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Blizzard requiring you to link Twitch Account to chat during events

Blizzard recently revealed a new moderation system in partner with Twitch in order to curb online toxicity during events broadcast on Twitch. The new system will require you to link your Twitch and Battle.net accounts together in order to participate in any of the Twitch chats during Blizzard events. As taken from their announcement “The program will be trialed during 2018 Season 3 quarterfinals matches across all regions, from Dec. 28, 2018, through Jan. 12, 2019. The Path to Pro team then will evaluate the program’s overall effect on creating a more positive viewing experience.” they will be monitoring the success of the program.

Wiggins Thoughts: There has been a lot of outrage about this move by Blizzard and while I can understand why some people would be upset, this type of thing was bound to happen. You have Amazon and Activision combining accounts for better or worse. Games these days and especially ones I’ve played this year hyper-focus on teamwork and rely on your team members to play effectively and do well. This forced coordination creates quite a toxic environment as a player, do bad and you get yelled at, that one guy not pulling his weight and you’re bound to get frustrated. That issue aside though the internet has always been a vile place to be, so many people say things you would catch them dead saying in real life to another person all because there is a perceived lack of consequences. Well now there potentially are consequences for them being an !#@hat online. Do I think this is the right way of going about curbing online behavior ? Not specifically on a personal level. Is it an attempt to fix a much larger and wider issue, yes. I don’t think it will work and I for one don’t watch any Blizzard events and don’t much like the idea of linking my accounts together to participate in what usually just devolves into some sort of message and emote spam. For many years we as gamers have held some crazy idea that we don’t want government or companies interfering with our “fun” and it has continued to have a wild west feel to it but at someone someone or something apparently needs to step in and lay down some ground rules on how to treat another person either in real life or online because this type of idiotic childish behavior we continue to encounter online needs to stop. We are better then this and we should behave better so that we don’t need to have the likes Blizzard attempting to dictate what we are allowed to say online. We can’t keep treating each other the way we have online, with no consequences, because we are doing all a disservice.