Culture Unity Research: 53% of Devs Report Rise in Toxic Behavior in 2023 - The percentage of those who experienced toxic behavior has also increased to 74% in the past year.

Unity has recently conducted a report on toxicity in multiplayer games that delves into the recent findings of a 2023 study by Harris Poll, commissioned by Unity. This study examined player and developer perspectives in three countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, and South Korea. The study involved 2,522 players and 407 developers as respondents and revealed some interesting data worth considering.

According to the report, 53% of game developers have observed an increase in toxic player behavior over the past year. The survey's definition of toxic behavior encompassed disruptive play, harassment, extremism, cheating, inappropriate content, and other forms of negative conduct. In addition, players shared their experiences of encountering harmful activities across various game genres during the past year.


Image credit: Unity

Notably, the top three genres where players encountered toxic experiences were first-person shooters (51%), sports/racing titles (49%), and battle royale games (44%). Conversely, the genres associated with the least toxicity were card/deck-building games (23%), puzzle games (29%), and adventure/platformers (30%) in terms of encountering harmful behavior online.


Image credit: Unity

The also report reveals that card/deck building games had the lowest toxicity rate at 23%, followed by puzzle games at 29%, and adventure/platformers with 30% of players encountering harmful behavior online.

Almost all players don't want to sit idly by, instead, they take action. 96% of the gamers choose to use blocking and reporting as their way to fight back toxicity. Interestingly, 67% of them are considering leaving toxic games, and 74% have already taken action and started avoiding games "known for their hostile communities".


Image credit: Unity

In response to these findings, Unity proposes several recommendations for developers to combat online toxicity, which involve promoting positive behavior and fostering collaboration across the industry to mitigate toxic elements.

Speaking of Unity, yesterday we published an interview with Johannes Knop who told us about their game ABRISS where you build to destroy, discussed their brutalist art style, and how the game was created with the help of Unity. If you want to have a look at it, here it is.

Get Unity's report here and join our 80 Level Talent platform and our Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.

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[Breadbassket]

Be aware if you want to get the report it won't be easily accessible to the general pubic since it requires providing an Email Address, First Name, Last Name, Industry, Company Name and Country.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

I wonder why, or if this isn't just astroturfed to prove a point to justify some follow-up action.

 

[Megaton Punch]

Notice how there are four categories that almost certainly all boil down to "blasphemy" (i.e racial slurs). Also, how is "unintended disruption" toxic? If it's unintended, isn't it by definition not toxic behavior?

I also find it interesting how the top category is "cheating". If cheating is even possible in your game, it means it's badly designed. It's toxic behavior, sure, but it's also ultimately on you. So way to tell on yourselves for making a competitive multiplayer game with a non-authoritative server like a moron.

 

[Rick's Beef Wellington]

This just shows that the US is the global leader in sensitive tattle-tales.

 

[NerdShamer]

Obligatory reminder that this is just on convenient distraction from.that time.they've threw their devs under the bus

 

[Lokenstien]

>try to violently suck as much money out of your user base as possible
>surprised that hate and toxicity increased in the world.

Who would have guessed? Get fucked Unity, you deserve all the baneful ire you get.

 

[Whoopsie Daisy]

HIghest levels of toxicity are in normie games. Whoddathunk letting normies into a hobby that wasn't designed for them would be a mistake?

Although lololololol thinking that 90's dweebs had a stronger spine/character than modern-day jocks.

 

[NerdShamer]

Be aware if you want to get the report it won't be easily accessible to the general pubic since it requires providing an Email Address, First Name, Last Name, Industry, Company Name and Country.

Made up some bullshit on an burner. It's mostly just charts and graphics from the article. But for some reason, I can't post the PDF or the screenshots of it, on here.

Spoiler: PDF

Like I said, it's mainly just bread & circuses.

Basically, Americans ruin everything, people want the "trolls" punished. Thankfully, only an minority voted for getting the government involved.

There's some other shit, in there. But I'm pretty sure that the article covered it

 

[Creative Username]

just turn off chat if you are pussy and don't want to see gamer words

I also find it interesting how the top category is "cheating". If cheating is even possible in your game, it means it's badly designed. It's toxic behavior, sure, but it's also ultimately on you. So way to tell on yourselves for making a competitive multiplayer game with a non-authoritative server like a moron.

Modern soydevs can't into netcode, then people start cheating. Their response? Just make more client-side security, as in literal, actual, unironic FUCKING KERNEL LEVEL ROOTKITS. RRRGRGRHRHGRHRGGG. *incoherent*

 

[Zyklon Ben's Poison Pen]

Modern soydevs can't into netcode, then people start cheating.

