Why i stopped using in-game voice chat.

So last weekend i was playing BF1 with random people, i was using voice chat to talk to my squad.

I talked to them about capping points and asking them for ammo and health, the response i got was terrible.

They told me to shut up and make them a sandwich (which is standard, i get those all the time) but then it got worse.

I got threatened with getting raped and killed and other disgusting things, i felt so bad that i left the computer and actually cried.

Now i can hear most people saying: ''it's the internet just suck it up'' but i got so many of these responses before that i kinda broke down.

So after that i decided to stop using in-game voice chat (with randoms atleast).

I honestly don't get why people have joy in these things, im just there to enjoy the game and escape the horrible things happening in real life.

I think most people say, "it's the internet, mute and block everybody immediately." I don't want to generalize, but it's applicable, so I'm going to! Most people, like 95% at least, who play shooters online have something wrong with their brains. A developmental impediment that makes them lash out at everything around them at the slightest excuse. Like instead of their skulls being filled with brain, it's some kind of phlegmy, fecal, oozing substance that leaks out of their mouths when they talk or at least try to form words. I usually automatically mute everyone and then block at the first annoying thing someone says when I play anything online.

I don't know why shooters in particular. Every game genre and playstyle have their shares of decent humans and garbage humans, but I've never played a shooter that wasn't always disproportionately in favor of trash monkeys the world probably wouldn't miss if they all caught fire and died. Does anyone really think we'd be losing a cure for cancer? At the Nobel Prize acceptance speech, nobody's going to be saying, "before I devoted my life to medical science, I used to spend my afternoons teabagging fools in CoD and drawing weed dongs on my gamer card." No, the world would get a little lighter and there would be more air and food for the rest of us. Hooray!

In conclusion, always mute your voice chat and kill all humans.

Yeah that fucking sucks. Some people are assholes, dunno why.

Yeah, that's pretty standard fare. Shit sucks, but what can any one person do about it aside from mute everyone, grow numb towards it, or play along?

Anonymity is a gift and a curse.

The less people know you personally, the more easily it is to dehumanize you and treat you with apathy or dissent. It's been like this since before the Internet. The Internet just makes it more widespread and easier to do.

Hopefully this doesn't detract you from continuing to enjoy online games. Those types of assholes aren't the kind of people that can be helped, it's best to avoid them when possible, and seek out communities where pieces of shit naturally get shunned out. I suggest finding a group of like-minded people to play with. Make a thread in the BF1 forum asking for usernames to play with, or clans to join. Or if you want more spontaneous playmates, hit up the unofficial Giant Bomb Discord and check out the Looking For Group channel. It's mostly PUBG requests these days though, because that's the latest hotness. In my experience, there are a good number of decent players out there, it's just the sour apples that seems to stick out in our minds.

Yeah, it's a lot of work just to find decency in our hobby, but it's something that's worth it in my experience. The handful of cool people I've met makes it really easy to quickly forget about the numerous assholes I've encountered.

@rikiguitarist: It hasn't detracted me from playing and continuing enjoying games but it just made me really damn sad.

Seeing and hearing these messages over and over again just broke me, im ok now but last weekend i was in a really dark place.

While there certainly are assholes out there, I think a big part of the blame falls on the collective that is playing games and isn't proactively making things any better as well. Maybe there's a group of people having the bystander effect to assholes, but a large portion are probably like myself that just go in without microphone and just mute everyone. That whole thing gives assholes a lot more free space to roam and own the voice chat.

I recall proactively trying to steer the attitude in every match of Dota I used to play. Always being really nice at the start and joking throughout at any mistake. It didn't always work, but I recall plenty of times when a classic asshole was met with a lot more resistance when I managed to swing the team into my corner. Once I even had one apologize for his attitude to someone else on the team. But it takes a lot of effort and sometimes I just didn't have the energy and some of those matches were disproportionally a lot more negative.

It's sad to hear the levels of insults you're getting though, glad it hasn't detracted you from continuing to play those games.

I even mute text chat in Rocket League, I don't want to talk to or hear random assholes.

