Riot Games will listen in on your voice chats. Here's why it doesn't matter

techradar.com:

Maybe they're already on their best behavior? Developer Riot Games will soon be listening in on the voice chats of Valorant players, the company announced recently — and most people are a-okay about that. 

Starting July(opens in new tab)(opens in new tab)13(opens in new tab), Riot will launch a “voice evaluation system” and record in -game voice chats whenever a disruptive behavior report is submitted by players. Riot says this will help to train its language model to identify disruptive behavior, and states the voice evaluation will not be used in the reports themselves. They know that “false positives [and negatives]” can happen, Riot admits.

Right now, the developer is focused on making its tech the best that it can be before it launches the official beta later this year. The new system will record only North American players, and only those speaking English. TechRadar has asked Riot if the beta has an exact launch date and if it plans on rolling out the evaluation system internationally, but we didn’t immediately hear back from them.

The voice evaluation system comes as Riot Games is hammering down on disruptive behavior in Valorant. The company updated its Terms of Service back in April 2021(opens in new tab) which now states Riot has the ability to “record and evaluate voice comms when a report for disruptive behavior is submitted.” So if you agreed to the Terms of Service, you are subject to being recorded.

Riot Games also published a report (opens in new tab)in early February 2022 about its efforts to combat “chat toxicity.” Reading through the report, it appears that Valorant has a problem with players engaging in offensive language and harassing others. The developer states it actively tracks player-submitted