Riot Games, the developer behind Valorant, will begin monitoring players' voice communications on July 13 (via PCGamer). The gaming company says it 's going to help train language that it will eventually use when evaluating player reports across all of its games.
Riot first announced this change in April 2021 after updating privacy policy . The new terms give Riot permission to “record and potentially evaluate voice data when using Riot-owned voice communication channels” for the purpose of combating hate speech and harassment via voice chat.
Riot says it will analyze the recordings when a player reports someone for abusive comments. In turn, this will help the company determine whether the reported player violated its policies and take appropriate action.
Riot is set to begin evaluating player reports based on these recordings. It’s using the information it collects to help shape the beta which is expected to launch later this year of the system , . For now, Riot will only be evaluating the chats of English-speaking Valorant players in North America . The only way to opt out of this system is to disable voice chat entirely or use another communication tool, like Discord.
“"We know that before we even consider expanding this tool, we need to be sure it's effective and if mistakes do occur, we have systems in place to make sure we can fix any false positives (or negatives for that matter)," Riot notes in its statement.
When this system actually goes live, Riot says it won't "actively monitor your live game chats" and will only "listen to and potentially review voice logs" if you report it for disruptive behavior. It also adds that it will delete this information after resolving the situation, just like it does for reports made through text-based chat systems. Still, it's sure to raise privacy concerns from some players, like the always-on Vanguard anti-cheat system that tracks your activity both in and out of Valorant.
The programmed reporting system isn't the only way Valorant is trying to crack down on toxic players. Earlier this year, Riot began allowing Valorant players to add specific words or phrases to a "Mute Word List" that is supposed to help block abusive content from the chat.
