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No matter where you go in life, you are sure to encounter a toxic individual now and then, who is all set to ruin your day. And this fact is especially true for competitive multiplayer games like League of Legends, CS: GO and in this case Valorant.
The game, much like any other multiplayer IP, has become a platform for such individuals to vent out their frustrations. Valorant has become a hotbed for racial slurs, homophobic commentary, and most of all, sexual harassment.
Even though the reporting system is there to keep things in check and try to make the game as PG 13 as possible, but these days, it’s falling quite short of expectations, and it feels like the toxicity is slowly getting out of hand.
Valorant Voice comms can be easily abused
When it comes to tactical, first-person shooters, communication between players is one of the crucial ingredients to winning rounds.
Accurately giving out map callouts and ability timers are essential, and voice comms help in doing that much faster than just typing it out.
But for the toxic individuals, these voice comms can be very easily abused, and they can start raging on the mic, making you have a very bad time. And muting them might seem like a good option, but if you’re in a ranked game, you would actually prefer communicating with the team and try winning rounds, rather than shutting them out.
In a recent Tweet by the streamer and Team Fight Tactics UX designer Evergreenily, we see just how toxic a game of Valorant can get when an individual starts to abuse the voice comms.
That being said, in a follow-up comment, we see that the Valorant executive herself, Anna Donlon is taking notice of the reporting issues that the game has right now, and talks about “looking into long-term solutions for making it safe to play VALORANT - even solo queue!”
In another example, a Reddit user who goes by the name of GreatfulLoL, talked about her recent experiences with sexual harassment in Valorant. She writes, “I’ve been sexually harassed a lot while playing [Valorant]. If you get caught cheating once you get hardware ID banned, but for you to get any punishment for sexual harassment, you need to have dozens of people report you.”
Pushing for a stricter punishment system
Valorant fans want the developers to make harassment as big a punishable offence as cheating, with both leading to the same consequence of a hardware ban.
Players suggest that a more practical way of catching the culprits will be to save the voice comms and allow Riot to have recordings of players who are reported for abuse. Now, this system can be built into the game to make it a more streamlined process.
Riot should start to take up the harassment issue as seriously as they take cheating in Valorant.
