In a blog post published today by the social and player dynamics team, Riot Games discussed the latest findings gathered on VALORANT player toxicity in text and audio chat.
The biggest takeaway of the post was that Riot's survey of VALORANT players discovered that "the frequency of harassment by players in our game has not decreased significantly." In January, VALORANT banned over 40.000 players. Bans ranged from a few days to an entire year, with permanent bans for the worst behavior.
The makers acknowledged that the work done so far is at best fundamental for next steps, and they discussed some of the things they're working on to reduce harassment in their game.
Currently, VALORANT plans to impose harsher penalties instead of the hitherto "conservative" ones while data is being collected. Manufacturers are starting to rely more on detection methods and will begin to impose more penalties based on detections.
VALORANT will also show "zero tolerance" and try to find a way to punish a player immediately rather than after the game. The makers noted that people are creatively getting around their methods, so they're working to tighten up automated moderation in this regard.
Finally, and perhaps the biggest complaint from players at VALORANT, are voice communication penalties. It is more difficult to detect that a reported player is harassing in voice chat and requires a more manual process to penalize players. VALORANT plans to be transparent about its work on sound moderation by the middle of this year.
Last year, Riot updated its Terms and Service to enable voice communication assessment. Those who do not want their voice to be recorded for the purpose of managing the voice chat can choose to turn off the voice chat or choose to be recorded.
While Riot has been transparent about the changes it plans to make, there are no immediate meaningful changes to the way VALORANT is moderated for voice chat communication. Riot has shown great interest in fixing the harassment issues that plagued the game, but most players have been grappling with it since the game's inception, and few have removed VALORANT because of it.
VALORANT makers tell the community that enforcing voice chat penalties is “a brand new technology under development,” and they are planning a beta launch for North America later this year. For now, players will have to stick to reporting, muting and continuing when they encounter toxicity in chat.