There was (still is, just not maintained) a mod named etpro for an older game called Enemy Territory. This mod tracked all variables, all bounding boxes, all movement, all hits and bullet traces serverside. It corrected and fixed BS on the fly and booted bad clients. I thought, wow this is the future of netcode and network gaming.

Ahh you gotta laugh at yourself sometimes.

 

[Creative Username]

There was (still is, just not maintained) a mod named etpro for an older game called Enemy Territory. This mod tracked all variables, all bounding boxes, all movement, all hits and bullet traces serverside. It corrected and fixed BS on the fly and booted bad clients. I thought, wow this is the future of netcode and network gaming.

Ahh you gotta laugh at yourself sometimes.

Even then, it was the past way, and the only Right Way. The Right Way is to be fully server-sided and refrain from sending the client any unnecessary info (to prevent wallhacks). Client-side prediction and server-side rollback can then be employed to improve gamefeel without compromising fairness that much. Trusting clients with anything is always a design flaw, unless you somehow figure out how to make blockchains work at 60 Hz or something. ()

If you make a competitive networked game and don't do this, you are doing it wrong.

 

[Fastest Hand In The East]

Oh my God, stop the presses, there is hatespeech in CoD voice chats!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Watcher]

Fun fact the concept of behavior being "toxic" was created by a developer at Riot games to explain why players would be mean to each other and how it was the developer's responsibility to coax players to be nicer to each other. The term has always been framed as if it's someone's responsibility to socially manipulate people and police their thoughts. It's a term that frames things as if the end user is a problem that must be solved.

I genuinely think this problem was caused primarily by matchmaking and didn't exist during the era of dedicated servers. As players could just leave and join a different server with curated moderation. Similar to discord.

 

[FILTH Tourist]

I genuinely think this problem was caused primarily by matchmaking and didn't exist during the era of dedicated servers. As players could just leave and join a different server with curated moderation. Similar to discord.

You are on to something, but I think the rise of "competitive" games where gamers are ranked and stats are kept track of is the real root issue. The more at stake with wins and loses leads to people taking shit way to seriously. You seen this before toxic became a mainstream term with fighting games as people rage quit to preserve their W/L ratio. I never have much issue with players when match making in something casual like low tier warthunder, but when a loss can bump you down a league tier or cause you to lose a lot of gear or money brings out the worst in people.

 

[rel=alternate]

This is just PR.

If they release a report saying it's all fine, then nobody is going to bat an eye.

If they go with some click bait shit such as this, they will get MSM mentions.

I would be curious to see the raw data. But that would be if I trusted them at the collection stage to begin with, which I don't.

 

[Inside your walls]

...And with your help we can become toxic even more

 

[Watcher]

You are on to something, but I think the rise of "competitive" games where gamers are ranked and stats are kept track of is the real root issue. The more at stake with wins and loses leads to people taking shit way to seriously. You seen this before toxic became a mainstream term with fighting games as people rage quit to preserve their W/L ratio. I never have much issue with players when match making in something casual like low tier warthunder, but when a loss can bump you down a league tier or cause you to lose a lot of gear or money brings out the worst in people.

I genuinely don't think it's the case. Competitive game stuff has been around since Doom. A huge section of the playerbase doesn't give a shit about it. However when you're constantly being matched with complete strangers and the only way to play with familiar players is to make relationships outside of the game, you have zero incentive to be nice to people. When you play with the same group over and over again you subconsciously become nicer to them out of necessity.

 

[Safir]

I think the rise of "competitive" games where gamers are ranked and stats are kept track of is the real root issue.

This.
As a consequence, the matches themselves are no longer fun for such players, the core game is climbing the ladder, Like poor people going to the slots, hoping to win.

However when you're constantly being matched with complete strangers and the only way to play with familiar players is to make relationships outside of the game

Not much changed and nothing got worse with regards to making relationships, new games even facilitate it.
Previously:

• join a private server or an IRL group
• make friends there

Now:

• join a discord server
• troon out
• 41%

oh wait, let's try again

• join a discord server
• play with them using company-owned infrastructure but avoid matchmaking

alternatively

• join the game
• get matched
• meet someone decent
• agree to play together
• stop using matchmaking

The increase in "negative conduct" pedophiles whine about is caused by the expansion of what counts as "negative conduct". Yes games are less fun but they don't measure whether the games are fun, they measure how many times you said nigger.

 

[Sister Miriam Godwinson]

How can you even be toxic in a card collecting online game, 95% of them don't even have a chat function, if not more. All you can do is passively-agressively spam the pre-recorded "Hello!" emote at your opponent until he mutes you.