Call of Duty developer vows to crackdown harder on racism

Call of Duty has a reputation for being quite toxic. It has a lot of 12-year-olds saying they tapped your mom in the sack, people screaming expletives, and of course, lots of racism. This is a known staple of the game’s multiplayer community.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward announced today that they’ll be cracking down far harder given recent world events. Beyond just announcing these changes, Infinity Ward also apologized for not trying harder to enact these changes sooner.

“There is no place for racist content in our game. This is an effort we began with launch and we need to do a better job. We’re issuing thousands of daily bans of racist and hate-oriented names. But we know we have to do more – and we are,” reads the statement. “We apologize to our players. This is our commitment to you, our fans, thank you.”

Infinity Ward will be enforcing more bans, adding more filters and restrictions on custom names, and improving player feedback systems to report players.

Throughout the years, players have found ways to showcase their racism or bigotry beyond expressing it vocally. Call of Duty: Black Ops introduced an emblem editor which has appeared in multiple titles, allowing you to make pictures of whatever you want. Some are inappropriate but not really as toxic or offensive as the more extreme emblems.

In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, the addition of cross-play makes users create an “Activision ID”. This lets you change your name to whatever you want and the filters for this system have been… well, quite generous to some players. You’ll find players running around with names that blatantly say the N-word, maybe just using letters or characters to get around the filters.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s fourth season of content was meant to release yesterday but was delayed in response to the Black Lives Matter protests. No new release date has been given.