I got into online gaming back in 2004, and I never started using the ingame chat. It's always the first thing I disable when I start with a new game. I only ever use a closed teamspeak server, where only people I know and trust have access. I still get the text chat, which tells me all about why I've made the right decision not to use the ingame chat. The way I see it, games tend to draw in alot of people who don't see the harm in the abuse they indulge in. Who maybe lack the empathy to see that a constant barrage some people are subjected to online eventually takes its toll.

Sorry for what you have to deal with. People are the worst.

First of all, I'm very sorry this happened to you. I think a lot of us have abandoned voice chat with strangers over time for similar reasons. Even if most of your experiences are fine, the unpleasant ones are so unpleasant that it's not worth it.

It's complete B.S. that this is allowed to happen. Online abuse (not just in gaming, unfortunately) should generally not be permitted and it's really horrible how often it's gender based. Unfortunately it's pretty easy to identify women by their voices and they get singled out for abuse. I'm sure if race or other characteristics came through on voice as clearly they would be targeted just as frequently.

Unlike what others have said, I don't think that it's most players (most players just don't talk) and I don't actually think the issue is with bystanders not wanting to get involved. The real issue is that the gaming systems don't give players the tools to punish toxic elements. Just shouting them down doesn't work because it causes a confrontation that, in my experience, at best distracts them from their current target and at worst causes them to step up their harassment. It should be easier to report abusive players and it should be taken much more seriously. It would be easily implemented at this point to record the last minute of voice chat in any system and keep that record permanently, and review it, if someone is reported as behaving badly. Then anyone who says "make me a sandwich" should receive a significant ban from online play on the service (say a month or so) and anyone who issues a rape or death threat should be permanently banned. A zero tolerance policy would do a lot to fix the problem.

I also think it would be good for business. I think toxic behavior by a minority of the community drives a lot of people away from online offerings. Not just women (who are over 50% of the population) but also men who can't stand being exposed to the toxicity. It's easy for a small number of people to ruin the experience for everyone. If abuse was not tolerated I think more people would play online and thus buy DLC, microtransactions, and even full games that they skip now because they don't like the toxicity.

So why don't game companies implement this system? I think it's a combination of the tech culture and inertia. Gaming culture came about when monitoring behavior was impossible (since connections were peer to peer and voice chat was via third party applications if any) and people have just come to think of "anything goes" as the way things are. Xbox, Playstation, and in this case Origin are centralized now and could take action, but they just don't think to crack down. It would also take effort to implement good reporting systems, even if it would ultimately be profitable.

This is all a long-winded way of saying that companies should be held to account for the things they permit on their servers. Would you go to a restaurant where they permitted one group of patrons to harass and demean another group without consequences? I certainly wouldn't. There's no real difference between that and online services. Gaming and Internet companies need to grow up and start taking this stuff seriously. Otherwise they end up with toxic services people don't want to use, and customers like OP feeling alienated and miserable.

I was never big into online multiplayer gaming and so I've never really used voice chat. I chat to my mates when we play something like Battlefield or PUBG together, just to catch up and co-ordinate some things. Even that's fairly rare and my consoles are near my kids' rooms so I can't really talk too much anyway.

@bigsocrates: I 100% agree with your post.

A zero tolerance policy for harassment would be nice.

And i reported lots of people over the years on Origin and Steam but i never heard something back, so i guess they just don't care or they are too lazy to do something.

@samanthak: well it aint exactly an easy thing to do and i doubt they are lazy. I cant think of a single game that has solved it other then turning it off completly. Also all the yelling people are paying customers that dont like getting banned...

I like listening to people on the internet. Its most nonsense like described but you know thats how people sound like and i embrace it.

I get more irritated by people that has muted everyting because you cant communicate in any way with a guy you are playing with. I dont like being ignored. I totaly understand why they do it however so it is what it is.

@rethla: Why have the report option then if they don't do anything about it?

How have you survived this long? It's kinda the way it is. Doesn't matter what game, it's pretty much been my experience across the board. I guess be glad you're not black? 'Cause as much as dudes are sexist online, boy are they wayyy more racist. Don't take it personally and it's sad but maybe take steps to avoid even the possibility of having interactions like that. There isn't really a good solution to the problem.

Also, about the report thing, I think it goes through the system and something could happen like a warning or a ban but never right away.

