With the announcement that Overwatch 2 is adopting a new way to combat toxicity and negativity in its community with SMS Protect, quite a few questions are being thrown around. One of the most discussed details from this topic is the fact that the game will be recording your in-game voice chat. You might be wondering why Blizzard Entertainment would do this. Here is the reason.
Related: Overwatch 2 will require phone numbers, voice recording consent to combat player toxicity
Why does Overwatch 2 record your voice chat?
Overwatch 2 is making the move to begin recording in-game voice chat so that they can combat toxicity and hand out suspension punishments to players that are being disruptive and just downright unmanageable in the game. While Overwatch has been a great game since it was released in 2016, the community has been known to be one of the more toxic and unwelcoming groups despite the game’s undertones of inclusivity and working together.
By recording your voice chat, Blizzard will be running a transcription of everything that was said and can quickly and easily identify when a player is being toxic and unreasonable. If you see this happening in a game, be sure to report them for disruptive behavior, and the system can quickly check to see what was said and hand out a punishment to the perpetrators.
If you are worried about Activision having access to the things you are saying, Blizzard is promising that all voice recordings will be deleted very quickly, and the transcriptions themselves will be deleted within 30 days of their creation. This is not a system that will go out of its way to suspend players on its own, so you must report someone who is being hostile in the chat so the system can work.
