Riot Games is planning to improve VALORANT’s abusive chat and voice communication detection system, as stated in today’s Ask VALORANT blog post. According to central player dynamic producer Rae Edwards, some of the game's worst communication offenders have already been dealt chat and voice restrictions.
Earlier this year, VALORANT launched an initiative to force the name changes of players who chose an abusive or offensive in-game display name. While this was deployed a couple months ago, players do still encounter abusive communication through the chat or voice options. The Ask VALORANT question asker mentions the “Forced Name Change” implemented a couple months ago, but also wonders how Riot plans to handle the “awful stuff in chat.”
Rae Edwards, VALORANT’s central player dynamic producer, addressed the issue. Edwards initially states that the team was aware their detection system would not be equipped to handle abusive chat comms at the game’s launch. A new system begins to take effect today, as “[they] issued chat and voice comms restrictions to the worst of the worst.” Edwards adds that the system targets "language and behavior that’s so obviously bad that it’s easy to detect.”
The new system is currently only running in the English language. Edwards explains that the team is “expanding [their] supported languages and improving [their] detection so it does more than catch only the most egregious offenders.”
Two more questions were answered in the blog post, the first of which asks why recent patches have been considerably unstable. Senior producer Arnar Gylfason responds, saying, “our day zero patch stability has honestly been far below our own expectations recently.” Gylfason states the development team will undergo a “thorough investigation” of their patch shipping processes to see where they can improve.
When asked if future patches will take the game’s esports scene into account, VALORANT esports strategy manager Riley Yurk says timing patches alongside competitive events is a “pretty complicated process.” While the development and esports sides of the game are working to sync the new patch and event schedules, the patch 1.11 drop did cause some disruption. Yurk says the team will try to “improve with the lessons [they’ve] learned.”
VALORANT updates are expected every two weeks. The official First Strike event is set to begin on December 3rd.
Source: Riot Games