Riot Banned 40,000 Valorant Players Last Month, Will Start Collecting Voice Chat Audio To Combat Abuse

thegamer.com:

Riot has revealed the next steps in its plan to combat toxicity in Valorant, following 40,000 bans and 400,000 chat restrictions for abusive behaviour in January alone. These new actions will include granting Riot the ability to gather voice chat data, in order to ensure that its bans are backed up with evidence.

Voice evaluation is scheduled to roll out in North America "later this year", but in the meantime, Riot will be introducing other ways to disincentivise toxicity. This includes using existing reporting methods to dish out harsher bans, and escalating punishments for particularly offensive players. The team is also hoping to bring in mid-match bans when a "zero tolerance" word is typed in chat, so players don't have to suffer through a whole game with an abuser.

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"When we surveyed players, we noticed that the frequency with which players encounter harassment in our game hasn’t meaningfully gone down", the Valorant team says in a new blog post. "Long story short, we know that the work we’ve done up to now is, at best, foundational, and there’s a ton more to build on top of it in 2022 and beyond."

Riot sets out many plans for its voice chat moderation, admitting that this is the hardest area to combat. One way in which this could be dealt with includes rolling out a Turkish pilot scheme, which has introduced dedicated player support agents on hand to moderate behaviour. If this proves successful, it will possibly go live in other regions.

Riot further explains that the increase in bans seen in the middle of last year comes from the company's growing faith in its report system. It stresses that it wants every ban and mute to be "fully justified", and now