With protests and other demonstrations throughout the United States, Call of Duty announced its intent to delay Modern Warfare Season 4 and Call of Duty: Mobile Season 7. Today Infinity Ward followed this up with an announcement that it will be trying to "do a better job" tackling racist and hate-oriented names found when matchmaking in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone.
The issue of racist usernames was brought up by players like drdewd on the r/modernwarfare subreddit following Monday's delay announcement, as they said "we need to bring more awareness to this because its [sic] insane the amount of offensive names I run into." Infinity Ward agrees that "there is no place for racist content in our game," and said it is committed to taking steps to grow the "thousands of daily bans" it administers in Modern Warfare and Warzone.
These steps will include adding more resources to monitor and identify content, increasing the systems that can be used to permanently ban players, better restricting name changes, and making it easier to report. These will be ongoing developments so there are no indicators as to when Infinity Ward wants to see concrete improvements, but it is good to see them doing something alongside charitable events for the Call of Duty Endowment.
Some in comments under Infinity Ward's Tweet are cynical that the studio is starting to push harder against this issue only in the wake of a national movement, but drdewd amended their post today thanking fans that backed them for initiating "a first step in the right direction." Other companies have spoken out and changed plans due to demonstrations following the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officers, including Sony delaying its PS5 reveal event.
Another company that has made a big showing of support for the current Black Lives Matter movement is the children's television network Nickelodeon. On top of releasing a "Declaration of Kids' Rights," Nickelodeon went off the air for nearly nine minutes Monday to replicate the amount of time George Floyd was in police custody and asphyxiated by former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin.
Only time will tell how effective Infinity Ward will be in stemming racist and hateful username in Modern Warfare and Warzone. In the meantime, Season 4 will drop eventually and include new content like playable operator Captain Price as well as fixes to bugs and glitches.
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Warzone are available on PS4, PC, and Xbox One.
Source: Reddit