Some games just aren't fun to play as they have really toxic communities with people harassing and verbally assaulting both teammates and opponents. Publishers often do half-arsed attempts to prevent this and too few really seem to take it seriously.
But perhaps they should. According to a new report by Dr. Rachel Kowert, toxic communities are bad both for the users mental health and business. It turns out that 7 out of 10 gamers have avoided games because of bad community reputation, 6 out of 10 gamers have also decided not to spend money in a game because of a toxic community, and 6 out of 10 gamers have quit playing games because of "hate and harassment".
And not only that, it turns out gamers prefer to spend their hard earned cash on "non toxic" games:
"Looking at game players aged 13 - 25, researchers found that the average monthly amount of money spent on games deemed "non toxic" as compared to "toxic" was a difference of 54%. That is, there was a 54% gain in revenue for games that "don't sell consumers spewing name calling, racial epithets, holocaust denial, misogyny, threats to one's safety, and your garden variety rape and death threats"."
Let's hope all publishers take measurements to make online gaming the fun and nice thing it's meant to be.
<social>https://twitter.com/DrKowert/status/1679145180551860227</social>