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Mike Morhaime on Combating Racism in Hearthstone
There's been a lot of discussion regarding the recent DreamHack Austin Hearthstone event, but unfortunately not all of it has been positive. During the event, Twitch chat was filled with blatant racism during matches featuring Hearthstone Pro, Terrence Miller, which was not moderated well.
Today, Mike Morhaime, Blizzard Entertainment's President and CEO, issued a statement about the event and clarified that the company is investigating ways to deal with discriminatory behaviour in the future.
- The use of a Twitch pilot program to help moderate streams/ban evades is being looked into.
- Esports tournament partner policies will have stricter checks and penalties to provide a better chat experience.
Quote from Mike MorhaimeWe’re extremely disappointed by the hateful, offensive language used by some of the online viewers during the DreamHack Austin event the weekend before last. One of our company values is “Play Nice; Play Fair”; we feel there’s no place for racism, sexism, harassment, or other discriminatory behavior, in or outside of the gaming community. This is obviously a larger, societal problem that affects us on many levels. We can only hope that when instances like this come to light it encourages people to be more thoughtful and positive, and to fully reject mean-spirited commentary, whether within themselves or from their fellow gamers.To help combat this type of behavior during live events, we’ve reached out to players, streamers, and moderators, along with partners like Twitch, DreamHack, and others, to get consensus and collaborate on what to do differently moving forward. To that end, we’re investigating a pilot program that Twitch has in the works to streamline moderation and combat ban evasion. We’re also updating our esports tournament partner policies with a stronger system of checks, balances, and repercussions to provide a better chat experience around our content.
We believe these are important steps to take to help address the related issues, but we acknowledge that they only address part of the problem. This is ultimately an industry-wide issue, and it will take all of us to make a real impact.
Additionally, GamesBeat reached out to Twitch who had the following to say.
Quote from TwitchWe take harassment very seriously and understand how important this is for the entire Twitch community. We currently approach chat behavior by providing broadcasters tools, education, and autonomy to police their own channel. While in this instance the broadcaster was unable to fully prevent the described behavior, Twitch has a responsibility to broadcasters and players to provide a welcoming environment. As such, as Blizzard noted, we are exploring new tools and processes to increase awareness and mitigation of these issues, and will continue to take action against chatters who committed reported violations. We can’t comment on specifics at this time, but we do have a team dedicated to improving these aspects of the chat experience with a lot of internal progress already that we hope to share with the community soon.
Stop trying to associate your sick selves with the moral people who fight political correctness. You're not with us.
Too many SJWs today. The chat is mainly to joke around.
Honestly. These people need to stop taking the internet so seriously.
You're right that twitch chat is the dumbest thing ever but I don't think you understand free speech. Free speech means the government won't go after you for what you say but companies like twitch and blizzard have all the right to call you a moron and ban you.
I don't know how they plan on combating it. There's always loopholes in communication. About the only way they could is sub-mode only. Banning people won't do anything, since you can make a new account in less than a minute.
Racism isn't the issue.
I mean, Twitch chat is always a bunch of terribly parented children spamming garbage about what they see. It ain't about racism, it's about twitch chat needing to get altruistic and care about not hurting other people's feelings. It goes so far beyond racism, they act that way toward EVERYONE, it has nothing to do with color.
Acting like it is a racism issue, just gets people to pass over the real problem, the fact that everyone in the age acts like an asshole and thinks its great. "You can't tell me what to do," is what they say. But someone like their parents needs to. Aristotle believed persons are formed in their youth, and if not raised properly they may just be permanent shitty people, beyond hope. And to some degree he is right, some people are so dangerous that they must be contained indefinitely to protect the rest of society.
Parents really got to get on their shite, and lay down some law in their households. As ancient Chinese war wisdom would have us know, "control the mothers and you control the entire nation." For centuries strategists have realized that if you own the mothers of a nation, you control the entire future of that nation, as the mothers mold the future generations to come. The mother is the most important person to the child.
Feminism has shit upon us. No more mothers to properly raise their children = generation of assholes. Seriously all you women out their, raising children is the most courageous, useful, honorable, productive, rewarding thing in the world. And good mothers might be the #1 commodity the world is lacking right now.
