Valve today released some information regarding the new communication bans in Dota 2, and the results are interesting, to say the least.

This announcement follows last month’s change to the way bans are handled by the game, with reports for verbal or text based abuse leading to players being muted. These mutes prevent players from communicating by typing or keyboard, instead relying entirely on a special chat wheel to coordinate with their team.

Valve have stressed that the new system isn’t designed to punish innocent players, and as such it takes multiple reports over a host of games for a player to get muted. At the time of writing, around 1% of the player base have actually been muted by the system.

According to Valve, this new system has been very successful, with a 35% drop rate in overall negative communications, with a 30% reduction in all round reports. This appears to be due in part to around 60% of muted players modifying their behavior once they are punished for it.

While it seems unlikely that this system is the be all and end all to negative communication in “MOBA” games, the positive first month of the system does indicate that at least some players can be made to realise the errors of their ways.