Call of Duty: Warzone Bans 350,000 Players for Racism and Toxic Behavior

Activision has announced that 350,000 players have been banned for "racist names and toxic behavior" across Call of Duty: Warzone, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and Call of Duty: Mobile. These measures were taken through a review of the player-name database, and from reports provided by players. While the bannings should prove to be a great first step towards building a more welcoming environment in all of the publisher's Call of Duty games, Activision has also announced a number of other plans to fight back against racism, sexism, harassment, and other forms of toxicity.

Activision announced the measures in a new blog post. A link can be found in the Tweet embedded below.

We are committed to delivering a fun gameplay experience for all of our players.

Learn more about our continued efforts against toxic behavior, hate speech and harassment of any kind across #Warzone, #BlackOpsColdWar, #ModernWarfare and #CODMobile.https://t.co/mBdPVnITix pic.twitter.com/1sBABeH6FY

— Call of Duty (@CallofDuty) May 26, 2021

In addition to the bannings, Activision has added new in-game filters to catch more racist user names, profiles, and clan tags. There will also be new technology that filters racist words used in text chat. Filters have also been implemented across 11 different languages.

The publisher isn't stopping there. Activision's goal is to provide players with greater capabilities to make reports. It also wants to address toxicity in voice chat, increase communication with the Call of Duty community, and more. It would be impossible for any publisher to completely remove racism, sexism, and toxic behavior, but Activision's plans could drastically cut back on problems in the Call of Duty community. Video games represent a form of escapism for those who play them, and everyone should be able to enjoy the hobby without worrying about harassment. Hopefully, these measures have a big impact on the issue.

Call of Duty: Warzone is currently available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the game right here.

Have you been enjoying Call of Duty: Warzone? What do you think of Activision's measures? Let us know in the comments or share directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!