Riot Games, the developer behind Valorant, will begin monitoring players’ voice communications on July 13. The company says it helps train language models that it will eventually use when evaluating player reports across all of its games. So it is dealing with bad behavior and abuse.
Riot announced this in April 2021 after an update to its privacy policy. The new terminology allows Riot to “record and potentially evaluate voice data when using Riot-owned voice communications channels” to combat hate speech and harassment via voice chat. Riot will consider recordings when a player reports someone for offensive or offensive comments. The idea is that this will help determine if the reported player has violated their policies and then Riot can take action.
Riot won’t start evaluating player reports based on these recordings just yet, but it’s using the information it collects to help build the beta version of the system that should roll out later in the year. For now, Riot will only evaluate conversations for English-speaking players in North America. You can opt out, but disable voice chat entirely or use another communication tool, like Discord for example.
Riot says it will not “actively monitor your live in-game communications” and will only listen and review audio logs if your disruptive behavior is reported. The information will be deleted after the situation is resolved. Of course, it does raise some gamers’ privacy concerns, just like Valorant’s always-on anti-cheat system. It will be interesting to see how this actually works.
Earlier this year, Riot began allowing brave players to add specific words or phrases to its “mute word list” that would help block offensive content in chat, so they’re putting a lot of effort into combating bad behavior.
Source The Verge
Image credit Riot
Filed Under: Gaming News