Sony are interested in a voting system that would allow spectators to kick players from game🌺s.
As originally reported by , Sony has been granted a patent for a feature that will allow spectators to “be꧒nch” players, send ‘play better’ warning messages, or even pay to have players remove🔥d.
The p𓂃atent is titled ‘’ a🎐nd was filed in January 2020, and granted on Tuesday.
Sony has been trying to become more active in esports, acquiring the biggest fighting game tour💞nament in the world, Evolution Championship Series, , as well as filing patents for esports match betting and features that could help organisers create esports tournaments more easily.
In this latest patent, Sony ౠdescribes giving spectators access to a menu that would allow them to vote to have a specific player ꩲremoved (‘benched’) from the game. It specifically lists Twitch as an example of when spectators are gathered. Spectators would be given four options in the menu: ‘remove player from game’; ‘warn player to improve’; ‘provide custom message’; or ‘keep in game’.
A spectator’s vote 𒁏would then be counted with other viewers and if the total number of ‘remove’ votes hits a certain amount the player is removed from the game. 𓄧Sony elaborated that when players are removed an animation could be included to show the removal of a player and visual clues “as to why the player was removed from the video game”.
The patent also ♔described the possibility of using the skill level of a spectator to give a we😼ighting to their vote, giving such viewers more clout in the voting process.
For other spectators, they can potentially spend real-world money or in-game currency to remove players, choosing to pay either a fixed price or𒁃 ‘pay per🎶centage of fixed price’ or ‘bid in auction’, the patent details.
For professional esports,♏ this menu system could raise the stakes and make spectators feel more involved in the action. For everyone else, however, how do we feel about spectators paying actual money to remove you from a game? Anyway, it is only a patent, for now...
