On April 30, the VALORANT terms of service got an update. The change allows for Riot to access and record voice communications in their fight against toxicity. This means that they are testing out Valorant Voice Chat recording. It’s one step towards an upcoming feature that the team has been working on. The new feature will work in the background to record voice chat and determine, in conjunction with player reports, if a player is causing harassment. The goal is to improve accuracy and reliability of bans and punishments towards toxic VALORANT players.
Starting on July 13, VALORANT will implement its fledgling voice-recording software on North American servers. The program won’t be used in reports just yet, though. Instead, the system will be using what it picks up to train its voice recognition. Once the system has learned enough, there will be a beta launch “later this year.” It will only be available in North America, until it’s ready to be ported to different languages and regions.
[Related: VALORANT Episode 5 Release Date]
Riot’s Crusade Against Toxicity
The voice evaluation system is an ambitious attempt to create a more welcoming community within VALORANT. Riot Games has been vocal about their larger, ongoing initiative to pave the way to creating a healthier environment in gaming for all. All the way back in February, the Social and Dynamics team shared their vision to deter “insults, threats, harassment, or offensive language”, as well as encourage “pro-social behavior”. The team has also floated an idea for a
The Potential Downsides
For those who don’t feel comfortable with being recorded once the change takes place, VALORANT assures players that there will be no active monitoring of game communication. However, the only option to “opt out” of the voice recognition system is to disable voice chat entirely. According to the terms of service, just playing VALORANT is an agreement to be recorded.
Some are concerned that more invasive monitoring of players will lead to potentially unjust strikes or worse. According to statistics shared by Riot Games, ten times more players get stuck with a comms restriction– a relative slap on the wrist– than are hit with a total ban from the game. However, both numbers are high and trending upwards. Just in January of this year, over 400,000 players were restricted from communicating in game. In the same time span, over 40,000 players were given a mixture of temporary and permanent bans.
Going Forward
In the same February report on toxicity, the VALORANT team specified that they’d like to implement “Generally harsher punishments for existing systems”, and had already been operating at a “more conservative level.” The new voice recording system will arm VALORANT with another tool to enforce the game’s community. Hopefully, it will make a dent in online harassment. Riot promises to continue to post news “with concrete plans about how [the voice recording system] will work well before we start collecting voice data in any form.”
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