Voice chat is the worst for toxicity, but 2/3 of gamers never report it | Speechly
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Online gaming has boomed over the last decade and gaming has become more social. Voice chat is the preferred way to communicate in social games, but it’s also the most toxic medium.
That’s one of the conclusions in a new report from Speechly, a Finnish startup that uses machine learning to help stop toxic speech in gaming voice chat.
Speechly commissioned Voicebot research to do a survey of over 1,000 U.S. online gamers, and it found that voice chat is widely used today and liked by gamers. But they also say it is the worst channel for toxicity in terms of reach, frequency, and severity.
And it doesn’t seem like it will end soon, considering about two-thirds of toxic behavior victims in online game voice chat have never reported an incident, and those that have didn’t report every incident. The problem is much larger than previously reported, said Otto Söderlund, CEO of Speechly in an interview with GamesBeat.
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“According to this research, two-thirds of gamers actually use voice chat for games. I thought that voice chat was a bit earlier in the adoption curve. But it seems it actually is actually pretty far along in the adoption curve,” Söderlund said.
“It wasn’t surprising that there are massive amounts of toxicity,” said Söderlund. “About 70% of voice chat users say that they have experienced a toxic event. That represents an industry-wide massive challenge.”
Söderlund said the toxicity profiles are continuous and repetitive,
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