@liquiddragon: Well i guess i can't take as much abuse as others but yea racism is also a NO NO in my book and they have to take an active role in doing something about it.

@rethla: It is an easy thing to do. Xbox and PS4 record your last few minutes of gameplay as it is, and that recording function is also built into Windows I think. Recording the last 2 minutes of voice chat (so reports could be verified) would be easy with that technology. It just isn't a priority.

Current reporting systems rely on "He said, she said" and lend themselves to second chances and warnings and all the rest. They don't work. If you implemented an evidence based system there would be no need for that. Just have someone record and log the interaction and issue the appropriate correction.

I'm sure at some level the companies don't want to ban the bad actors because they like their revenue (this is why Twitter allows harassment to go unchecked) but I think it's the wrong way to look at it. Once again, imagine this was a physical store. If a man walks up to a woman in a store and starts berating her and calling her all manner of names, what happens? He gets ejected. Why? Both because it's the right thing to do AND it's the profitable thing to do. No store wants to be hostile to 50% of the population (more if you count the other men who would also boycott) just to keep the business of a few horrible people.

Online isn't different. And these services lose money by keeping the hostile players around, because decent players are driven away. If we think it's 5-10% of the population who are toxic, I would be shocked if a significantly larger percentage of people didn't stop playing online (and thus paying for the services) over the toxicity. Anecdotally I've seen plenty of people say that toxicity drives them to single player games.

As for you, personally, it seems like you should be strongly advocating for these kinds of bans. You get ignored when you are (I presume) just trying to coordinate strategy because people don't want to deal with the toxicity. The toxic people are to blame, not those who turn off their headsets because they don't like the rape threats. Thus if the toxicity were eliminated a lot more people would be on the mics, coordinating with you. If this were a tennis court and someone pooped on it and everyone else left so you couldn't find anyone to play with would you blame the pooper or the people who left because of the poop?

Sorry this happened. It's an unfortunate aspect of online gaming and has caused me to avoid voice chat in games altogether.

Maybe you could squad up with some Giant Bomb players?

Bans are rare and require multiple people to submit reports. After awhile most people just stop submitting reports because they think it's useless. Another thing that could be done to improve matters would be to tell people when their reports lead to a ban. That way they know that the system is working. As it is most people just see the report go into the ether and then may be matched with the same player again (nobody should ever be matched with a player they have reported, though I think some games do prevent this.)

I think it's very weird how many people are on the Giant Bomb forum saying "nothing could be done." Why is the Giant Bomb forum so good? Partially because it is HEAVILY moderated. Mods shut down threads just for bickering, let alone harassment and abuse. They are not afraid to swing the ban hammer. This place is civil and usable because the bad elements are weeded out. Why should online gaming be any different?

@rethla: Wow just wow....

@bigsocrates: Player unknown is going down that "evidence based report" thingie right now. I would say about 60%-80% of trashtalk has stopped because people ar afraid to get banned but i doubt the last 20% will go away and the actual people getting reprimands are very few (but loud).

@samanthak: Hey we are in the same boat here. I have pressed the reportbutton many times and never seemes to get anything out of it. Most of us probably have.

@bigsocrates: I don't think you should just dismiss the idea that the problem is a learned behavior, something that can change by fostering a better community in more ways than bans. The difference between a forum and an online gaming platform is scale. It's easy to throw out people from a restaurant or close the occasional thread on a forum as relatively slow as this one. But it's another thing when you have millions of players online 24 hours per day with potentially several thousand reports on a daily basis. At some point the load of the reports to a department at a company is going to clash practically and financially with expectation. I do agree though that if your report leads to something, they should probably notify you. I recall reporting a video on Facebook and got a message back almost a month later saying the video I had reported had been dealt with, making that little action feel a little more impactful. I am sure most places these days automate a lot of this and only surface the ones that get repeating complaints over a short period or they implement some back end reputation system that only pings someone after x amount of complaints overall. Either way, neither is probably changing the landscape of online interaction anytime soon because the time between action and potential consequence is too long if at all.

That's why I am saying we need more ways than leaving it up to companies to take care of the vibe on these platforms.

