Following Activision's recent statement of solidarity with protesters, speaking out against police brutality and the death of George Floyd, many fans were interested what the company actually plans to do. Now, an action plan to combat racist abuse in Call of Duty games, including Warzone, has been revealed.
Modern Warfare and Warzone included a new feature allowing players to easily edit their display names, which would be shown in-game, instead of Gamertags or standard account names. This led to the display names falling under less scrutiny, and the lack of restrictions implemented on change frequency meant it was easy to abuse.
It did get abused, with alarming frequency. Racist and otherwise offensive display names became rife in these games, with few opportunities to report the players responsible. Activision has now pledged to increase resources dedicated to monitoring racist content, making it easier to report players, restricting and filtering display name changes, evaluating other potential changes and increasing the number of permanent bans.
In the past couple of days, countless companies and brands have made various social media posts stating their support of the protesters, the Black Lives Matter movement and all communities suffering injustice due to bigotry and discrimination. Some have made monetary donations to BLM and other organizations.
However, many have questioned the sincerity of these statements. Too many times have large corporations made ineffectual statements without doing anything of any importance to truly help combat racism and discrimination. Activision's plans to fight racism in Call of Duty: Warzone indicates a true willingness to help instead of merely jumping on a trend to gain sympathy.