In an effort to crack down on disruptive behavior, Riot Games is going to start recording players’ voice chats during online gaming sessions.
For now, it will only focus on recording voice chats via the first-person shooter Valorant, the Tencent-owned company announced. “In order for us to take action against players who use voice comms to harass others, use hate speech, or otherwise disrupt your experience, we need to know what those players are saying. Which is why, moving forward we’ll need the ability to analyze voice data,” the game developer said.
However, the company needs to first secure permission from users’ to record the voice data. So Riot Games is rolling out an updated privacy policy next month that’ll say it can record, store, and monitor voice chats over its services. Players will not be able to opt out, aside from quitting the game.
The developer plans on reviewing the recorded voice comments selectively, though. “When a player submits a report for disruptive or offensive behavior in voice comms, the relevant audio data will be stored in your account’s registered region and evaluated to see if our behavior agreement was violated. If a violation is detected, we’ll take action,” Riot Games explained.
“After the data has been made available to the player in violation (and is no longer needed for reviews) the data will be deleted, similar to how we currently handle text-based chat reports,” the company added. “If no violation is detected, or if no report is filed in a timely manner, the data will be deleted.”
How long the voice data will be stored remains unclear. We’ve reached out to the company for comment and will update the story if we hear back.
According to Riot Games, disruptive behavior over voice chats has become a “huge pain point” for gamers. However, the developer also needs clear evidence to verify the violations took place.
For privacy-conscious gamers, Riot Games says it’ll be transparent about its data-collection practices. It also doesn’t plan on actively monitoring voice chats in real-time. “We know collecting voice data is a concern for many of you, but be assured that we would never ship anything if we weren’t comfortable having our own data treated the same way,” Riot Games added. “And if you prefer to not have your voice chat captured, you may turn off voice chat.”
Although the updated privacy policy applies to all its titles, including League of Legends, Riot Games says the voice recording and ensuing moderation will only be applied to Valorant. The voice-recording system is still under development, but the company plans on eventually beta testing it in North America before a wider rollout.
“The Valorant team will share more information about how it’ll work before they start collecting voice data in the beta and will also notify players in the client before collection starts,” the company added.
