Riot Games is tackling comms abuse in VALORANT

It’s obvious to anyone who has ever played VALORANT with random teammates that there is a widespread comms abuse problem. People misuse the voice comms often, usually to flame their teammates, and it is especially common at lower ranks. The toxicity issue gets a tiny bit better as you climb higher on the ladder. But, even at the top, the problem ensues. Today, Riot Games has released an article detailing the problem and the steps it is taking toward a solution.

In the article, Riot acknowledges that the problem of comms abuse and toxicity will never be fully solved by a single action, but the steps it takes will improve the chat and voice experience in VALORANT. The results of the “Muted Words List” addition in Update 4.0.1 are discussed in graph form. Although those results are positive, they can be a bit misleading. According to Riot, the average VALORANT player has not reported any improvement on these issues, so these fixes and results can only be taken as the starting steps, rather than the full solution.

The next steps the VALORANT team is considering can be summarized as an increase in the power and speed of punishments (now that they have the necessary amount of data to feel confident in their judgment), improvements to the voice chat moderation system (which used to rely more on manual reports) and the spread of the pilot program ALARMBOT. This program makes reporting easier and more successful and it’s been tested in Turkey for about two weeks now.