Earlier this month Counter Strike: Global Offensive implemented a new community driven ban system. The new system is similar to the one in League of Legends where disruptive gamers are brought before a select panel of experience players. These players then decide whether the gamer should be banned for their behaviour or not and then collectively agree on that decision.

The development team behind DOTA 2 reported a 35% reduction in negative player interactions after implementing temporary chat bans based on player reports in their game and now the system in Counter Strike has yielded some equally pleasing results. The experimental system present in Counter Strike is currently in its beta phase and is called 'Overwatch'. This system gives self-nominated players the ability to report, review and issue temporary bans against "problem players". Members of Overwatch are selected by Valve based on self-nominated players' wins, account age, total play time, skill level as well as their report count. The Valve appointed 'investigators' have found evidence of disruptive behaviour in 90% of the highly-reported cases. In addition to this it's been reported that the investigators' choice of action in these instances has been unanimous in the "vast majority" of cases.

Valve said in a recent blog update "In addition to our standard test cases, we recently added demos of pro CS:GO players (specifically NiP and Quantic) to the test pool. Every single test case has been correctly dismissed as 'Insufficient Evidence', with no false convictions made."

This all sounds very promising indeed. Personally I think in practice a community based system dealing with negative player behaviour is a fantastic idea. It makes sense that, as a problem within the community, it should be dealt with by the community. I'm thrilled to see that it works in practice too. I hope more multiplayer games start to adopt similar systems. But what do you make of the new system? As always, let us know in the comments below.