Valorant, the developer of Valorant's free first-person shooter (FPS), will begin monitoring voice communications between players on July 13.
According to the game company, it is helping train language models for its eventual use in evaluating player reports across all of its games.
After updating its privacy policy, Riot announced the change in April 2021.
Riot is now authorized to "record and possibly evaluate voice data" when Riot voice comms channels are used. This is done in order to combat hate speech and harassment via voice chat.
Riot states it will review recordings of players who report someone for making abusive or offensive comments.
This should allow the company to determine if the player was in violation of its policies and take appropriate action.
Riot won't start assessing player reports on the basis of these recordings yet. It's already using the information to build the beta version of the system that it plans to release later in the year.
Riot will not evaluate conversations between English-speaking Valorant players within North America for the time being.
You can opt out by disabling voice chat or using another communication tool like Discord.
Riot states in its announcement that "we know that before it can even consider expanding this tool," and that "if mistakes do happen, we have systems in order to correct them."
Riot claims it will not "actively monitor" your game comms and will only listen to and review voice logs if you are reported for disruptive behavior.
The company also stated that it would delete the information once it has resolved the issue, similar to what it does with reports submitted via its chat-based text systems.
Valorant's plan to report system is not the only way it is trying to get rid of toxic players.