@samanthak: haha I'm kinda suggesting you're able to take a lot of abuse 'cause I've tapped out a long time ago. Idk but maybe all that stuff gets kinda brushed off as just the typical online troll, though they definitely crossed the line with rape and murder. I guess the solution would be to record matches and be able to submit them as evidence.

@bigsocrates: I've pretty much stopped playing multiplayer games but I agree, whenever I've reported someone, I always came away frustrated by the lack of feedback. Things should be better and a lot of things could probably be done to achieve that but I look around and I don't see GB as the rule but the exception. Plus, can you really compare a gaming forum of a subscription based site to an online multiplayer community? I'm not saying you can't, I'm saying I don't know. I also don't know if it's gotten better over the years but it sure doesn't seem like it so I'm really just assuming it's a difficult issue to tackle, especially when money and jobs are on the line. Again, I totally agree that it seems possible abuse can be addressed in a more meaningful way and I'm puzzled by the lack progress. But as an end user, what can I really tell someone besides, yeah, it sucks, maybe try to avoid it.

@pezen: The community has proven that it cannot police itself. And it's not just in gaming. Twitter is toxic. Facebook can become toxic. Even NEWSPAPER web sites are toxic if unmoderated. It only takes a small percentage of bad apples to ruin the experience. After all if a woman goes online to game and 9 times out of 10 everyone is polite but 1 time out of that 10 she gets rape threats, she's not going to be like "well I only get rape threats 10% of the time, so this is pretty great." OP said that the harassment was so bad she cried. Would you want to do a recreational activity where 10% of the time it was so horrible it made you cry? I wouldn't. And assuming she plays with 10 different players every match, that only requires 1% of players to be toxic to ruin the experience. 1%.

If you want to propose actual solutions please do so, but nobody has figured out a way to deal with these things other than moderation yet. And the Internet has been around for decades.

As for the cost of moderation...it isn't free but it's not that expensive. As I said, I don't think it's a huge population doing it, and part of the reason it is as large as it is is because it goes unchecked. A lot of people would rein it in if they knew that behaving in a toxic manner would get them banned from their favorite game, and that, in turn, would reduce the cost of moderation.

The scale issue isn't really relevant because while online services are bigger than a restaurant or forum, they also have a lot more revenue. I think Xbox Live earns well over a billion dollars a year. Origin doesn't charge to play online, but when you buy on Origin directly EA doesn't have to pay an online storefront, so they get a lot more of your money. Companies this large and rich can afford moderation teams. The scale of the issue is bigger but so is the scale of the revenue.

As I said, if you have a 'social engineering' solution that works please share it. But in my opinion the Internet proves there isn't one. There are basically two ways to have a functional Internet community. Obscurity and moderation. Obviously obscurity doesn't work when you have a community of millions of players, so moderation is the only option.

Should have to get a license to use the Internet.

I don't know why, but somehow it seems like this sort of behavior has become a lot more prevalent in say, the last 10 years?

I remember actually having good conversations with strangers in Halo 2 and 3. I remember talking to these people in the lobby and forming a party and just using the voice chat for calling out enemies and weapons. I also talked to a Scottish dude about body hair. Those conversations might have been weird and kinda terrible sometimes, but at least we were able to talk to each other without it devolving into slur-wars.

Of course there have always been people who don't appreciate being told what to do, while others don't even wanna hear about anything other than the game. That sort of thing is fine. Different strokes and all that. But the flat out - attack-you-on-sight people? I don't remember that problem being as bad back then.

Maybe that is just my perspective. Maybe it has always been bad. Maybe it is more dependent on gender that I thought.

@bigsocrates: I'm not saying we should get rid of moderation, of course not. That's like saying we should handle disputes in society without a legal system anywhere in sight. But what I am arguing for is a little more engagement from everyone that isn't an asshole. A handful of people can't solve a community, but the entire community can. You're taking my urge for some civic courage as an alternative to moderation when I'm saying it's an addition that few people seem to think about. Everyone is looking to someone else to fix the problem instead of being part of the solution (myself included often times).

But also, your point about the threat of being banned from your favorite game will get people to act better goes against studies on the legal system in regards to harsher punishments as a deterrent from crime (not to mention how easy it is to circumvent it by just making a new profile). There's no empirical evidence that the threat of harsher punishment is actually a real deterrent, the deterrent is mostly getting caught, not the punishment. And since the punishment on an online platform is a nuisance at worst, it's not going to change much on it's own.

