Much like its League of Legends producing counterparts at Riot Games, Valve has been trying to curb some of the negative players interactions on DotA 2, its flagship MOBA title. The latest effort, has been dealing out chat bans to players that have repeated negative interactions with other players and it seems to be working, cutting the overall number of negative communications by 35 percent.
According to Valve statistics (via PCGamesN), around 60 percent of players that receive chat bans, improve their behavior. Only 1 percent of players are currently banned, but with these sorts of statistics, that number seems likely to fall into the 0.X range sooner rather than later.
In a blog post, Valve explained the reasoning behind the chat bans: "Losing a bunch of Dota 2 games doesn’t seem to cause people to quit. But one thing that did stand out in the data was the amount of negative communication between players. Put simply, you are more likely to quit if there is abusive chat going on in your games."
While there is trolling between teams in other titles, due to the needed synergy in MOBA titles, negative interaction between teammates is more common and is one of the major causes for players quitting the game altogether.
"Our data shows this is working exactly as we hoped," says Valve. "Many players banned eventually reach a ban free communication style, and the percentage of players being reported for communication bans is dropping over time."
You guys have smashed me more than a few times on here. Have any of you been hit with DotA 2 chat bans?