PSA: ‘Overwatch’ Wants Players to Stop Being Douchey

  If you’ve dabbled in online gaming, you’ll have no doubt noticed the rampant streak of bastardry that runs through the whole thing. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing something as cutesy-ass as Dora the Explorer Cruises Over to the Arctic and Gives an Eskimo a Bit of a Hug, if it has an online component, people will be taking it far too goddamn seriously.  

You know the sort of thing we’re talking here. Abusing the other team when you beat their asses, abusing your own team if they’re not pulling their weight, abusing your opponent if they’re worse than you, abusing your opponent if they’re better than you, cheating, raging, blaming non-existent lag, pre-teen cretins trying out some new cusses they just heard… it’s a minefield right here.

The sad thing about the worst online players is, you can’t climb through the Internet, emerge out of their TV/monitor screen like that creepy girl from The Ring, grab them and put their scrotes in a mangle. The next best thing? Having a little snarky fun at their expense, courtesy of Overwatch.

Lately in the celebrated hero shooter, a new trolly trend has emerged. Instead of the traditional post-match ‘GG,’ players have been dropping a ‘GG EZ,’ just as a middle finger to that last dangling thread of sportsmanship in gaming. The dev team don’t want any of that BS going on, so they’ve added a lil’ feature to the game with the latest server test patch. The chat now filters ‘GG EZ’ into a range of different sentences, as Kotaku reports. Here are a couple:

• “I’m wrestling with some insecurity issues in my life but thank you all for playing with me.”
• “I feel very, very small... please hold me...”
• “Well played. I salute you all.”
• “For glory and honor! Huzzah comrades!”
• “It’s past my bedtime. Please don’t tell my mommy.”
• “Gee whiz! That was fun. Good playing!”

This is something I can get on board with. Not least of all because nobody says ‘gee whiz’ or ‘huzzah’ often enough these days.