Slurs, threats, and encouraging suicide should be non-negotiable permanent bans on first offense.
There is never, ever a valid excuse to say slurs, threaten violence, or encourage suicide over a video game. Frankly, this being implemented as a rule will not affect anyone who is a decent human being. If you are concerned about being banned over this, you are the problem. Be a better person.
"Why not just [ignore them/mute them/hide the chat box/etc]?" Because the people on the receiving end should not have to take action because someone else refuses to act like a decent human being. Why is the onus on the victim to act? It is 100% the fault of the one that said it in the first place for having no self-control or decency. People like that aren't wanted nor needed in any game community ever.
Lesser levels of toxicity should also warrant immediate chat mutes for some period of time or number of games. If people keep doing it, it should eventually escalate to a permanent ban as well. Severe toxicity should skip levels.
The reason games have a "toxicity culture" is precisely because people allow it to thrive by just dismissing it with statements like "Just mute them lol".
Comments
I'm not arguing here but I can barely say Feng without it being censored in chat.
My only fear is that they might mix up killing yourself as an in-game term versus a death threat/unacceptable statement, because it's a phrase that comes up a lot in innocent contexts. Like to cook up an example where it's ambiguous, a survivor might complain about being stuck in a thana/DL/Gift of Pain Legion game, and the killer says "just ######### then." That's not well phrased and very easily interpreted as a call to suicide, but it's just as easily possible that the killer was talking about exiting the game via hook.
Otherwise, yeah, 100%. I might move it to a 2nd-time permaban with an unambiguous zero-tolerance warning and temp ban on the first offense - I have no love for these people either way, but I can see some jumped-up 14-year-old coming from another toxic gaming community and thinking this stuff is cool and normal to say, and it'd be a bit of a waste to give someone the axe when they could be set straight otherwise. That, or just chat bans for anything shy of slurs (in which case, give them the full yeet, that's never explicable.) But the real scumbags definitely need to be weeded out faster than they currently are.
while I want people gone that are toxic, I also disagree that the chat is the actual problem.
This is an asymetrical game, more often than not one side will stomp the other, leaving the other side frustrated. This frustration can lead to actions, such as in-game toxicity (face camping, teabagging, sandbagging and other actions that annoy other players). While banning people for not behaving in chat is a good first step, it WILL NOT fix toxicity in this game as there are plenty of other channels to vent your anger, be that through in-game actions or by leaving a comment under someone's steam profile.
Funnily enough Microsoft is all over this on xbox, i have gotten many people chat banned and real banned for that kinda stuff, one swear word gets handled in minutes. I dont know how fast it works on the other consoles but the lack of proper handling of that stuff on behaviours side is most likely why theres no endgame chat on console.
But this is exactly why you can mute and report people.