Sexual harassment is making this unplayable

I’ve only played this game for a short time, but I fell in love so quickly. It’s literally a dream concept. The only issue is that creepy people start saying sexual stuff when they hear I’m a chick. Reporting and muting is all fine and well, but how do you deal with someone following you around the map and fondling your virtual boobs? Now I don’t want to make a SJW tumblr post or anything, but they can make this game unplayable. Not only that, but one dude in particular made it nearly impossible to report him as he blocked my view of the menu as he pretended to virtually rape me. I struggled just logging out and had to run backwards as he chased me just to do it. It’s annoying and I just want to play the game. Personally, I think a “hide player” function could really benefit this game.

5 Likes

If this happens make sure you take video footage or screenshots so you can get them properly banned or something

3 Likes

Sorry to hear that… some people just are just terrible human beings. Hopefully that individual can get mac banned or something. I would HOPE, from my interactions with female players throughout the game and just the community in general, that this is not the common norm. Most people I have met tend to be the opposite.

Hope the mods can help you out so you can continue enjoying your Orbus experience.

2 Likes

I’ll share a little bit of real-world, training with the community:

If you see it happening to someone else, it’s OK to step in, say something, and stop it.

For a lot of “good” people who would never do something similar, they will see a situation like this develop and assume it is consensual. That the victim is a partner or willing participant. They’ll feel awkward about the entire thing, or like they’re intruding and just move away from it.
For a lot (not all, but some) of “bad” people who pull this shit, they honestly don’t realize how messed up they are acting. They think they are being cute.

A lot of the time, all it takes is one bystander to walk up and ask “Dude, what the fuck are you doing??” to make a situation stop. Be that bystander.

6 Likes

What was the players name, he won’t be safe in the wilds😉, on a more serious note I am sorry this happened to u, and this thing rarely happens, but if it does again you can press both menu buttons on each controller it should auto mute everyone around you and make them invisible if they come to close

3 Likes

Hi, we are incredibly sorry about the bad experiences you went through. We have received the reports and will take appropriate actions to ensure this doesn’t happen again. We do not want you or anyone to feel uncomfortable and unsafe and there is no excuse that makes it acceptable by the players.

We have been and will continue to enforce our Code of Conduct against it. If you ever have any bad experiences with players like this, you can still PM the staff if you haven’t reported it in-game as well. We will take steps to ensure that the players involved aren’t able to do this repeatedly. Once again, we are very sorry about this and take matters of harassment extremely seriously. I’m going to send you a PM for short further details if that is okay with you.

12 Likes

I’ll be sure to take screenshots next time. Especially if reporting in-game is tricky. Good advice :slight_smile:

1 Like

Just piggybacking off of what Mathieu said, very sorry to hear that you had this experience.

Just to make sure you are aware, if you press both of the menu buttons on your controller at the same time, it will instantly mute everyone in the game and hide their hands, which should hopefully make it possible to escape situations like those more easily. I’m open to any suggestions as far as how we can expand that feature to help provide a quick escape so just let me know if you have any thoughts on that.

This type of behavior is against our Code of Conduct, and we follow up on every Report that we get as quickly as possible to make sure that this type of behavior and the people who are doing it are removed from our community. It’s totally unacceptable and it just saddens me honestly that anyone thinks it’s okay to act like this, whether in VR or in real life.

So again, my apologies, and we’re taking care of it now.

6 Likes

I’m not sure how the in game reporting works I’ve had the luxury of never having to report a player. But, if there are people like you’ve jus described then I’d take ever precaution to get them banned. In game reporting + taking screen shots and video then sending to a mod on the forums

1 Like

The menu button trick is very helpful, thank you. I’ll be sure to use that if I ever have a similar situation.

(However, I do want to mention that his head and body were blocking my view of the menu, not just his hands. An option to have hiding bodies would be beneficial imo.)

1 Like

Yeah, I will look into adding that as well.

Also, I just wanted to point out that we received Reports on that player not only from yourself but from 4 other people in the community. It seems like they just logged on, ran around harassing everyone, and then after exactly 2 hours got off (and I assume applied to get a Steam refund.) So it seems like this person really just wanted to run around and cause trouble from the get-go. I will see if I can contact Steam and issue some kind of report against them at that level, but I’m not sure if that’s possible.

I guess the reason I’m saying that is, a) that is by far the most reports we’ve gotten on a single person that quickly, and b) lots of community members noticed it happening and reported it to us. So I hope that incident doesn’t spoil your view of the whole community, overall we have been lucky thus far that it’s been great. And we’ll all just have to band together and do our best to make sure that type of behavior isn’t allowed to stand.

So thank you for bringing this to our attention, and again my apologies that this is something you ran into after starting the game.

11 Likes

I definitely noticed that it seems like an awesome community overall. I’m glad because I want to keep playing this amazing game :slight_smile: Thank you again for the responses and quick action.

6 Likes

inb4 virtual restraining orders are a thing.

In all seriousness though, the dev team and mods are awesome people and I’m glad they’re handling this swiftly and properly.

Don’t let this bad experience ruin Orbus for you.

2 Likes

I’ve been playing a long time and I actually didn’t know this was a thing.

This does drive a point though: This is a new experience and therefore, new problems will be created and will require new ways of handling them from a Dev perspective. It’s one thing to feel gross when your avatar gets crowded in a game, but when the same jerks get in your literal (virtually) face, it’s a whole new issue.

Maybe have ignore remove their avatar entirely from sight, with an option to have their name tag remain (for reporting reasons), or turning their avatar into a transparent, gesture-less block? I’m sure the devs can think of something.

I was just toying with the idea of turning everyone into little puppies that bark instead of speak.

8 Likes

…well, let’s not incentivize ignoring people too much :stuck_out_tongue:

It’s not like they can automatically detect this. You have to report the person.

I wasn’t aware of this. Does this also mute yourself?

They definitely did and we took appropriate action. They did everything right in this situation, it was the other person who was in the wrong.

Currently it just temporarily mutes everyone else in the game for 5 minutes. Probably makes sense that it should mute you, too, I will add that to the list.

You can also do the same shortcut (both Menu buttons) to un-mute everyone as well.

1 Like