Riot Games will monitor ‘Valorant’ voice chat to combat disruptive players

engadget.com:

Abusive Valorant players could soon have their verbal tirades come back to haunt them. In a blog post published on Friday, Riot Games outlined a plan to begin monitoring in-game voice chat as part of a broader effort to combat disruptive behavior within its games.

On July 13th, the studio will begin collecting voice data from Valorant games played in North America. According to Riot, it will use the data to get its AI model “in a good enough place for a beta launch later this year.” During this initial stage, Riot says it won’t use voice evaluation for disruptive behavior reports.

“We know that before we can even think of expanding this tool, we’ll have to be confident it’s effective, and if mistakes happen, we have systems in place to make sure we can correct any false positives (or negatives for that matter),” the studio said.

Some players will likely bristle at the thought of Riot listening in on their voice comms, much like they did when the company introduced Vanguard, its kernel-level anti-cheat software. But Riot says it sees voice evaluation as a way for it to “collect clear evidence” against players who take to comms to abuse and harass their teammates. The tool will also give the studio something it can point to when it provides sanctioned players with feedback.

“This is brand new tech and there will for sure be growing pains,” Riot said. “But the promise of a safer and more inclusive environment for everyone who chooses to play is worth it.”