I love Gears and I’ve made some good Gears friends over the years, but Gears Of War is the most toxic community of randoms that I’ve ever come across in game. Most people weren’t too bad with trash talk in Gears 1 and 2, but Gears 3 and on forth had terrible randoms. People getting on their mics and referring the match, screeching, etc. It was worse than COD. It didn’t help that old Epic fueled the fire around that time too with making their forums a dictatorship. Any valid criticism was met with Epic talking down to the player and even banning tons of people. At least The Coalition aren’t that bad in that aspect. I didn’t really care when Rod left. When he faced criticism in Gears 4 and 5, he told the community to F off and play something else. That’s not a good way to do business.
From what I remember, Epic even would join in on flaming someone and congratulated those that agreed with them and flamed the person themselves.