Counter-Strike will soon start silencing abusive players

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Counter-Strike will soon start silencing abusive playersSquish, squelch, squash

Squish, squelch, squash

Valve detailed the changes in a blog post titledSquelching The Noise(gross).CS:GOplayers already have the power to mute all players, but the team feels it’s currently too broad an option. That you might, in fact, actually want to communicate with your team from time to time makes it all the more frustrating that some strangers are using their microphones to perform ear-crime.

This auto-mute lasts until the account gains a certain amount of XP. You can’t ride this one out on another account ‘til the timer passes. Valve hope this report-based system will help the community regulate itself. Reports will be weighted towards players with longer playtime who report less-frequently, hopefully avoiding mass-squelching from bots or aggrieved sub-communities.

But that’s a heavy reliance on CS:GO players not to abuse the platform for their own ends. For example,YouTuber 3kliksphilip suspectssituations like a foreign speaker being reported as abusive just for saying hello in their native tongue, or a player being penalised for a malfunctioning microphone.

I suppose we’ll have to wait and see what sort of abuse threshold warrants a squelching. Gross.