Heroes of the Storm adds new reporting options and silencing penalty

Heroes of the Storm developer Blizzard will not abide your toxic bullshit.

Heroes of the Storm is pretty accessible as MOBAs go but it's still a highly competitive experience where every player matters. Add bad manners, hair-trigger tempers or a long, bad day to the mix and you have the perfect recipe for the genre's notoriously toxic culture.

Blizzard doesn't want that. To help the community police itself and stamp down on unpleasant behaviour, it has introduced a suite of reporting options designed to more clearly identify problematic behaviour.

The way you report players won't change (via the score screens or chat panel) but what you report them for may vary. Here are the new options:

• Abusive Chat
  - Insults, cruelty, or ongoing harassment directed at one or more players.
  - Hate speech
  - Real life threats
• Intentionally Feeding
  Player intentionally and repeatedly gets their hero killed in order to anger allies or feed XP to the enemy team.
• AFK/Non-Participation
  - Player is idle or inactive for an extended period of time during a game.
  - Player is present, but has given up or refuses to take part in the game.
• Cheating/Botting/Hacking
  Suspicious behavior which indicates the player may be using third-party software or hack programs to gain an advantage during a game.
• Inappropriate Name
  Character names or BattleTags that are offensive, insulting, bypass the mature language filter, or are otherwise considered objectionable.
• Spam
  - Excessively communicating the same phrase, similar phrases, or pure nonsense
  - Blatant or repeated advertising for third party websites

According to a Battle.net post, these new options will be available as of the next patch.

Blizzard said it will investigate reports and take account of individual hero mechanics, so don't worry about being reported for idling as Abathur or feeding as Murky. It will also investigate users who repeatedly file false or trivial reports.

Players who are repeatedly identified by genuine reports will be punished with silence, suspensions, or even permanent bans in extreme cases. Silencing is a new penalty also coming with the next patch, and will be handed out to those who are reported for spam and abusive chat.

Silenced players cannot send whispers to strangers or use allied, hero league draft, custom and general chat. They can still use party chat, initiate and join parties, send whispers to friends, reply to whispers from strangers, issue pings and send and receive friend requests.

Your first silencing will last 24 hours, but this period will double with each penalty - with no maximum duration.