Last year, Dota 2 creator, Valve, announced that the game will be getting an “Overwatch” system.
As of today, the system has now arrived to Dota 2, with several fans and community members sharing images and screenshots of the new feature.
What is Dota 2 Overwatch?
Dota 2’s Overwatch system is a set of powerful tools to help the game’s community “self-regulate” negative behaviour among players.
While Dota 2 has always had behaviour management systems in the past, Overwatch’s focus is to provide tools for “good-standing members of the community” to control the reporting and flagging within the game.
In other words, it’s “crowdsourced moderation”.
How Overwatch works
Eligible “good standing players” will occasionally be notified below their profile pictures that they have “cases to review”. These cases are pre-recorded videos of players who have been flagged for bad behaviour.
“Good standing players” can then watch these prerecorded videos and ultimately have a choice of concluding if the flagged player was “guilty”, “not guilty”, or has “insufficient evidence” — allowing Valve to take further action in the future.
Changes to how reports and bans work
Dota 2 has also had changes to how reporting and banning works.
Players can now report other players after matches have taken place directly on the scoreboard by clicking on the flag icon next to another hero’s portrait.
Once a reported is started, players can place markers in the match to guide reviewers of the accused player’s negative behaviour.
Once a report has been made, reviewers will be notified of the negative behaviour, where they can then move forward with evaluating the verdict of the reporter’s claims.
Protecting the community
As with many multiplayer online games, profanity, negative behaviour, and harassment have been common occurrences among players, and can have negative implications to the game’s reputation.
While many developers have built reporting features in their games, having to go through every report can be extremely challenging and time consuming, considering there are thousands of reports being placed daily.
This new move with Overwatch comes as a way for Valve to crowdsource “reviewing resources” among their community, ultimately ensuring the game remains an enjoyable and safe place for everyone.