The use of racist, sexist, homophobic, and all sorts of other slurs have become commonplace in the matches ofCall of Dutygames over the years. This kind of language has, in many ways, become just as identifiable withCall of Duty’sbrand as Doritos, Mountain Dew, and 1v1 matches on Rust have been over the years. And after a long period of time in which this issue has festered, Infinity Ward says it’s now looking to do something about it.In the wake of the protests that havebroken out throughout the United Statesfollowing the death of George Floyd, conversations surrounding racism have come to light in a major way. Developer Infinity Ward is now (finally) looking to do something about this problem in its own neck of the woods. Shared in a new post on Twitter, Infinity Ward said it is looking for ways to cut down on racist content that appears inCall of Duty: Modern Warfaremoving forward.“There is no place for racist content in our game,” Infinity Ward said plainly. The studio went on to state that it has taken steps since the launch ofÂModern Warfarelast year to eliminate this kind of content more, but that it clearly hasn’t done enough. Moving forward, the studio says it will invoke additional resources that will allow it to recognize certain tags and IDs that are racist. Furthermore, in-game reporting systems will be increased and will ban more players by the hour who break these rules. Additional steps to make it easier to report racist acts along with increasing permanent bans to repeat offenders have also been mentioned as well.“We apologize to our players. This is our commitment to you, our fans, thank you,” read the end of Infinity Ward’s statement.
Let’s be perfectly honest here: this is a move Infinity Ward doesn’t deserve much praise for at all. As many responses to the post on Twitter stated, the fact that it took the death of a man and an ensuing global protest of systematic racism for Infinity Ward to finally feel the need to more staunchly rectify and push back on these long-standing issues inCall of Dutysays a lot. While the studio behindÂModern Warfarecan never police the actions or speech of every player who jumps into the game, the point still stands that this has been an issue in the game’s community for well over a decade at this point and it’s something that Activision and variousCall of DutyÂdevelopers have never really addressed head-on.
It’s absolutely a good thing that Infinity Ward is now looking to crack down on these racist issues that have lingered withinCall of Dutygames for years, but it’s hard not to think that something shouldn’t have been done sooner. Hopefully, the steps that the studio has outlined here can lead to actual change within theÂCall of Dutycommunity.
