On July 13th, Valorant’s free first-person shooter (FPS) creator Riot Games will begin listening in on player voice interactions (via PCGamer). The game developer claims that this is to aid in the training of the language models that it will eventually employ for assessing player feedback across all of its games.
After amending their privacy policy, Riot first made this modification public in April 2021. The revised terms let Riot “collect and perhaps assess audio data when using Riot-owned voice comms channels to eliminate hate speech and abuse using voice chat.” Riot asserts that it will check the recording when a player complains about another player making improper or abusive remarks. The company should thus find it simpler to determine whether the reported player violated its rules and take the necessary action as a result.
Instead of starting to analyze player reports based on these recordings just yet, Riot is using the data it collects to help construct the beta of the system it expects to launch later this year. For the time being, Riot will only evaluate the conversations of English-speaking Valorant players in North America. The only methods to object to this arrangement are to use a different communication channel, such as Discord, or to completely deactivate voice chat.
“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),” Riot notes in its announcement.
According to Riot, the technology won’t “actively monitor your live game comms” and will only “potentially listen to and review voice logs” if you are reported for behaving disruptively. Additionally, it declares that after the problem has been fixed, it will delete this information, just like it does for reports made through its text-based chat systems. It will probably raise privacy concerns in some players, much as the always-on Vanguard anti-cheat system that monitors your behavior both within and outside of Valorant.
Valorant is making efforts to get rid of toxic gamers in various ways in addition to the suggested reporting method. This year, Riot introduced the “muted words list,” a feature that allows Valorant players to submit specific words or phrases to a list that will help filter out abusive conversation.
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