We can all help with Overwatch’s toxicity — but Blizzard must lead

Recently Blizzard’s Jeff Kaplan spoke in an Overwatch Developer Update video about the issue of toxicity and bad behavior in Overwatch. In it, Kaplan addressed some key improvements being targeted to improve the recently released reporting system for consoles and for reporting and moderating bad behavior overall in the game’s ecosystem. He also conveyed a sense of responsibility that the Overwatch team now owns for trying to discourage and prevent toxicity. These are all the kinds of things you’d expect when a developer is addressing a prominently discussed and rising issue in a game, and they were done well.

But then the video took a very strange turn.