Blizzard requires account linking with Twitch for Overwatch Contenders

Blizzard has announced a decision regarding their Twitch chat for the upcoming Overwatch Contenders broadcasts. This will take place during the Contenders Season 3 games.

Blizzard will be trying a new moderation system from December 28 to January 12, which viewers are required to link their Blizzard account with their Twitch accounts to chat during the broadcast. For those who don’t have a Blizzard account, they’ll have to create one, which reduces “drop-in” viewers from chatting. They’ll be prompted to create one if they should engage in the chat without an account.

The company didn’t say how they’ll use this system, but the goal of this new implementation is to “create a more positive viewing experience for viewers and encourage a more positive environment for chatting by enforcing consequences and dealing with trolls directly since they’ll have control over their Blizzard account. This goes beyond Twitch’s control and puts the driver’s wheel back into Blizzard’s hands even though it’s hosted on another service.

They’ve already stated that they want to monitor and deal with users that violate their ToS and Guidelines outside of the game when negativity is spread, so this follows suit.

Game Director Jeff Kaplan stated that Blizzard is attempting to:

“proactively seek out social media sites like YouTube, for example, and look for incidents of very toxic behavior, and seek out the accounts that are participating in those, and action them often times before anybody’s even reported them or they’ve shown up in any other place.”

This was reported during a Developer Update earlier this year.

Regardless, we’ll have to see how this turns out. Perhaps more companies may start doing the same for their live events from this point on. Stay tuned for updates.