Call of Duty partners with Modulate to combat online toxicity

With voice and text harassment in the online gaming sphere a major concern for many players, Call of Duty is finding new ways to combat toxicity and carve a path to a safe and welcoming place for everyone. Modulate and Call of Duty will squad up to deliver real-time voice chat moderation via the AI-powered ToxMod system. The beta begins today with the launch of Season 5 Reloaded in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II and Warzone 2.0. A full release will be dropping alongside Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III on November 10 to ensure the wave of new players can have the best experience possible. Click here to visit Activision’s FAQ page.

Call of Duty’s new voice chat moderation system utilizes ToxMod, the AI-Powered voice chat moderation technology from Modulate, to identify in real-time and enforce against toxic speech—including hate speech, discriminatory language, harassment and more. This new development will bolster the ongoing moderation systems led by the Call of Duty anti-toxicity team, which includes text-based filtering across 14 languages for in-game text (chat and usernames) as well as a robust in-game player reporting system.

“There’s no place for disruptive behavior or harassment in games ever. Tackling disruptive voice chat particularly has long been an extraordinary challenge across gaming. With this collaboration, we are now bringing Modulate’s state of the art machine learning technology that can scale in real-time for a global level of enforcement,” said Michael Vance, Chief Technology Officer, Activision. “This is a critical step forward to creating and maintaining a fun, fair and welcoming experience for all players.”

An initial beta rollout of the voice chat moderation technology will begin in North America on August 30 inside the existing games, Call of Duty:Modern Warfare II and Call of Duty: Warzone™, to be followed by a full worldwide release (excluding Asia) timed to Modern Warfare III on November 10^th. Support will begin in English with additional languages to follow at a later date.

“We’re enormously excited to team with Activision to push forward the cutting edge of trust and safety,” said Mike Pappas, CEO at Modulate. “This is a big step forward in supporting a player community the size and scale of Call of Duty, and further reinforces Activision’s ongoing commitment to lead in this effort.”

Stay tuned to Gaming Trend for more Call of Duty coverage!

 

See below for our list of partners and affiliates: