Aggressive games, aggressive language. Call of Duty: Warzone used to have a feature allowing users to report offensive speech in the chat. The newest Season 4 Reloaded patch, though, jettisons this, effectively allowing the freest speech ever. Given that it’s a multiplayer action game with adrenalized players, abuse and harassment become imminent… at least, until the next patch. 

Fixing bugs is among the primary aims of the update, as they appeared throughout season 4 after the initial patch was issued. Along with the chat, it fixes some minor problems with weapons, like the C58 Royal & Kross 4x Optic glitch that changed the stats of weapons with this optic on. Another issue addressed is infinite Dead Silence. Finally, the Sentry Turret Killstreak map icon now moves along with the actual turret when moving on the train. 

These fixes are, though, not a big deal next to uncensored speech in chats. Players now expect more toxicity and abuse in Call of Duty: Warzone. Given that shooters are a perfect environment for hate speech, they attract just the right audience: hardly will people insult and harass each other in multiplayer games that do not imply realistic violence. And violence is just what we love about the Call of Duty series.

The developers say the report button is removed just temporarily. The official explanation is that the feature caused crashes and thus needed some repair. No more “Report Offensive Chat” button may mean, though, that Big Brother is now watching all the chats with AI and does not need informers among players. In this case, even innocent phrases may be taken ambiguously and become a reason for sanctions. And we don’t know what to consider the lesser evil. So far, though, players use Twitter for reporting misbehavior in CoDW chats, and this seems to work a bit.