota 2 players have experienced harassment while playing the game.

The study, which takes a look at positive and negative interactions with other players in some of the most popular multiplayer games in the United States, lists Dota 2 as the game where the highest percentage of players have experienced harassment, with a massive 79%. It also reveals that 38% of Dota 2 players are harassed frequently in the game.

Sitting just behind Dota is Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, Overwatch and Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds that all have 75% of players who have experienced in game harassment. In fact out of the 15 games that the study took a look at, all 15 featured at least 50% of players reporting some kind of harassment. The lowest percentage was Minecraft, where 51% of players reported being harassed.

League of Legends was actually ranked quite poorly across most of the metrics the study looked at, and perhaps most telling was that 27% of players ended up quitting or avoiding the game due to harassment.

Across all of the game studied it was clear that in game voice chat and in game text chat was where the majority of harassment was taking place, perhaps showing that better moderation systems in multiplayer games could help alleviate some of the harassment.

Arguably the most concerning aspect is that as well as harassment, players are being exposed to some troubling topics when playing these games. Across all of the games in the study, 23% of players said they had seen or heard discussion of white supremacy and 13% being exposed to 9/11 conspiracies.

It certainly paints a bleak picture of the state of multiplayer games, but the study also took a look at positive interactions within multiplayer games. World of Warcraft came out on top with 59% of players having some kind of positive social experiences within the game. Dota 2 came in at ninth, with 42% of players reporting some kind of positive social experience.

While many will simply brush off stats like this by saying that it’s just the standard in online games, there is no doubt that harassment is having a massive impact on a lot of players, and the more that happens the less people will be willing to play. A toxic community will eventually destroy a multiplayer game’s fan base, and could spell the end for a game. Unfortunately until developers and publishers start to improve their moderation tools it seems that we are going to continue to see studies like this pointing out just how toxic multiplayer games can be.

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/mikestubbs/2019/07/27/study-reveals-79-of-dota-2-players-have-been-harassed-in-game/

2019-07-27 15:33:02Z
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