What happened is that gaming got bigger than Hollywood, thus, the gaming industry became extremely adverse to any kind of negative publicity and controversy. L

What happened is that gaming got bigger than Hollywood, thus, the gaming industry became extremely adverse to any kind of negative publicity and controversy. Like a games community being declared "toxic" by bored game press having a slow day. That's just not good for business aka the stock price, friction like that needs to minimized and ultimately made impossible. Which first started with censorship of in-game chats with bad-word filters, and by now we've reached a point where most AAA games don't even allow you to chat with the opposing team anymore; Too high is the risk of somebody getting offended. This is also convenient on another end; The more you limit the players expression, the less of it you gonna have to moderate. People can't report other people for saying nasty things, when nobody can say anything! Wouldn't be surprised if 10 years from now there ain't even voice or team chat anymore, and the only way for players to express themselves individually, is buying DLC, like skins, animations and character voice lines.