Blocking toxic players across platforms: that’s what the Xbox boss wants

Toxic players are still a problem in many games (pictured here: Caustic in Apex Legends).

Xbox boss Phil Spencer would like to be able to block toxic gamers on all platforms at the same time. This would ensure that we no longer encounter a person with whom we no longer want to have anything to do with in other games. Toxic people could be banned from our online sessions once and for all. How exactly the Xbox boss envisions this and how it could be implemented, unfortunately, remains unclear.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer would like cross-network bans and block lists

This is what it’s about: Games like LoL, Overwatch or Call of Duty are known for their sometimes very toxic communities. Unfortunately, this also applies to entire networks such as Xbox Live: For some time now, the Microsoft service has been fighting more or less successfully against people who make other people’s lives online like hell. On the other hand, it often only helps to block and block the people.

Platform-wide blocklists? In a conversation with the New York Times podcast Sway, Xbox boss Phil Spencer talks about the problem. Of course, it is also about possible solutions, how the whole thing can be contained and online life could be made easier for all those affected. Phil Spencer has a rather unorthodox idea (via: WCCFTech).

He wishes that players who were blocked could also be banned from all other “networks”. Once a troll has been banned, it would no longer be able to harass us in other games on other platforms. For this purpose, block lists could ideally be taken from one network and transferred to another. However, this is difficult for the entire industry.

However, the implementation seems extremely unrealistic: It is not entirely clear which platforms and networks Phil Spencer is talking about here, but it should be very complicated or even impossible to transfer such blocklists. This hardly works at all for various games, but it is probably a huge technical hurdle for PSN and Xbox Live, for example.

That is why we will continue to work on other levels for the time being to keep toxic players out of our online games. In addition to word filters and the like, the focus is on AI monitoring and techniques that could be used to monitor audio chats, videos or images. At least Phil Spencer explains that these areas could still be expanded within Xbox Live.

More on the subject:

Regardless of whether it is Riot, Ubisoft, Activision Blizzard or Quantic Dream: Not only in games, but also in developer studios and publishers, toxic behavior internally or a corresponding corporate culture including crunch, racism, sexism or queer hostility are also extremely problematic.

What do you think of such possibilities? Would you like portable blocklists?