Video games are never made with malicious intent in mind, and while your mom’s best friend keeps telling her that the shooting game you keep playing will make you violent, there isn’t much truth to that. They just give you a world where you can escape and have fun.
But no matter how sweet of an angel you are, not everyone else who plays the same games as you have the same temperaments. Along with online games come player bases and communities that are mean, poisonous and rude simply because they are behind a screen and can get away with saying whatever they want.
If this sounds like a nightmare, you may want to avoid the 10 games we have on our list below.
The 10 Most Toxic Gaming Communities to Avoid in 2022
10) Minecraft
Minecraft is one of the most popular games in the last decade, and it will of course bring a lot of jerks and mourners into the player base. Although the game has a large number of peace-loving adults who just want a relaxing time in their sandbox world, many young players feed on causing chaos.
You’ll soon see public servers turn into each player yelling at each other, tainting each other’s creations, and generally making it hard for players to have fun. Since Microsoft or Mojang don’t run the game’s online servers, neither company steps in to stop the mess, leaving the toxicity running rampant.
9) overwatch
Team-based shooters tend to be poisonous, but add a high degree of variety and competition to the mix, and you’re sure to attract a bunch of enemy players. Released in 2016, overwatch remains one of Blizzard’s most popular games, and with Overwatch 2 as it is not currently available, the stakes and toxicity will undoubtedly rise.
Blizzard has claimed in the past that the game’s “disruptive behavior” has been reduced by about 40 percent since the game first came into the limelight, but in fact the toxicity is still pretty rampant. Quite a few top players have stopped overwatch League due to the hostile nature of the community.
8) Rocket League
Rocket League is unique in that it has an emote system that allows players to interact in matches. While typing in chat is possible, the fast-paced nature of the game makes it less than ideal. Most players have a number of preset messages associated with at most a few keyboard shortcuts.
Does this keep players from being excessively toxic? Not really. Players will still do their best to chat spam Rocket League, where the game has a high grieving potential. Matches are quite fast and players are incredibly quick to judge others and their mothers too.
7) World of Warcraft
World of Warcraftis one of the most popular MMOs of all time to date, and as we know, the larger the community that owns a game, the more likely toxic players are to sneak in. The game has a terrible mix of old-school players who are salty about the game’s ever-changing focus, jerks who mistreat everyone, and newbies struggling to find a place to feel at home.
Regardless of the meta and popular playstyles, PvP sees experienced players using exploits to sweep the carpet among low-level players. Dungeons and raids are packed with people rushing through dungeons yelling at everyone if they’re too slow to catch up, with chat never being one to shy away from the constant trolling. Unfortunately, with constant updates and expansions, the toxic community seems to be thriving.
6) Duty
The sheer size of this game franchise is both a blessing and a curse. While this makes the game incredibly active and engaging, the players you’ll be playing with will most likely scream your ears if you make a single mistake – or if you play well. The game’s toxic player base doesn’t really need a reason to be toxic.
Of Duty dating back to 2003, many players have reached their skill limit and want to start over. This means that new players constantly encounter highly skilled players who may not always be tolerant of newcomers. This frustration can manifest itself in the form of petty insults in the chat to get booted for low rankings, which ultimately prevent you from playing.
Many content creators of the game are also trash-focused, further promoting the game’s hostile environment.
5) Fortnite
Fortnite is a game title synonymous with streaming, an industry known for its hostile users. That, coupled with the game’s cartoonish graphics and low cost aimed at kids, makes sure Fortnite a hub for spoiled angry teens to scream in voice chat while nibbling on chips right after.
Flexible building, using emotes to get eliminations, you name it, and there will be a toxic practice haunting the game. One of the most horrific things players do is team up in Solo mode, where a player in a one-on-one situation secretly involves a third person to work with them and help the player. eliminate, and then share the loot.
This is against the game’s Terms of Service and players have been banned for it in the past.
4) Halo
With the franchise dating back to 2001, Halo is the flagship of multiplayer shooters out there, but has quickly turned into one of the most toxic games due to its player base. Most harassment complaints related to Xbox Live are the result of: Halo games taken a little too personally.
A leading factor that has brought the game to its wretched state is the professional Halo esports players and content creators who don’t think twice before putting toxicity at the forefront of the games they play. It is not uncommon for trolls to milk money from toxic troll content they post on YouTube.
The game even invented the term “tea bags,” where a player will taunt another player by standing over his dead body and repeatedly crouching over the corpse representing, well, mean things.
3) League of Legends
Errors are easily punished in League because of the complex mechanics, and along with the five-versus-five structure of games where you essentially roll the dice nine times per game, little kids (and even adults) who can’t control their emotions are one button – bleed away from your eyes at the raging wall of text they managed to conjure up mid-game.
Satisfying, League does not have any form of voice communication during its games, along with text chats with filters, to ensure that the toxicity present in the game’s fanbase doesn’t go completely overboard. League would certainly have taken a higher spot on this list had it not been for the developers’ countermeasures.
2) dota 2
dota 2 is a game where emotions run high, adding greatly to the risk and reward element. Such a game element can easily cause players to often have negative gaming experiences, and not every player can keep a cool head.
Like some of the other games on this list, players in dota 2 also grief and abuse voice chat, but manage to be one step ahead in degeneration. Players have discovered ways to avoid AFK detection by becoming permanently invisible near a ghost wave, while angry players regularly waste wards, tomes and smoke.
Keeping in mind the simplicity of burner account creation and rampant smurf brands dota 2 almost undeniably one of the most toxic gaming communities out there. There’s even a 2019 study that says the game is the most toxic out there, but apparently the study is a bit outdated.
1) CS:GO
What do you get when you have an online multiplayer game that combines the free-to-play character with a high skill level and voice chat? The potential for an incredibly vicious and hostile community to nurture within the game, and over the years since the game’s release in 2012, we can see that just that has taken place.
To make matters worse, Valve doesn’t exactly enforce strict guidelines and anti-measures to prevent toxic practices from plaguing the game, meaning friendly fire for no reason other than trolling can and will go unpunished multiple times before the player finally is booted from the game.
Cheating and smurfing both have the muddy waters of CS:GO, even as Valve is taking big steps to discipline one of the most toxic gaming communities out there. The company sees itself banning tens of thousands of players from chat every few weeks.
With all these incredibly unfortunate points in mind, it’s safe to say that: Counter-Strike: Global Offensive quickly grabs the number 1 spot on this list.
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