And if we use your number, 1% of people acting horrible out of a pool of millions of players, how is moderation for thousands of tickets per day not expensive or practically difficult enough even for a billion dollar company to justify? Are you saying they should have hundreds of people working on this? That's a lot of money they probably don't want to spend, especially not since they're probably not losing customers as evident by people sticking around the game and the service despite their experiences being bad. That's a cynical viewpoint, I know, but at some point either we take a hard stand and 'vote with our wallet' or we need to find more ways to combat the issue because a company, at the end of the day, doesn't care about you. They care about your wallet and how much of it they can get. Your feelings are irrelevant, however much social media has convinced us otherwise.

As I said, I believe moderation is much needed, but it's always going to be an uphill battle if the community doesn't do anything to help lift the baggage. And if that solution is simply to just form small pockets of likeminded players away from the masses, so be it I suppose.

I honestly stop what I'm doing and report any asshole like that.

I stopped a long time ago and mute it whenever i can, ever since halo 2 with the mass of racist 12 year olds.

Also report those dudes, especially anyone even joking about rape might want to contact the authorities too if you want.

First of all, I'm so sorry that happened. I get physical threats occasionally as a dude and even that doesn't feel good. I wish there was some way for developers to handle stuff like this, as in banning people. It's just a slippery slope that is hard to solve I reckon.

I'm extremely sad that this kind of stuff happens. Unfortunately, people prove time and time again that in the absence of consequences, terrible behavior happens instantly. Throw in the relative anonymity of online gaming (actually, the internet is much the same), and the space becomes largely a dumpster fire of racism, sexism, and general awfulness. I was watching Westworld this week, and it's a fairly apt societal commentary in that the visitors almost exclusively use the park to act out sociopathy. Watching it, all I could think is "yeah, that's probably what people would actually do if this really existed". Given the opportunity, most people will be awful.

One thing the internet has done to try and curb this is remove the anonymity. The comment sections on anything are typically a thunderdome of appalling, offensive trash, so some websites have gone the route of requiring you to comment with your facebook profile. I don't have any kind of data to back this up, but I have to imagine people are a bit more reticent to post terrible things if they have to actually own their comments and have them tied to their real name. As such, perhaps it's time to end the gamertag. I think it would probably cut down on the in-game toxicity if everyone knew it was Steve Jones going on a horrible tirade instead of xx420bluntsmokaxx. Then again, having actual names out there would cause other issues, such as people being able to track down people outside of gaming, so maybe Steve focuses his hatred instead on having a real-world confrontation with the person he blames for losing that game of Overwatch or some shit.

Sadly, I don't think there's a good solution, aside from the extremely unrealistic concept of people just fundamentally altering their behavior to actually be nice and respectful to each other. The sheer manpower required to actually police communities effectively is often something studios simply can't afford to do. There's an argument that the behemoths like Valve, Microsoft, Sony, et al. could do a better job on this given their resources, but the scope of it expands so much there as well. I'd be willing to bet that listing out the vitriol that occurred yesterday alone in GTA V, DOTA, CS, and PUBG would be a staggering document that would require teams of people to address properly. There's just too much of it, and that's talking about a very short time period within only a few games. I watched one of the waypoint streams, and Austin had screenshot a wildly offensive name for reporting. It damn well should have been reported, but will it make a difference? Probably not.

I fondly remember the early days of online gaming. I swear, I could hop on a game of Splinter Cell co-op Spies vs. Mercs with some random and almost always have productive voice chat that both helped teamwork and made it so damn fun, to where virtually every game, win or loss, ended with some laughs and some genuine "good game" comments. There was so much promise, and I thought we were entering an amazing new era of gaming. Fast forward to today, and "gg" is used mostly as a dickish taunt. I was really sad to hear that it was Battlefield 1, which I've found to mostly be decent in terms of voice chat. Then again, as a male, I'm not subjected to the kind of garbage women unfortunately are, and I guess it's pervaded every game by now. Just know that we're not all jerks and try to enjoy the good times more than the bad, because that's sadly about the only way to tolerate online gaming at this point.

