Although competitive gaming can offer some exciting experiences and even give the best players careers in eSports, there are some issues that gamers can face when they want to rank up in games like CS:GO, League of Legends, and more. Valorant.
These issues stem from players interacting with each other and are often summed up by the term “toxic behavior.” Verbally harassing and “trolling” other players through voice chat is a problem that many players face and that some games have tried to solve.
For example, Back 4 Blood recorded what players said in their voice chat. And now, RiotGamesthe developer behind League of Legends and Valorant, wants to follow his example. In a brief update posted on the Valorant website, Riot has stated that starting July 13 in North America, voice chat will be recorded in English. This has caused some concern among players, who believe that this is an invasion of their privacy and could lead to some unfair bans.
Riot has since stated that this will be a background release of a voice evaluation tool that it plans to release in beta this year. The technology will use recordings of what players say in voice chat to determine which users are violating behavioral policies.
Essentially, this tool seeks to detect overly toxic users, working similarly to a recent Sony patent that sought to eradicate toxicity by detecting disruptive gaming. For now, the test RiotGames you will only hear voice chat from English speaking users. And just to put your mind at ease, the developer has also stated that even if a player is found to be toxic, it will not automatically suspend them.
There are “systems in place” to correct any false positive or negative results that occur in the detection system. It’s clear that Riot is toughening its stance against toxic behavior, something that many of its fans have been wanting for a long time.
Before changing the voice chat feature from Valorantthe company had already removed the chat feature in League of Legends to prevent players from other teams from being toxic to each other.
