Toxicity is a widespread phenomenon in competitive online video games. In addition to its direct undesirable effects, there is a concern that toxicity can spread to others, amplifying the harm caused by a single player's misbehavior. In this study, we estimate whether and to what extent a player's toxic speech spreads, causing their teammates to behave similarly. To this end, we analyze proprietary data from the free-to-play first-person action game Call of Duty: Warzone. We formulate and implement an instrumental variable identification strategy that leverages the network of interactions among players across matches. Our analysis reveals that all else equal, all of a player's teammates engaging in toxic speech increases their probability of engaging in similar behavior by 26.1 to 30.3 times the average player's likelihood of engaging in toxic speech. These findings confirm the viral nature of toxicity, especially toxic speech, in competitive online video games.

翻译：毒性是竞技性在线视频游戏中普遍存在的现象。除了其直接的不良影响外，人们还担忧毒性行为会向他人传播，从而放大单个玩家不当行为所造成的危害。在本研究中，我们评估了玩家的毒性言论是否会传播、以及在多大程度上传播，导致其队友表现出类似行为。为此，我们分析了免费第一人称动作游戏《使命召唤：战区》的专有数据。我们设计并实施了一种工具变量识别策略，该策略利用了玩家在不同比赛中的互动网络。我们的分析表明，在其他条件相同的情况下，一个玩家的所有队友都参与毒性言论，会使其参与类似行为的概率增加至普通玩家参与毒性言论可能性的26.1至30.3倍。这些发现证实了竞技性在线视频游戏中毒性行为，尤其是毒性言论，具有病毒式传播的特性。