As a wise man once noted, "If I could bring the famous artist Michelangelo back from the dead, there isn't a stadium big enough to contain the number of people that would want to see this greatest of artists. And yet just the average good mother is someone who is better than Michelangelo."
Feminism and working mothers are destroying our families and the future of our children.
CALLING ALL GOOD MOTHERS. PARENTING REQUESTED.
Started off good, but kinda veered off course when you started ranting about how working mothers are destroying families, as if fathers are somehow less capable of being good role models and educators. Forget good mothers, how about just decent parenting in general?
TLDR:
Twitcht douche bags hate blacks, girls, gays, religious, themselves, Raynad and losing.
Realized, in the past. Ancient Chinese wisdom is just that. Ancient. Things change. And who said that michaelangelo thing? I can find LITERALLY nothing on that. That's all you noted.
Human nature? Who cares. Human 'nature' is to have disgustingly high death rates at birth and an average lifespan of 30. Again, things change.
You are arbitrarily saying 'well, these people are awful', 'something that causes people to be awful is lacking this' 'we have slightly less of this, even though we have more of the other benefit, so it MUST be this'.
Oh I'm not saying that. You are: "working mothers are destroying our families and the future of our children."
Oh fuck off with your politically correct spouting. I hate the PC crowd as much as the next person. Consider this: maybe, just because what you're saying is anti-PC, doesn't make it right!
Prove it. Some mothers are awful. Some fathers are better than good mothers. Can you prove any of what you're saying?
No, they aren't. Literally, the ONLY role of 'mother' is to be the female parent. THAT'S IT! Nothing more. Literally. Nothing. More. Those people staying at home are fulfilling the role of nurturing parent. In history this was usually fulfilled by mothers, yes, but so fucking what?
Maybe "Children having a bond with their mother greater than any other person in their life" is due to the fact that children will bond most to the nurturing parent, not just arbitrarily choosing based on sex, and since most nurturing parents have been mothers, most have historically been so with mothers? Did you consider that? I doubt it.
You have done literally nothing to prove her calling their fathers would not have been equally effective. This entire point is mute and, in fact, appeal to 'authority'. You do it again here: "As Philip DeFranco"
Fix your grammar, I have 0 idea what this is trying to say.
P-P-P-Prove it!
This is getting long. I suggest you PM any response.
Today, we are living in an artificial world surrounded by artifical things and rules, trying to dominate (human) nature. The tower of babel has been built up once again and its higher as ever before. But birthrate are decreasing and society is on the verge of collapsing. Things will come to balance.
Not sure if it's racism on Hearthstone in particular, but it should be addressed all the same.
most of it is just "dudes" trying to be funny and not really thinking about (let alone, meaning) what they are saying.
Wow, just wow.
The BS begins when your own client has no efficient way to report harassment, and in the case of mobile apps, none at all. You literally need to be on a computer if you want to report chat abuse to blizzard. And what do they do with the reports? God knows. I've never heard of a banned account, not even temporary.
But don't get me wrong, I'd rather have these matters dealt with with secrecy, because when people make statements like this and make a big deal out of 12 year olds being fucking 12 year olds pieces of shit that have access to the internet, as most of us were in a way or another, it feeds the subject, it keeps it alive and kicking.
Have you actually seen a racist speaking? It's fucking retarded, they sound insane to anyone who is barely reasonable. What do you do with insane people with the right to free speech? You fucking turn your back on them and ignore them, and if they stab you in the back, then you kill them in return and do a favor to humanity.
Look at this piece of shit. What do you do about it? Get angry? No, you laugh. Because being angry at lunatics makes you a fucking lunatic.
Glad they're going to do something
Because they are coddled from birth. People now think that they have a right not to be offended, which they don't. Offense is never given, it is always taken. What I see in twitch chat is not racism, but a bunch of people who want to get a reaction, which is what they got.
The way they are dealing with it is all wrong.
Cannot believe people like you still exist. Supporting racists is the same as being a racist prick yourself. You are disgusting.
How did you possibly get 'they support racists' out of what they said? I mean honestly, how could you POSSIBLY interpret it that way?