A few months ago Marvel Rivals became embroiled in one of the biggest controversies in its history when an error during an update ended up removing the "Hate Speech" option in its reporting system. This unfortunately led to a huge rise in slurs and hate speech within the game, and it also damaged the relationship between NetEase and players as many felt the studio wasn't doing enough to provide adequate safeguards for players.
Little was said about the issue at the time, although it was corrected fairly quickly and NetEase promised harsher penalties for toxic behaviour a few weeks later. Now Marvel Rivals' creative director Guangyun Chen has explained what exactly went wrong and what the team is doing to rectify the issue in a recent dev diary:
"In mid September, while optimising our report system UI, we made a configuration error that caused the 'Hate Speech' option to be replaced by 'Crime'. The moment we discovered the issue, we fixed it immediately—it was an oversight on our part."
Mistakes happen, but what matters more is that NetEase is now trying to do more to combat hate speech in Marvel Rivals. "This incident sparked massive controversy in the community, and we realised right then that simply fixing a UI option wouldn't be enough to combat hate speech," Guangyun Chen says. "Because of this, we've entirely overhauled our penalty system for abusive language."
Starting on September 24, NetEase "ramped up our disciplinary measures," meaning that the "most severe offenders" will be met with a 365-day chat ban, something that players are overjoyed to see enacted. But he still reminds players that a healthy game environment also depends on the players—yeah, that's the problem.
"We strongly encourage everyone to report any toxic behaviour immediately," Guangyun Chen adds. "Our operations team verifies every report to ensure the appropriate penalties are applied."
