Riot Games to Monitor Voice Chat in Valorant to Lower Toxicity Levels

While sinking hours into the first-person hero shooter Valorant, we all have faced an issue that was detrimental to an otherwise immersive gaming experience. No, this problem isn’t associated with a glitch of any sort but stems from players interacting with one another rather disruptively, creating a toxic environment.

Hate and abuse in multiplayer shooter games through voice chat has tormented players over the years; therefore, many devs, naturally, have tried finding a way around it. A while ago, the makers behind Back 4 Blood started recording players’ communication in voice chat, and now, Riot is set to jump on the bandwagon as well.

Riot Games confirmed that Valorant would start recording in-game English voice chats from July 13 in North America to find out which users are breaking behavioral policies.

As part of a larger effort to combat disruptive behavior, Riot Games recently updated its Privacy Notice and Terms of Service to allow us to record and evaluate in-game voice communications when a report for that type of behavior is submitted

Riot Games

It must be kept in mind that Riot won’t actively monitor your live in-game communication when this system rolls out. Instead, it will only listen to and review voice logs when a report for disruptive behavior is submitted in order to train and improve its language models so that it can be prepared for a Beta launch later this year.

If you are concerned that this move by Riot violates your privacy and could lead to unfair bans, then rest easy. The developer stated that even if players are discovered to be toxic, they will not be automatically banned as there are “systems in place to make sure [Riot] can correct any false positives (or negatives for that matter).”

While this tech might not be perfect and can bring its fair share of issues when it launches, it’s good to see Riot taking a solid stance against toxic users to foster a safer and more inclusive gaming environment.

About Valorant

Valorant is a free-to-play first-person tactical shooter developed and published by Riot Games. The game has a competitive player base and currently runs on Unreal Engine 4.

The game is set on a near-future Earth and features a cast of characters known as Agents, each of which have their own unique set of abilities to create tactical opportunities. Ten players are divided into two teams, Attackers and Defenders, with the goal of winning the most rounds. Players have access to a number of in-game weapons, shields and abilities which they can purchase before the start of every game.