Amazon’s patent envisages a combination of toxic players and other toxic players

• As long as video games have been around, some players have shown less polite behavior.
• The modern term for this player behavior is “toxic,” and Amazon has gotten a new idea that it has patented it to deal with these players: pair them with other toxic players.
• The patent says: “One mechanism for dealing with such players is to isolate all“ toxic ”players in a separate group of players, so that only one toxic player is paired with other toxic players.
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As long as there have been video games, there have been cheaters, bad sports, and all sorts of other unfortunate behaviors.

A common term for this gamer’s behavior these days is “toxic,” and Amazon has patented an interesting way to approach these players: put them together.

One of the mechanisms for dealing with these players is to isolate all “toxic” players in a separate player group, “so that one toxic player is paired with other toxic players,” says a recently published Amazon patent monitored by Protocol.

The offending parties will be grouped together in their own game lobby where they will play any multiplayer game with one another, instead of playing with a larger group of users who do not exhibit toxic behavior,

Because “toxic” behavior is a broad category, and the type of behavior identified as such is operator dependent, Amazon’s solution includes other factors as well. Some players may not find insults to be “toxic” behavior, for example, while others may not find quitting mid-match “toxic” behavior.

As such, the patent description goes further, and also permits the matching of bad players with other players based on the “behaviors displayed by these players” and “these players’ preferences for those behaviors.” In short: a player who swears a lot may match other players who swear too much, while players who withdraw from multiplayer sessions mid-match may be matched with other players who left matches in the middle of the match.

Amazon has a lot of experience trying to modify gaming communities: It has Twitch, the world’s most popular video game streaming service, that has struggled with moderation for years.

Several video games dabbled in the type of player coping behavior covered by Amazon patents, including “Grand Theft Auto Online,” “Fall Guys,” and “Rainbow Six: Siege” among others. The difference with the Amazon patent is that it uses a variety of factors to match a variety of different types of so-called “toxic” players together.

Of course, given the nature of patents and Amazon’s inability to date to create a successful multiplayer video game, no one is guessing if we will see this technology in action.

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