I remember in 2007 watching a video on 1up where Jeff Green talked about how awful the voice chat was in the Modern Warfare 1 beta, with it pretty much being a dumpster fire of racism and petulant temper tantrums. I think at this point, 10 years later, there are no more Jeff Greens who use voice chat in games, and now voice chat is a sort of draw for people with horrible, repellent things to say.

I play a lot of Splatoon, and I think Nintendo's mix of paranoia and forgetfulness in regards to building an internet platform have become weirdly appealing. I used to laugh out loud at people criticizing the lack of voice chat in Splatoon, because I honestly wondered how many reviewers were hopping on to games with random people online and having a laugh-a-minute great time. When I think of voice chat online, I think about a very racially charged argument I once overheard in Counter-Strike between two young men about who was better at fishing.

Voice chat really sucks, and I really hate it. And I mean, I'm a straight white cis male, so if I'm having a bad time online, forget it, it's a nightmare for anyone else. Pretty much any good voice chat experience was through a closed group, like a tightly-knit Splatoon discord group or a World of Warcraft guild. The only good random voice chat experience I can remember was when MechAssault came out and Xbox Live first started up. That memory is kind of hazy now, but I remember it being nice and thinking that's what voice chat was always going to be like.

I'm really sorry you were viciously harassed online. I wish I could offer some way of fixing it, but I can't. Certainly, harassment and racism and all that should be dealt with more rapidly and with greater care, but we'll see. Sorry again.

@samanthak: I have no solutions to offer that aren't the obvious, largely unhelpful, mute, block, and report. Unfortunately, I think it's true that public chat has generally degenerated into pure hell because anyone who isn't like that has thrown up his or her hands and given up on ever using it. I know I have.

I do just want to say, though, that I'm sorry that people say things like that to you (and everyone else who deals with similar abuse), and if it helps any, you're a profoundly better person than the assholes on the other side spewing that vile shit.

In terms of your comment on bans I will say Riot does at least ONE thing right with bans. If a player you reported gets banned or punished you as the reporter get a notification about it. It does not say which player it was but it is a system that least informs the user base that the system is working.

God reading that just pisses me off. I do NOT understand why people feel the need to insult people in fucking voice chat. I can understand if you're in a group chat with your friends and you're shitting on your teammates on vent or whatever while playing, you know, where THEY CAN'T HEAR YOU, but to do it to their face like that is just immature and makes you look like a complete asshole.

I also don't understand the intense sexism and racism in some game chats either, I have NEVER felt compelled to say some of the horrible shit that others have said online, even though I'm anonymous. I don't even understand the thought process behind those kinds of insults, like the "go make me a sandwich" line, HAHA she's a girl ONLINE! HAHAHA THAT'S SO FUCKING FUNNY!!!!!!! AND OH MY GOD YOU JUST CALLED THAT BLACK PERSON THE N-WORD, YOU'RE SO EDGY AND COOL! HAHAHAHA!!!!!! Is that it? Do they just think it's funny or something? I don't get it. God, it just pisses me off to think about it. I just hate how I'm lumped up with these shitheads who think this is funny, or even something acceptable to say.

I wish developers would take a MUCH harder stance against shit like this. I remember back when I played TF2 non-stop, there was this server called Animal House my friends and I used to play on, and it was SO fun because it had like 20~ regulars, and we would just have a freaking BLAST playing Dustbowl all the time chatting like good friends. I must have played over two-hundred hours on that server - very good times.

I haven't talked to randoms in years. I mainly play on Xbox Live and it's with the same 3 or 4 people. We've known each other since playing Halo 2 together so we're actually friends. We have similar taste in games so we usually get the same stuff. I have over 90 people on my friend's list, but having a few close people is ideal IMO.

I'm black, I would sometimes run into racism, but I mainly don't want to talk to randoms since most people don't have mics or if they do you'll just hear them breathe or yell a random cuss word as they die. Also, I don't think any game is all THAT complex where you have to talk to your team anyway. Even when I play with friends we're hardly talking about the game. I would use this site or some other tool to make gaming friends.

