Riot Games will record voice chats in the online shooter “Valorant” in the future. The audio files can thus be checked for insults or harassment, announces Riot Games in a blog entry. Those who want to continue playing “Valorant” and other games from Riot Games must accept the changed terms of use.

With this step, Riot Games wants to take action against misconduct in the voice chat of “Valorant”, which was previously not recorded and thus could not be reported. While the text chats of online video games have been audited for years, trolls have mostly been able to let off steam in voice chats. This is now to change with “Valorant”.

Basically, all voice chats in “Valorant” will be recorded in the future. If Riot does not receive a message about a recorded voice chat, the files are to be deleted again quickly, writes Riot in its company blog. Exact times are not mentioned. According to the company, it only wants to listen to the recordings if a player has clicked on “Report”. Furthermore, the live chat will not be monitored during the game.

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Trolls in voice chats

Voice chats are a popular tool for coordinating teams in multiplayer rounds. Voice chats allow team members to inform their teammates about tactics and developments faster than text chat. However, time and again trolls or heated tempers use voice chat to insult and harass others – knowing that voice chats are usually not reviewed and therefore they do not have to fear any consequences.

Riot Games makes it clear in the announcement: if you don’t want your voice chat to be potentially checked, you have to mute the mic or disable voice chat completely. Namely, if someone reports the voice chat, the complete recording will be checked along with the spoken messages of all participants. The voice recording will first be tested in North America before it is deployed worldwide.

The new terms of use apply to all Riot Games games. However, the gaming company writes that currently only “Valorant” voice is recorded. Riot’s most popular game, the MOBA title “League of Legends”, has a severely limited voice chat function anyway: Here you can only chat with friendly players. Users of a Playstation can report voice chat clips recorded by their console to the moderation team. In return, Playstation consoles always save the past five minutes of voice chat.