Anyone who has been online could have predicted it. Give people an internet connection and a microphone, and some will quickly reveal how much they suck. After yesterday’s PS5-only release Destruction of AllStars, players reported almost instantly cases of severe verbal harassment, aggravated by the baffling absence of tools to prevent such behavior.
Get around through social media, and you will see many players complaining DestructionIntrusive voice chat, which is enabled by default. Even worse, the voices of other players come through this tiny little speaker in the face of the PS5’s DualSense controller. (Yes, really.) Some players met on ResetEra, the popular video game forum, for sharing stories about racial insults, homophobia and other cases of inexcusable and derogatory language. When reviewing the game for Ars Technica, Apparently, Sam Machkovech listened to “an alt-right podcast on the Dark Web and QAnon” broadcast by the speaker.
“It’s a really fun game and I’m sure it will be fun with younger kids,” a ResetEra moderator said. he wrote. “But I think they won’t want to” DIE FUTT PERRA! “or some horrible homophobia yelling through his living room driver’s speaker.”
Even worse, Destruction of AllStars it offers few frustrating tools to help players get away from the shakes. From what I can tell, there is no way in the game to silence or denounce hostile players. You can press the trackpad to get a list of all the participants in each game, but there is no way to actually interact with any of the usernames shown. It’s just a list. There are also no buried settings in the options that allow you to turn off bulk voice chat.
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In other words, to get everyone to shut up, you’ll have to rely on system-level tricks. Whenever you feel like having a (toxic) party talk, here are the two easiest options at your fingertips.
Use of activity cards
As you select your character before the game, you should see a pop-up notification at the top right of the screen: “Game voice chat has begun.” Once you see it, of course you shut up. Touch the PS button. Go to “Voice Chat | Destruction of AllStars”Activity card (probably the first to appear) and touched Square. You can also do this after the game starts, but it will probably splash you. Just one up.
Another step forward: you have to do it every game. The PS5 will not remember that you muted the chat the previous game.
Muting the DualSense driver
When you press the PS button, you pull your “control center,” a string of icons at the bottom of the screen. The control center is customizable; when you have it open, just press the Options button. Before playing, adjust the bar to include the “sound” icon. At any time, you can click on it and turn the controller speaker all the way down. This will make everything nice and quiet.
Of course, that players should even fall back on system-level solutions is not ideal. It’s a little weird that voice chat is turned on by default, and even weirder it comes through the driver’s speakerphone. But it’s downright baffling that there’s no apparent way to silence individual players per game, to report offensive assholes in the game, or to turn off voice chat altogether, which has quickly proven to be distracting, at best, and contemptuous, at worst. It’s 2021. Anyone who has been online could have predicted it.
Kotaku came to Lucid Games, DestructionThe developer and Sony, the publisher of the game, to see if any of these issues will be fixed in future updates of Destruction of AllStars.