@samanthak Well, that sucks. Doesn't surprise me, though. People tend to think of the internet as a land of 100% anonymity (it really isn't, but that's another topic for another day), and so they view the opportunity cost of spouting crap as nothing. In real life, shouting expletives and /or muttering sexually explicit pick-up lines at someone would get a person thrown out of most bars, shopping centers, and other such venues. It might even cost such said person his or her job if the comments got back to their boss and place of employment. These potential costs for over-utilizing freedom of speech keep a lot of nastiness in check.

On the net? Hardly. "I'm 1337GaM3r_THX1138. As long as I don't threaten any high ranking politicians or make explicitly detailed death threats ('I checked your IP address and know where you live and who you are. Have fun walking to your car in the Target parking lot when you go buy your Friday groceries, Ms. Doe.'), no legal authorities are going to care. Oh, and the game isn't storing records of voice chats during online matches, so it's really your word against mine anyway. Notice how I never type any of my rubbish about sandwiches to you? You're welcome. Feel free to report, though. Might be a cathartic exercise in futility for you. ;-)"

Personally, I just mute and /or block. I don't even bother reporting anymore. *shrug* People faced with minimal consequences will usually be as unfriendly as humanly possible... in very inventive ways, occasionally. I knew of a guy from Iceland who was beaten in StarCraft 2 by a South Korean player. Shortly after victory, the South Korean player asked several terse questions to try and work out the best insult. He didn't have a lot to work with, so he latched onto Iceland, remembered a recent eruption there that had caused massive damage and human suffering (to the point of making international news), and triumphantly called his defeated foe a "volcano bas$%$#."

People are droll. Hang in there.

I've never gotten anything even a tenth as bad as that on voice chat. But even so I disable that shit instantly in every game. If I wanna co-ordinate and have some team play, I'll get actual decent human beings I know to play with. Fuck that random voice chat noise. Nothing good comes out of it.

Sorry you had a particularily rough encounter, but just know that no one really expects you to "suck it up", it's a far better option to limit how much of the garbage you expose yourself to.

@samanthak: Whenever i think maybe there is hope for us as a society I hear another story like yours and I just want to give up....No one should have to hear that. Pub chat is the first thing i disable, I applaud you for hanging on this long. Have your positive experiences been good enough to warrant the risk of having to put up with the bullshit of others? I don't know how you do it....I couldn't even handle being told i suck before I peaced out...I'm there to relax and enjoy what little free time I get these days.

Yeah that sucks. Real sorry that happened to you. Unless you can play with friends or you're a guy with thick skin (women get treated worse even with thick skin) you're kinda just screwed. I hate it's like that. I mostly play overwatch, and the experiences I've had with it have been positive ones, but whenever I venture out to other stuff it's crazy. (Not saying the overwatch community is pristine or anything. Just going off my personal experience here.)

I try to be nice to everyone in general, but (and I hope it doesn't come off as weird) I try to be extra nice toward ladies or... basically anyone who's not a straight dude online. That's all each of us can do. It takes one person at a time to make a change. Just remember not everyone is like that. Some people are still out there to have fun and makes friends!

Starts up PUBG, turns on voice chat. N-word X50, LGBT focused slurs X25, people breathing into the mic/blasting music/yelling for no reason X15.
Turns off voice chat.

I don't have anything more poignant to say than what must people here have already said, but yeah, it sucks.
Money speaks, and these people bought the game and spend their (or more often is the case, mom and dads) money on the game. Devs don't really want to ban money. Combined with the head ache it can be to actually report this stuff, combined once again with how many people do it.
I don't know what the solution is, but whoever figures it out one day deserves a noble peace prize or something.

My advice is to try and find a community ( maybe even on this site! ) of people who want to play the game and have fun. Ideally, even if they are strangers, they should care more about the game then saying horrendous shit. For me it was a good way to find friends to play with online, even if they are strangers initially. Sorry this happened to you, these shitheads would not dare say any of that stuff to your face because they are so cowardly that they have to vent online while hiding behind a screen.

edit: i found some cool communities on PS4 if that helps

@pixel_junkie: Really?

People suck. Just start a discord group with anyone you are friends with who plays games, and call it good!

Whenever people start getting rude, I start messing with them. If they're gonna hate on me, i'll at least give them a reason to.