Introduction
Online vitriol is nothing new, but if you have been playing online games these past few years you know how bad it’s gotten. What is the most toxic game in 2023? That’s a very relevant question nowadays because some people might even avoid or jump from game to game in hopes of avoiding these kinds of players.
In this article we’re going to try and list some of the most toxic games active right now, sadly most of these are very popular titles that have been going strong for years, but still, you might want to reconsider playing these if you are already at your limit with online toxicity.
Minecraft
If you have never played Minecraft, you might be surprised at seeing it included in this list, but to most current and past players this is nothing new.
Minecraft is probably the ultimate “building” game out there, with no clear end goals and so many options to build and progress, Minecraft might be a perfect example of humanity’s endless creativity and potential to build great things.
But like uncle Ben said “With great power comes great responsibility” and many Minecraft players don’t seem to understand this concept.
It’s not uncommon to see entire game servers devolve into childish infighting and name calling, followed by the ever present “griefing” behavior that plagues every cooperative game in existence. It’s also why most newer games have often tried to avoid private servers at all costs, to avoid this problem!
Fortnite
Fortnite shares a lot of similarities with Minecraft, it’s a game that attracts a lot of young players from all over the world, it features combat, exploration and building. So it’s no surprise to see it listed in here right next to Minecraft.
Unlike other games in the “building” niche Fortnite is actually a battle royale game, so it does have a clear end goal (to end up as the last player alive). But all this does is add to the fire, it’s normal to be screamed at by a prepubescent voice in public matches over the smallest things, and while it can be hilarious at first it quickly becomes boring when it happens so often.
I don’t really think Fortnite is that Toxic when compared to some of the games we will feature next, but it’s sheer popularity and the fact that probably more than half of people who play this game are in school can make this game unbearable at times.
Halo Games
Back in the Xbox 360 days Halo was seen as the pinnacle of what online gaming would become, unlike the “older” shooters it had an interesting story, great graphics and this game is what popularized the common “skill-based matchmaking” that is so prevalent today.
In the present, Halo is no longer the top dog when it comes to well.. anything really, continuous flop after flop and changing studios has led to Halo declining. Maybe it’s this frustration what leads some players to act so toxic in game, quickly resorting to name calling and slurs in voice chat.
Newer Halo fans constantly clash with the older fans, making the community divided in a lot of topics, with most of them being a clear divide between what the older fans consider “real halo” and what the newer fans want.
Out of all the modern shooters (I’m not including Fortnite here) Halo is probably the least toxic, but that doesn’t really mean much when this entire genre is so toxic.
Call Of Duty Games
I could say exactly the same things I said previously for Halo and they would be mostly correct, COD has always been extremely toxic, with public voice chat being a constant source of screaming, insults, slurs and worse.
But unlike Halo Call of Duty has been extremely successful for a very long time, at this point Ubisoft prints money with COD, and have been doing it for close to 20 years now, this means there are a lot more players nowadays in COD that can be toxic.
Another thing that adds an extra layer of toxicity is that unlike Halo, COD has never been a Microsoft exclusive game, so there’s never been quite the same level of policing the population there. Accusations of cheating a extremely common, with most skilled players being called hackers every single game.
If you want to get into a new shooter then make sure you got plenty of friends to play with as COD is a pretty annoying game in this regard.
World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft is probably the most successful MMO of all time, it’s been going strong for almost 20 years now. Back in the day WoW was a cultural phenomenon that defined online gaming as a whole. That means that every toxic interaction you can have in any MMO today was probably first popularized in WoW back in 2004.
WoW suffers from many of the same things we mentioned for the other games, namely a disconnected and divided player base, with old-school players that want to go back to the more hardcore days of the early 2000s constantly clashing with newer gamers that want a more accessible and simplified experience.
But it’s not only this divide in the player base, the game itself has everything it needs to be extremely toxic.
WoW has raids, difficult and long dungeons that require upwards of 20 or 30 players working together to complete, so to compensate the game has party finder tools that matchmake players into pick up groups to finish these. As you can imagine this is a breeding ground for toxicity and horrible behavior, with some players straight up quitting because of this.
And while Blizzard obviously want to fix this issue, it’s probably not going to happen as it’s been so long!
League of Legends
LOL has been known as one of the most (if not the most) toxic games in the world for a long time now. As a MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) this game has many gameplay elements that promote toxicity in the player base.
MOBA’s pit two teams of 5 against each other, they must work together to acquire resource with which to win the game, every time a player dies the enemy teams gets gold and experience. You can see where the toxicity comes here, pretty much every single game (even unranked games) will have a toxic teammate that will flame and eventually grief your team because one of his team mates is dying.
It a big problem with these types of games, unlike the other games we covered here, MOBAs lock you into a match until it’s finished, with players unable to leave they lash out at what they see as the weak link in the team.
There are many theories on why this situation is so bad, I would say one of the biggest reasons is that a lot of people come to LOL after work or on their days off, so when they’re in a hopeless match they feel like they’re wasting their free time, most don’t see losing as fun so they get angry at their team for wasting their time.
Riot has been tackling toxicity ever since the old days, but now toxicity is different, it used to be common to read horrible things in the chat, but that doesn’t happen at all anymore. Automatic text bans will ban players immediately after typing slurs and insults.
Nowadays toxicity in LOL is more about griefing than what people type in chat, when a player is frustrated, they will not cooperate with the team, they will play in a way that causes the most damage to their own team in hopes of either ending the match fast or they will in fact try and “punish” their team mates for perceived offenses.
DOTA 2
This section could be really short, everything I wrote about LOL applies to DOTA 2 as well, but even more!
In my humble opinion DOTA 1 is the grandfather of online toxicity so it’s no wonder DOTA 2 Is the most toxic game in my eyes, there are many reasons why I think DOTA is even more toxic than League, they range from gameplay reasons to an entire different culture.
For the gameplay, DOTA is straight up a harder game, with longer matches, longer stuns, higher damage, and so on. The difference between every hero’s stats and abilities can be disorienting to most League of Legends players. So it’s no wonder that toxicity is also amplified here, with most matches being decided by the team that can handle these conditions better.
The culture thing I mentioned also plays a big part on this problem, while most games on this list (except maybe World of Warcraft) have a balanced age distribution of players, DOTA players are on average probably about mid-thirties.
This mix of older frustrated players coupled with unforgiving mechanics makes DOTA one of the most unforgiving games out there. Most new players will have to endure playing for 100s of hours playing against people that have been playing this game for decades so you can see where the problem lies.
And unlike LOL, Valve is much more of a hands-off type of company with toxicity running wild since day one, it doesn’t look like this is going to improve any time soon, and with no new players coming into the game this problem is actually going to get worse!
Conclusion
So which game is the most toxic in 2023? You could pick any game on this list and believe they were the most toxic, that is how bad this problem has gotten in 2023. But there are some outliers out there so I really think LOL, DOTA2 and WoW are definitely worse than games like Minecraft and such.
If you’re facing toxic teammates constantly, my advice would be to try and find a friend group that you can play with constantly, it really helps a lot. Anonymity online can amplify toxicity so much; a friend group can keep people accountable so no one is abused.
Besides that, don’t just play online ranked games. Try and switch things up by playing offline single player games every once in a while, no one can be toxic in those!