The Ability To Kick Players and Other New Features Coming To Party Pack 9

One of our most requested features ever is coming to The Jackbox Party Pack 9, alongside many of the features that already help you personalize your party experience. With this new pack, you’ll be building a custom teddy bear irreverent game night to love and cherish. 

You submitted tickets, you sent us DMs, you told us at conventions… You need the ability to kick players from the game. Especially when you’re livestreaming. For the past few years, we’ve been working to make it happen and we’ve finally landed on a solution that creates the most seamless experience for hosts and players.

The ability to kick players from the lobby OR the game you are playing is coming to The Jackbox Party Pack 9 on October 20, 2022.

How Kicking Players Works

You may be familiar with our moderation tool that we released in The Jackbox Party Pack 7. By going to mod.jackbox.tv and entering the game’s room code, someone in a moderator role has the ability to screen user-generated content before it ever appears. The kicking players feature will act as an extension of mod.jackbox.tv.

Using the moderator tool, you will be able to select players that need to be removed from the game. Once a player is kicked off, they will be denied access to rejoin the game if they attempt to. 

We recommend pairing this with the “Require Twitch Login” setting. If Twitch login is required, the server will prevent a kicked Twitch user from ever rejoining that room. However, kicking players is specific to that room only. That means if the host creates a new room by starting a different game, the kicked player will have the opportunity to rejoin.

In the lobby, moderators will be allowed to kick any and all connected players from the game without restrictions. Even the first person who joins the room (the VIP). If the VIP is kicked from the game, another player will be given their designation and a slot will open up for someone else to join. 

If the game has already started, we want to preserve any progress made in the game and make sure the experience is still enjoyable for everyone. This means moderators will only be allowed to kick players when the game is above the minimum player count and kicked players will remain in the game visually, but are disconnected and unable to rejoin or submit any new content.

Two More Features Coming to Pack 9

We’ve also added two quality-of-life updates to The Jackbox Party Pack 9:

• QR Code Sign-In: Using your mobile device, you can hold your camera up to the QR code on the screen and it will automatically pull up Jackbox.tv and have that room code entered for you.
• Easy Host Reconnects: If the game host loses their connection to the server mid-game, it won’t automatically be destroyed. The game will essentially “pause” for 5 minutes and give the host time to reestablish a connection. Game data or players will not be lost so you can finish your round! 

Other Returning Features

• Extended timers or No timers: For when you need to slow things down and give folks more time to complete actions.
• Subtitles: Don’t miss any dialogue!
• Family-Friendly Filter: Removes suggestive in-game content (but does not filter out user-generated content).
• Profanity Filtering: Prevents offensive user-generated content from being inputted into the game. Choose between None/Moderate/Strict.
• U.S.-Centric Content Filter: Removes trivia or jokes that may not be understood globally.
• Audience Play-Along: Once you fill up your game with players, allow up to 10,000 audience members to join along and impact the outcome of the game!
• Volume Controls: Increase or decrease the music, SFX, or host audio. 
• Require Twitch Login: Players will have to sign into their Twitch accounts to join the game.
• Motion Sensitivity: Adjust in-game art and animation to be more static. 
• Skip Tutorials: For when you need no instruction!
• Passworded Rooms: Creates a unique password that players must enter in addition to the room code for when you need an extra layer of security. 
• Room Code Hiding: Helpful when streamers want to display the game lobby but are sharing the room code with players privately elsewhere.
• Start Game from Controller: Toggle this on when you want to start the game from the device running the game and not the VIP’s controller. It helps keep control in the host’s hands in case they aren’t the first player to join!
• Player Limits: Set how many players can join the game before you start. 
• Post-Game Sharing: Creates unique shareable content that you can post to Twitter after the game is over. 

The Jackbox Party Pack 9 is coming to major platforms on October 20! Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok for more news about this upcoming pack. Add it to your Steam wishlist or pre-order Steam codes and get 10% off ahead of release!