Riot Games has revealed they are set to overhaul their moderation system for Valorant.
This follows a viral video showing a female player experiencing extreme harassment, including threats of violence, from a fellow player in the middle of a round of Valorant. The player made a plea to Riot to make changes to their system, making it clear that their current system that included suspensions was not good enough to protevt players like her.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, SVP and Executive Producer on Valorant, Anna Donlon, herself came up on a new video to explain their plans and rationale. Anna promised changes would be finalized and go into effect in the next 30 days.
These changes would focus the policies towards punishing severe behaviors faster, and to give out more severe penalties. The punishments would now go as far as to force hardware bans, meaning banned players won’t be able to make new accounts on the PC they were banned from.
Anna also explained that she herself went through player logs in the process of examining their current moderation process, as well as discussing player behaviors, and how they escalate penalties. Riot has found that most offenders do not become repeat offenders after they are penalized, but because of this incident, she has come to the conclusion that the current system is not good enough.
Anna revealed that Riot already anticipates an increase in reports, particularly reports that will have to be reviewed manually. Riot will increase their manpower accordingly. Riot also has a Riot Voice Evaluation system, that is currently in beta, but has proven effective. They have found that 75 % of players penalized by the system do not repeat their offenses.
Finally, Anna promises a one-time review of the top suspected offenders to ensure that anyone who is doing this now is punished accordingly.
Riot itself has faced accusations of harassment and workplace misconduct within the company. That issue was resolved in a California courtroom with a $ 100 million settlement, awarded to 1,000 former female employees, as well as 1,000 contractors. Riot will certainly want to go above and beyond expectations to ensure that they can escape that association.
Now, it may be easy to take this for granted, but Valorant is rated in many countries for young adults. For example, it has an ESRB rating of T for Teen. This was a deliberate choice to distinguish it from Overwatch 2 and other hero shooters. So there’s no question that Riot has to take their responsibilities in protecting players seriously, even if against each other.
Moderation will always be a concern in online gaming, but it is possible for game developers to change the culture around their communities to shape behavior. We hope Riot is able to do that for the Valorant community.
