Riot Games is reportedly planning to crack down on toxic players in its highly popular and competitive first-person shooter, Valorant, with the use of new measures to curtail harassment and hate speech.
In a video that was recently released and titled "Keeping Our Community Healthy // Dev Updates," studio head Anna Donlon spoke about the issue. She outlined the planned measures for Valorant.
Riot Games on Toxic Players
(Photo : Rito Games / Screenshot taken from official website)
These reportedly include new penalties such as hardware bans for offenders as well as an expanded role for the game's Voice Evaluation tech. The latter supposedly monitors chat for any bad behavior being committed.
Donlon also said that players who want to make "evil statements" are not welcome in the community. She added that player behavior is a very complex problem space, adding that sometimes, solutions have to be "painfully manual" and sometimes they can be tech-based.
The game director also reiterated that offending community members are in the minority but argued there are still people who want to take their insecurity out on other people. Donlon noted that in nearly all cases, someone gets hurt in the process of making these systems better, according to Rock Paper Shotgun.
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The situation was brought to light even more after steamer Taylor Morgan posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, detailing her experience with another player on Valorant.
During one of her sessions, the content creator was in a verbal argument with a player on her team and the other party made sexual harassment comments towards her.
In her X post, she accompanied the video with the words, "I know you hear us. I know you see us. If this goes unpunished I am taking as an active act from you that you do not give a single f*ck about any of the women and minorities that play your game," referencing Riot Games.
Implementing New Measures
Fortunately, it seems like the studio was actually paying attention and said that when victims are told to simply mute their comms, it is essentially putting them in a position to not communicate.
She added that to compromise how they wanted to play the game to accommodate those who were actually responsible for the problem.
Donlon said that Riot does not have any plans to crack down on what they call "banter," nor is the studio looking to "sanitize gaming by over-addressing these issues." However, she noted that players should be forced to "grow a thicker skin" to play online without facing abuse, said PCGamer.
The game director said that there is no room in the Valorant community for the "most egregious behaviors," adding that this is something that they will not compromise on. Donlon also said that the majority of Valorant players who are sanctioned for bad behavior refrain from doing so again.
As part of the new measures, Riot will review players' accounts if they were flagged for severe toxicity in the previous act and will issue appropriate penalties.
Donlon said that while they are not able to stop people from opening their mouths and saying something awful, they can still escort them out of their game spaces, according to OneEsports.
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