Posted in: Games, Riot Games, Valorant, Video Games | Tagged: Riot Games, Valorant

Valorant Is Now Recording Voice Chat For Offensive Behavior

Published Sun, 02 May 2021 12:12:09 -0500

In a move that we're sure will have thousands of trolls scrambling to learn all they can about the FCC, Valorant is now recording voice chat. That's right, in case you happen to be racist, homophobic, misogynistic, and just a terrible person in general, Riot Games will now have your comments, on record, for them to listen to and officially ban you. The move comes from the company updating the game's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, which was done so to create a more inclusive and respectful community. Which, if you've ever spent a couple of hours playing the game with voice chat on, you'd realize has a lot of problems. Mostly from people who are not only vocal about how much they hate their teammates for various issues, but will use pretty much every slur in the dictionary to get that point across.

We have a snippet from Riot below for you to read about their decision to do so, but to be blunt, we're cool with this because while it won't stop it from ever happening again, it at least now has people on the record saying terrible stuff so that when they get banned, they don't have much else to say.

Don't lose your cool, Valorant now has you on record. Courtesy of Riot Games. — Don't lose your cool, *Valorant* now has you on record. Courtesy of Riot Games.

We've been taking a look at disruptive behavior in our games for a while, and voice evaluation is just one of the ways we want to make our games better for everyone who plays them.

Disruptive behavior on voice comms is a huge pain point for a lot of players. And we believe one of the ways to combat it is by providing quick and accurate ways to report abuse or harassment so we know when to take action. We also need clear evidence to verify violations of behavioral policies before we take action and to help us share with players on why a particular behavior may have resulted in a penalty.

For Valorant, we recognize there is still work to be done when it comes to the issues surrounding player behavior. In February we launched improved AFK detection, new penalties for AFK offenses, text moderation for more than 11 languages, and report feedback so players know when an action has been taken on a report that they submitted. These changes are just some of the improvements we made to build the social experience that our players deserve. In the future, we'll continue this work by utilizing voice evaluation to eventually launch improved detection and penalties around voice comms.

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