Amazon invents a tech for toxic gamers

Video Games bring along cheaters, hackers, and bad sports in other words, such players are called toxic. Amazon has planned an interesting way to deal with them.

"One mechanism for dealing with such players is to isolate all toxic players into a separate player pool," a newly published Amazon patent spotted by Protocol says, "such that one toxic player is paired only with other toxic players."

The offending parties will be grouped together into their own game lobby where they'll play whatever multiplayer game in question with each other, rather than playing with a broader group of users who don't exhibit toxic behaviour

Since "toxic" behaviour is a broad category, and the type of behaviour defined as such depends on the player, Amazon's solution includes other factors as well. Some players may not find swearing to be "toxic" behaviour, for instance, while others may not find quitting out of games mid-match to be "toxic" behaviour.

Amazon has experience attempting to moderate gaming communities: It owns Twitch, the world's most popular video game streaming service, which has struggled with moderation for years.

Various video games have dabbled in the type of player behaviour policing that Amazon's patent covers, including "Grand Theft Auto Online," "Fall Guys," and "Rainbow Six: Siege," among others. The difference with Amazon's patent is that it uses a variety of factors to match a variety of different types of so-called "toxic" players together.