Elain Brown Games 06.26.2022 23:Jun PM EDT

It's Happening: Valorant Voice Chats Will be Monitored by Riot Games — When will It Start?

Riot Games' free-to-play game, Valorant, is on its way to launching Voice Chat.

Players who have a habit of verbally abusing their teammates should be cautious of the game's new feature.

As part of a larger initiative to tackle disruptive behavior within its games, Riot Games detailed a plan to begin monitoring in-game voice chat in a blog post that was released on Friday.

Riot Games has recently revised its Privacy Notice and Terms of Service for the game to record and evaluate in-game voice communications when a report for hate or any abusive speech is received.

Valorant's Voice Chat Update

As Valorant stated, "as a part of their current game systems that combat disruptive behavior, voice evaluation would provide a way to collect clear evidence that could verify any violations of behavioral policies before they take any action."

The technology will give Riot Games something tangible to refer to when communicating with sanctioned gamers about their violations.

This would also make it easier for us to explain to players why a certain behavior led to a penalty in the first place.

In order to train their language models and prepare their technology for beta launch later this year, Valorant will begin a background launch of the voice evaluation.

The testing will begin on July 13 with gamers from North America who have the English language setting.

Engadget reported that a number of gamers may not positively welcome the idea of Riot Games listening to their in-game voice interactions.

This behavior might be similar to that exhibited by some players when the business launched Vanguard, its kernel-level anti-cheat software.

Valorant's Safe Space

The Verge reported that Riot Games announced this privacy policy change in Valorant last year, in April 2021.

Valorant wants to create a safe space for players to continuously choose to play their game. However, the game company has received a number of complaints regarding the voice chat concerns of a large number of players.

In order for the game to execute the right penalty for the players who violate privacy policies and use abusive and harassing words, they need to have evidence of what those players are saying.

Riot has stated that it will review recordings whenever a player reports another player for making obscene or abusive statements.

In turn, this ought to be helpful in assisting the company in determining whether the player who was reported violated its policies and taking action as necessary.

Because of this, in order for Valorant to move further, it will require the capability to analyze voice data.

Limits of Voice Chat Monitoring

However, the reports that will be made on inappropriate behavior will not be compiled based on voice evaluations conducted during this time period.

This won't become available until the next beta version. Valorant also stated that they are aware of all the hurdles entailed with rolling out this new feature.

They first need to assure its effectiveness before implementing this feature in the game. As this is a brand new piece of technology, there will undoubtedly be some teething problems.

In the event that errors are made, we have mechanisms in place to ensure that we can remedy any false positives or negatives.

Riot Games believes this sacrifice will be worthwhile if it leads to a setting that is both friendlier and less dangerous for everyone who participates in the game.