Toxicity and harassment are still very common in Valorant community, according to the game’s developers who have announced new plans to combat misconduct and misbehavior.
A blog post outlines how the game will better deter and respond to this behavior, while reaffirming Riot’s commitment to creating a more inclusive environment.
“While we can never remove misconduct from individuals, we can work to prevent behavior such as insults, threats, harassment or offensive language through our game systems,” the blog reads. “There is also room to encourage ‘pro-social’ behavior.”
THE blog post outlines several steps the Valorant development team has taken so far, including following up on reports of player misconduct and implementing a silent word list that allows players to manually filter out phrases they’d rather not see. But it also admits that these efforts have had little tangible impact on the players’ experience and that more work needs to be done.
“When we surveyed players, we noticed that the frequency with which players encounter harassment in our game has not significantly decreased,” the blog reads.
“Long story short, we know that the work we’ve done so far is, at best, foundational, and there’s a lot more to build on in 2022 and beyond.”
The team is currently working on a number of additional features to crack down on in-game abuse. This includes harsher punishments for those caught by existing systems, improved moderation of voice communications, and real-time moderation of in-game chat, which should allow the game to automatically administer punishments during a match rather than after it has ended. .
The blog post also mentions that the Valorant team will begin testing ways to record and evaluate voice communications after a misconduct report has been submitted. This would provide clearer evidence to support the abuse allegations.
“We are trying different ways to engage with the player base over the next year to better understand where we can improve and we will be transparent about where we are in terms of the technology that we are building and where our head is. at/heading so we can keep the feedback loop open with you all.”
