Well, Overwatch isn’t a “shooting game.” It’s a team-based strategy shooter. Shooting is part of it, but it’s not the whole game. And I can’t tell you how freaking fed up I get with teammates who disregard two-thirds of the game because only the last one-third interests them.

I thought the issue here was wearing masks, not smashing windows.

Where I live, we have a thing called “winter.” If we couldn’t walk down the streets wearing balaclavas, you’d really see some shit getting burned down.

Maybe you don’t want your employer to stick his nose into your personal political activities.

The trouble with this is insurance companies. If you have to make an auto or property insurance claim after an accident or a burglary, you have to supply a police report. You can’t just say, “I thought about calling the police and decided against it because I believed it would cause more harm than good.” You do that,…

Really?

Really?

That’s probably why soccer stars like Ronaldo and Cristiano Ronaldo, both of whom have done commercials in Japan, write “Ronaldo” as ロナウド (Ronaudo) with ウ (u) and not ロナルド (Ronarudo) with “ru” (ル).

Yes, but . . . part of the fun of a game with a victory condition is trying to win, isn’t it?

Sometimes you just have to make the switch and hope someone notices you have no healer now. Tough love.

Unless you’re playing with a group of close friends or folks you’ve practiced with, it’s on you to switch when you see a gap in your team’s composition.

You know what hooked me into watching things I’d never seen before? Being able to browse by star rating.

Not just paying for Netflix’s service, but paying ever more and more for less and less.

“Tenet.” Not “tenant.” Hire a copy editor, please.

The game is the real world at this point, and warnings, timeouts, suspensions and expulsions are real-world ramifications for online misbehavior.

Punishments don’t even have to be severe. They just have to be certain. Bad actors act badly because they believe there won’t be any consequences. If just six reports are all it takes for Overwatch to issue you a warning, you’re far more likely to straighten out and fly right than if the first offense gets you a…

Counterpoint: If you trash talk your opponents in a chess tournament, you will get your ass ejected from that tournament and banned from future ones. Organized chess does not mess around with this shit. Online game developers could take a lesson from it.

I agree with most you just said, except for one thing. We cannot just simply declare “games are a form of relaxation”. Different people play games for different reasons.

The cynic in me says that this is only happening now because these companies have hit the tipping point, where the abuse is now costing them too much money, and going in on this together is the only cost-effective way to possibly solve it.

Speak for yourself. When I play a game, the only thing I want from trolls is for them to stay out of my experience entirely.

And you seem to have