A few weeks after several clips of Valorant players harassment women via in-game chat went viral on X (formerly known as Twitter) and other social media platforms, Riot Games announced plans to address these bad actors. In a seven-minute video posted on X, Valorant head Anna Donlon discussed the team’s responsibility to protect players, the current systems in place, and the future steps the studio will take to minimize abuse.
Valorant Want to Create a Healthy Environment, Eliminate Harassment
Abuse via in-game voice chat is not limited to Valorant, nor is it a new issue for Valorant players—especially women and queer individuals. I wrote about the insufficient efforts by companies to combat toxic voice chat nearly a year ago and was starkly reminded of the lack of progress this April when a viral video showed several male Valorant players harassing two women during a match. Just two weeks ago, Twitch streamer Taylor Morgan shared a clip where a Valorant player asked her mid-match, ‘Do you know what rape feels like?
At the end of the day there are people who want to take out their insecurity, or their bad day, or their hate on some stranger through their computer screen.
Anna Donlon, Riot Games
Donlon acknowledges that, despite Riot’s best efforts, their current systems ‘can’t catch everything’ and require ‘constant attention, tweaking, and improvement.’ She noted that these processes often have to be ‘painfully manual’ or rely on players reporting issues.
Donlon remarked, ‘At the end of the day, there are people who want to take out their insecurity, bad day, or hate on some stranger through their computer screen.’ She acknowledged that it often takes someone experiencing egregious, painful, or threatening behavior for Riot Games better to understand the gaps in their systems and processes. She noted that this is precisely what Riot is experiencing now, referencing the viral videos and the numerous reports of abuse highlighted by other players.
But Donlon did not mince words when addressing the men who relish abusing women in in-game voice chat or on Twitter, as well as the ‘reply guys’ who offer mealy-mouthed, unsolicited advice on avoiding harassment. ‘When you tell someone to just mute comms to avoid harassment, you are essentially putting the harassed person in a position to not communicate, to compromise how they want to play the game to accommodate you.’
‘We believe that no one should have to “grow a thicker skin” or follow other unhelpful suggestions just to avoid threats of violence or hate speech,’ she continued. ‘There’s no room in our community for the most egregious behaviors, and we’re not going to compromise on that point. If you need to make truly vile statements under the guise of regular trash talk to enjoy gaming, then please play something else. We won’t miss you.
After this refreshingly no-nonsense speech, Donlon then outlines how Riot Games will be approaching Valorant voice comms going forward, and how the team will update its systems to better combat harassment. This includes:
- Updating existing policies within the next 30 days to focus on stronger, faster penalties for severe behavior (hate speech, severe sexual content, threats of violence)
- New actions and penalties including temporary and permanent bans, up to and including hardware bans for the “worst offenders”
- “Beefing up” the teams that manually review reports
- Expanding the rollout of Riot’s voice evaluation system to different regions
- One-time review of the top suspected offenders of the previous Act [a roughly two-month competitive timeframe in Valorant] and issue penalties accordingly
Donlon is “hopeful” that these steps will help players feel safer while playing Valorant, but she also referenced plans to take a more “proactive” approach that the team will outline at a later date. She noted that hardware bans are an extreme form of punishment (one that some male gamers have, unsurprisingly, derided), but said that Riot Games will manually review these cases and will dole them out when there is “clear evidence” against someone.
