Overwatch: More than 18,000 accounts have been banned for cheating, trolling, harassment in South Korea

Those who play any game online (Dota 2, Fortnite, Overwatch or any game or genre) are pretty aware of how toxic people can be when playing online. Millions of games and millions of players are playing every minute, and it can be hard for developers to keep track.

Fortunately, Overwatch developers have been monitoring behaviour not just by getting player reports, but also by monitoring streams outside the game such as the ones on Twitch and YouTube. 18,188 accounts have been banned according to a post on their forum.

Game director Jeff Kaplan has addressed the issue of toxicity last year in January 2018. In South Korea, where boosting was recently made illegal (through the Game Industry Promotion Act), even the government has been closely working with game developers to curb such behaviour. Boosters can be fined up to $18,000 and get a 2-year prison sentence. This law doesn't apply to cheaters yet.

In July 2018, Kaplan said that abusive chats in the Americas have gone down 28.8%, and down 21.6% in South Korea. Toxic behaviour includes people who purposely go AFK, purposely throw games, insult and abuse other players, harassment and other behaviours that disrupt gameplay and anger other gamers.

There is also still a long way to go. The toxicity is so widespread and many toxic players have entered Blizzard's esports league, Overwatch League. There have been players who have been caught and banned from participating in the tournament as well as the game. Blizzard does have a tracker where they keep a list of all the blacklisted players.

In the same post, Blizzard has mentioned that they are constantly working on improving the reporting system, so that cheaters, abusers and toxic people can be punished accordingly. Hopefully, in the future, there will be a more efficient system to punish toxic players on time.