Over time, the gaming scene has evolved tremendously and unlocked various avenues that have played a major role when it comes to enhancing the gameplay experience. For instance, gamers can now play games together online and at the same time interact with them.
However, such features have some challenges for the players, which some might view as “toxic behavior”. There have been several cases where players have been attacked and harassed by fellow gamers via the Voice Chat platform on Valorant as spotted by Game Rant.
In an attempt to curb this sort of behavior Riot Games has updated its Privacy Notice and Terms of Service. One of the notable changes with this update is that they will now be able to “record and evaluate in-game voice communications when a report for that type of behavior is submitted—with the goal of kicking this off in VALORANT first”. A move that is likely to receive a lot of pushback since it could be seen as an invasion of gamers’ privacy.
According to the blog post by Riot Games:
Earlier this year, we also mentioned that as a part of our current game systems that combat disruptive behavior, voice evaluation would provide a way to collect clear evidence that could verify any violations of behavioral policies before we can take any action. This would also help us share back to players why a particular action resulted in a penalty.
North America is set to be the first place where Riot Games launch this new voice evaluation system, starting July 13. This will in return help Riot Games to better train their language models and position themselves in a better place in preparation for a beta launch later in the year.
However, gamers will not be able to lodge any abuse or disruptive reports using the platform which is set to start out with the future beta. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, and how well gamers take on this new change given the effect it has on their privacy.
At the recently held Xbox and Bethesda event, a big announcement was made, Microsoft will be partnering up with Riot Games to bring a couple of entries to Xbox Game Pass, among them Valorant. It will also be interesting to see how this move affects Game Pass users.
Riot Games further indicated that they are currently testing out the tool and will be rolling it out once they have worked out the kinks, and are positive that it is serving its intended purpose effectively and efficiently.
