Activision is looking to curb the toxic cesspool that is Call of Duty multiplayer with a few features coming in its upcoming game Black Ops 6.
While the development team released its voice and moderation system into Modern Warfare 3 at launch, Black Ops 6 will have a more robust version onday one. Voice moderation will be available in five languages — it already supports English, Spanish, and Portuguese, and will have French and German when Black Ops 6 launches. Text tools can monitor even more, with the ability to work with 20 languages, including Japanese, Turkish, and Romanian.
The voice moderation system, called ToxMod, was developed by Modulate.ai and uses machine learning to monitor voice and text chats for bad behavior and potential toxicity in real time. It doesn’t outright ban players, nor can it make decisions, but it can flag possible code of conduct violations to a team of real people who can issue bans or suspensions. Call of Duty uses Community Sift, a Microsoft-developed community AI moderation tool, to monitor text chat.
“We built ToxMod to help sift through the proverbial haystack and identify the worst, most urgent harms,” Modulate CEO Mike Pappas told GamesIndustry.biz. “This allows moderators to prioritize where they can have the most impact.”
Activision says in a new blog post that since rolling out improved voice chat in June, there’s been a “67% reduction in repeat offenders of voice-chat based offenses in Modern Warfare 3 and Call of Duty: Warzone,” along with exposure to voice toxicity dropping 43%. It also says that it’s blocked over 45 million messages in text since last November.
While Call of Duty is arguably the most popular multiplayer shooter series in the world, it’s known for community toxicity problems, which has led Activision to release a code of conduct and tools, like ToxMod, to help punish bad actors. The code of conduct says that the studio does not “tolerate bullying or harassment,” condemns cheating, and encourages players to report any incidents.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.