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A new patent filing suggests that Sony Interactive Entertainment is considering ways to combat toxicity in online games. The company has patented a system to punish and reward player behavior online.
Sony among companies quizzed by lawmakers over toxicity in online games
Recently, a group of U.S. politicians penned a letter to Sony, Microsoft, and numerous other game companies to urge them to combat harassment and extremism in online games. This has been a hotly debated topic for a number of years as game makers have deployed various methods of fighting negative behavior but with varying success.
As spotted by Top Tier List (via ResetEra), the aforementioned patent was filed in September 2022 and published last week. It describes “a method of verifying behavior associated with the play of a game.”
“The method further includes analyzing, by an artificial intelligence model, the behavior of the first player to determine whether the behavior is abusive,” the patent reads. “The operation of analyzing whether the behavior of the first player is abusive is performed to determine whether the characterization of the first player is accurate.”
Interestingly, Sony cites Fortnite as an example of an online game with abusive players in its patent. Its developer, Epic Games, is one of the companies lawmakers urged to address toxicity.