Heroes Of The Storm Seeks To Silence Abusive Players

Some people who play MOBAs are jerks who love to abuse other players -- teammates and opponents -- in chat. This should come as no surprise to anyone. But Blizzard's taking an unusual step to try and literally silence these kinds of players in Heroes of the Storm.

When the next patch hits, you'll be able to report players for a wide range of different behavior, including abusive chat, feeding, and chat spamming. If a player receives enough negative reports for abuse or chat spam, he or she will be silenced for 24 hours, unable to send messages through most channels. The next time that player gets dinged, the silence duration will be doubled... and then doubled again... and then doubled again, with no upper limit. As the blog post on the new feature puts it,

This means that players who receive multiple silence penalties may find themselves unable to chat for a very, very long time.

It may not be perfect, and there will still be abusive players who manage to circumvent the rules somehow, but hey, at least they're trying!