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PlayStation Working On Tech To Automatically Boot Trolls From Games

Catherine Lewis

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PlayStation Working On Tech To Automatically Boot Trolls From Games

Featured Image Credit: 20th Television Animation, Sony

Let’s face it, there’s not much more annoying than encountering a particularly persistent troll in a multiplayer game. You’d probably only disagree with that sentiment if you yourself are a troll. In which case, why? Anyway. 

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Back in April, Sony filed a patent application for a system to directly combat “disruptive behaviour” in multiplayer games, by processing and taking action against abusive players. Well, as first spotted by Game Rant, the patent for this system has recently appeared online, giving us a first look at how it’s going to work.

The patent, which was first published earlier last week, explains that the system will identify disruptive behaviour, and then determine the player responsible for it. It will also generate “real-time player behaviour demographic data” for specified game spaces, which is displayed to players associated with those game spaces, if that means anything to you. My head hurts.

Throwing the jargon aside, what the whole thing boils down to is that this is an automated system, which’ll be able to track trolls by monitoring patterns and collecting evidence of their behaviour. It also assigns a “behaviour score” to players, by taking into account both negative and positive interactions, which feels oddly like some kind of traffic light behaviour system from primary school (honestly, apt for the kind of people the system aims to deal with).

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Obviously, at this point, it’s impossible to determine how effectively this will actually work, but at the very least, it’s positive that Sony acknowledges that their current moderation methods just aren’t that great. Which, of course, is more likely to put people off playing multiplayer games in general - not ideal for the players or developers, as acknowledged in the patent: “When a player increases their engagement with a video game, the player is more likely to continue playing the video game […] which ultimately leads to increased revenue for the video game developers and providers and video game industry in general.”

If you so desire, you can read the whole patent online here, although be warned that it’s not exactly a light read - most of it went over my head, to be honest. Regardless, it’s nice to know that Sony is making an effort to make games fun, which is, y’know, preferable. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need a lie down after reading all that.

Topics: Sony, PlayStation

Catherine Lewis
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